Season 8 Reviewed

It’s generally regarded as fact that the universe is expanding at a rate beyond our comprehension.  It’s theorized that it may someday snap back onto itself like a giant rubber band, condensing for a period only to begin the process of expansion all over again.  An auxiliary theory is that, instead of condensing, the universe will continue to expand until eventually all matter will become so spread out that reality as we know it will dissipate into what we could only perceive as nothingness.  It reaches well beyond my realm of knowledge to verify or deny any of these concepts because, honestly, I barely understand this shit, but the latter theory was what came to mind when I tried to think of a way to describe the final Season of Full House.  There’s no dramatic conclusion or worthwhile resolve, just a bland dissolution as the series dissolves into nonexistence.

Nothing remotely important occurred during this Season.  To be fair, trying to create some sort of satisfying conclusion to a show that was never really going anywhere isn’t a realistic expectation.  There were points of the series where noteworthy events occurred, though, and this Season featured almost none of them.  DJ gets into college but the series concludes before she even graduates from high school, and that’s really the most remarkable thing that goes down.

The only thing that can really be taken away from this final Season is that none of these people are going to change or improve in any way and that they’re all just going to live in that house together forever, acting like assholes until the end of their days.  It would have been nice to think that there could ever be some hope for any of these people to come out from the bubble of privileged existence that is the full house and learn to contribute to society in some way, or at least acquire some fucking manners, but now we can be sure that it’s never going to happen.

There’s a bit of a continuing storyline where Danny is dating Gia’s mom, Claire, but it never goes anywhere and is eventually dropped altogether.  This reminds me that neither Danny or Joey really manage to have any sort of noteworthy romantic life throughout the entire series.  They tried to make Vicky work for a few Seasons but eventually gave up and Danny never really got much action after that.  Joey never had a love interest for more than a few episodes, but I can understand why.  The idea of his character having any sort of a sex life is just so creepy and unfeasible.  It’s interesting that even the people who worked on the show seemed aware of this.  That makes it even more strange that he did have so many short lived relationships throughout the series, though.  It would have been better for everyone if he’d just been completely asexual the whole time.

Becky gets promoted over Danny (and rightfully so) but they both continue their jobs on Wake Up, San Francisco.  Jesse continues to run the Smash Club, which doesn’t seem to take up very much of his time, plus he and Joey also maintain their radio DJ jobs.

DJ continues to be the only tolerable character on the show, or at least the only one who seems at all like an actual human being, plus she sports some pretty cute hairstyles and outfits this Season.  I feel glad for her that she’ll be escaping the full house soon.  It’s possible that she ends up being forced to stay, like because Michelle starts crying or whatever, but I really like to think that she gets out of there and makes a better life for herself.  It really does make sense that she would be the only one to escape and lead some semblance of a normal life.

Stephanie gets into her teen years and there seems to be an increased focus on her poor choices and budding sexuality (often both at the same time).  I think she got a little more screen time this Season but we all know that she was lined up to be the star of the show early on when she was an adorable, precocious 5-year old, and boy did that not work out.

Michelle continues to be a terrible person.  She really is the most detestable child in all of television.  I don’t know why they had to make her such a sassy asshole all the time.  Couldn’t she have had any endearing traits?  Ever?  One of the more interesting elements of this show is seeing what a kid will turn out like if you make them a tv star before they’re even cognizant, and the answer is that they’ll become a snotty piece of shit.  It’s interesting to me that this show had a sociological experiment built right into it, but not so interesting that I’m glad that I watched it.

The twins were a really odd addition to the show that never really amounted to much.  They might be the series’ greatest failure, actually.  They really weren’t cute and were totally unable to deliver any coherent lines at any point.  At least the focus on them was pretty minimal.

Although this final Season was fairly unremarkable overall, it definitely featured the worst story lines ever.  I still have to say that the dumbest premise of all time belongs to the episode in Season 6 where Michelle knocks over a dinosaur skeleton, but this Season hosted an incredible quantity of mind-blowingly shitty stories. The one where Michelle gets all obsessed with the rate at which her feet are growing stands out as the champion of awful ideas, but let’s not forget the one where she buys a donkey, or the Christmas episode where Mickey Rooney imprisons Jesse and Michelle in his store until they invite him to the full house to spend the holidays with them.  As the series ran out of sitcom cliches to recycle after having racked up so many episodes, they didn’t really come up with creative solutions, just weirdly hackneyed ones.

The question that always comes to mind during these Season Reviews is whether or not the one at hand was the worst so far.  Did Full House manage to get progressively worse throughout the series?  It’s hard to say.  Aside from Michelle becoming more and more detestable as she got older, I think that this final Season might have been less offensively terrible than the previous one, if for no other reason than the obvious lack of effort that was put into it.  One of the things that made Full House so grating and awful was the smug sense of self-confidence that was ever-present throughout most of its run, but this last Season felt less like it thought that it was great and more like nobody gave a shit at all.  So at least the lack of effort was more apparent, which makes it more ok for some reason.

I wish I could fall off a horse and forget everything that ever happened on this shitty show but unfortunately I’m stuck with it.  Well, at least it’s over.

Thanks to FHR reader Rustu for buying me the Season 8 DVD set!  And thanks so much to every single person who ever read this site, especially those of you who left comments!  I can’t say how happy I am to have accumulated such an active and positive community around this angry, fucked up project.  I am in awe of you all!

I hope to see a whole lot of you at The Waypost tonight for the final FHR close-out party!  I’m gonna do live readings of a few episodes and get real drunk!

Stay tuned throughout the week for a whole lot of bonus content!  I’m gonna post some Top 10 lists and video from the event in San Francisco and some other neat bonus stuff.  There should be a new post each day of the week unless something gets all fucked up.  Next Friday, January 31st, I’ll post a final wrap-up entry and then we’ll all have to say goodbye for reals.  Until then, I remain,

Billy Superstar