Season 8, Episode 10, “Under the Influence”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Joey cooks dinner so Jesse assumes that it’s meatloaf because that’s apparently all he ever makes.  Joey defies their expectations by presenting something new: meat muffins.  Even though that’s just meatloaf in a slightly different shape, everyone decides that they couldn’t possibly eat it and resolve to order out instead.  Michelle comes in and yells that she’s starving and demands food, which is so like her.  The twins are trailing her and they’re all up her ass so she gets irritated with them and tells them to fuck off and then Stephanie’s like, “how do you like them apples?” because that’s how she always feels about Michelle (not to mention that DJ feels the same way about Stephanie.  It’s a horrible cycle, I tells ya!).

Kimmie Gibbler comes over and doesn’t waste any time before mocking Joey and Danny for not having anything to do on Saturday night.  Before heading upstairs, she delivers some expository dialogue to Stephanie about how she and DJ are going to a frat party that evening.  Joey and Danny reminisce about how they used to lie to girls at their frat parties to get them to hold hands with them and wear their promise rings and stuff and then Danny decides he’d better warn DJ before she finds herself in a similar scenario with some guy who has actual sexual ambitions.

Up in DJ’s room, Kimmie Gibbler gets all nervous before the party but DJ tells her to chill the fuck out.  Danny comes in and warns them not to believe any frat boys’ horseshit stories and they’re like, “sure, whatever.”

Michelle plays Hungry, Hungry Hippos with Joey, which is the most well-loved game of all time that’s not really that fun and doesn’t even work very well.  I hope that whoever named it made a million dollars because if it wasn’t so fun to say, the game probably would have been a huge failure.  Michelle destroys Joey at it because, on top of being a horrible comedian and human being, he also sucks at Hungry, Hungry Hippos.  The twins come downstairs and want to play with Michelle and she’s like, “fuck, I am so sick of those assholes” but they get all up in her grill anyway.

The twins start playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos and then they knock it off the table, and even though it’s made of sturdy plastic, Michelle tells them that they’ve wrecked it and that they need to fuck off.  They tell Michelle that she’s mean and that they don’t like her anymore and then they start chanting, “we hate Michelle,” which is actually pretty great.  Sad music plays while the camera fixes itself on Michelle’s stupid pouty face while you can hear the twins continuing to chant “we hate Michelle” in the background and, it happens so rarely, but every once in a blue moon this show gives me a little morsel of genuine enjoyment.

As if Michelle being subjected to hate and ridicule wasn’t awesome enough, the next scene opens with DJ carrying Kimmie Gibbler up to her room fireman style because she’s drunk as fuck.  Stephanie comes in to infringe on their privacy and is unable to figure out what’s wrong with Kimmie Gibbler because she’s actually never seen a drunk person before.  You know what?  I can actually believe that.  Once DJ tells her what’s going on, Stephanie insists that they tattle to Danny like a couple of stupid babies but DJ talks her into helping cover it up instead.  She hides Kimmie Gibbler under the covers and tells Danny that she’s going to stay over because she had a fight with her parents and he’s just like, “fine, whatever.”  I’d be willing to bet that he’s never seen a drunk person before, either.

Kimmie Gibbler gets up and starts being an angry drunk and DJ explains that she already got them kicked out of the party and needs to stop being such an asshole.  Kimmie Gibbler tries to storm out of the house but she passes out before she can because drinking alcohol is really bad, kids.

In the morning, Michelle walks into DJ’s room and starts asking the sleeping form under the covers what to do about the twins still being mad at her because what the fuck does she care if someone else is sleeping when she’s got trivial problems that need to be addressed?  It turns out that the sleeping figure is Kimmie Gibbler, who’s all hung over.  DJ comes in and Michelle demands that she be notified in the future when Kimmie Gibbler sleeps over and then leaves.  DJ reminds Kimmie Gibbler that she was up all night puking and then asks her if she remembers anything that happened the night before.  Kimmie Gibbler gets all agitated and starts recounting that she was the life of the party before DJ ruined everything for her.  DJ’s like, “uh-uh, biznatch, I had to cover for you and hold your hair back when you were puking and sleep in a chair while you were passed out in my bed.”  DJ and Kimmie Gibbler used to have way more irrational fights like this back in the earlier Seasons and I’ve really missed them.

Kimmie Gibbler brings on a flashback to her version of how things went at the party, starting with DJ hanging out with a couple of stereotypical late-80’s nerds (they’re not even stereotypical early-90’s nerds).

Kimmie Gibbler comes in with a couple of hot dudes all up on her vag and addresses DJ in some weird old-timey New England-esue accent, which is really weird even if this is supposed to be an idealized version of how she saw things.  I mean, she has to know that she doesn’t really talk like that.  Anyway, Kimmie Gibbler remembers herself being all witty and charming and everyone standing around applauding her every action until DJ gets jealous and demands that they leave the party.  After the flashback is over, DJ tells her that this take on events is total bullshit but Kimmie Gibbler just tells her to suck it and that they shouldn’t be friends anymore.

Joey, who was supposed to make french toast for the family, decides to make flounder tarts instead, because I guess on top of everything else that he sucks at, he also had to be a terrible cook.  It seems kind of odd to me his terrible cooking never came up once over the last 7 years.  Jesse comes into the kitchen, followed by Michelle, who’s still hung up about the twins being mad at her.  Jesse takes a bite of a flounder tart (which is clearly just a Poptart.  Way to phone it in, prop master) and has a cartoonishly exaggerated reaction to how bad it is.

He actually spits it out into Joey’s oven mitt and puts it back on him, which is totally deserved, what with all those times Joey spit in everyone’s faces and all.  Even still, that shit’s pretty gross.

Becky comes in with the twins and tells Jesse that she thinks that they should solve their conflict with Michelle without any adult intervention but Jesse’s like, “I never listened to you before and I’m not about to start now.  Go sit down.”  And she does.

Jesse begins to deliver an oration on forgiveness to the twins.  He asks them if they can say “forgiveness” and one of them says “porgibinah.” Yeah, I guess that was a pretty loaded question.  He summons Joey over to him for a demonstration and then he sticks a flounder tart in his shirt pocket and smashes it, spraying disgusting fish liquid everywhere, so Joey can display forgiveness in front of the twins.

Joey agrees to forgive Jesse but when they ask the twins if they can forgive Michelle they still say no.  Joey decides to take advantage of the situation by spreading fish goo all over Jesse’s face so that Jesse can demonstrate forgiveness, too.

It’s amazing to me how every attempt from these assholes to display appropriate behavior immediately devolves into a show of exactly how you should never act ever.

Jesse pours the fish goo down Joey’s shirt, which Joey actually helps him with for some reason, and then the exchange reaches a climax with Joey trying to shove an electric egg beater up Jesse’s ass.  I’m not even making that up.

Becky intervenes, presumably because she and Jesse haven’t reached that level of experimentation in their relationship yet, and asks the twins if they’ll just fucking forgive Michelle already so this bullshit subplot can wrap up.  They say that they can’t because they don’t know what “forgive” means because, throughout all that fish goo smearing, no one actually defined the term for them.  The music comes on as Michelle walks over to the twins and tells them that forgiveness is when someone says they’re sorry and then sappy, gentle music comes on and then everyone hugs while the audience goes, “aww.”

Danny goes up to DJ’s room to tell her that the family’s going out to breakfast because her stupid worthless uncles smeared fish goo all over the kitchen.  He says that she can invite Kimmie Gibbler if she wants but she tells him that Kimmie Gibbler can go eat a big bag of dicks because she got drunk the night before and acted like a total piece of shit so they’re not friends anymore.  After making sure that DJ didn’t drink, too (like that would ever happen), Danny tells her that you shouldn’t abandon your friends just because they make bad decisions.  DJ says that she doesn’t want to be weighed down by Kimmie Gibbler being a fuck-up anymore, which is pretty rational if you ask me, but Danny just tells her that Kimmie Gibbler needs a friend like her in her life.  So, let me get this straight… Danny is defending DJ keeping a friend who makes terrible decisions and holds her back?  I really would have thought that drinking any alcohol ever would totally get you booted out of the full house for life, but it’s not like anything that goes on in there has ever made sense to me before, so it’s not like the show’s going to start following any internal logic now.

DJ heads over to Kimmie Gibbler’s but finds her nursing her hangover in the backyard, probably because there aren’t any sets for Kimmie Gibbler’s house.  DJ begins to tell Kimmie Gibbler her own version of what happened the night before, triggering another flashback.

According to DJ, Kimmie Gibbler was stomping around and being invasive, demanding attention, and spitting food in people’s faces.  So, basically, she was acting the way that everyone from the full house does whenever they go out into the world.  A guy comes over and tells DJ that she has to take Kimmie Gibbler home because she’s drunk and that they already kicked out the guys who brought the beer, making this the most unrealistic frat party in the history of television.  Kimmie Gibbler refuses to give up her keys so DJ has to wrestle them away from her so they can get home.  At the end of the flashback, DJ says, “and that’s what really happened,” which brings up an interesting point.  Usually in these Rashomon-esque stories, there’s a contrast between different people’s takes on an event that reveals their own motives or subjective perspective.  In this case, however, we’re just supposed to understand that Kimmie Gibbler’s take on events (which was way more fun and interesting) is delusional and that DJ’s is objectively accurate.  Doesn’t that sort of defy the purpose of showing contrasting points of view?  I guess it’s just to further the heavy handed point that drinking alcohol is bad and impairs your judgement, but even still, what a bunch of crap.

Kimmie Gibbler is unpersuaded by DJ’s recounting of events and tells her to kiss her ass and stop trying to run her life.  DJ starts crying and says that her mom was killed by a drunk driver and that she wasn’t going to let her dumb ass best friend die the same way.  The music comes on as Kimmie Gibbler apologizes and says that it had already been revealed that her mom had been killed in a car accident before but it had never been specified that a drunk driver was involved and that she was just drinking to feel cool and confident.  DJ tells her that she wasn’t being cool and that she made an asshole of herself but also that everyone gets nervous and you just have to deal with it and stay in control of yourself and then they hug and the audience goes “aww.”

I bet that Joey was the drunk driver that killed DJ’s mom.  It’s not like being a terrible, murderous driver would even add that much to what a piece of shit he is at this point, plus he got years and years of free room and board out of the deal.  As far as I’m concerned it’s canon.

Firsts:  It’s revealed that DJ’s mom was killed by a drunk driver