Fuller House Episode 2, “Moving Day”

DJ’s middle son goes down to the basement that used to be Joey’s creepy room and is now where Stephanie nurses her hangovers.  I bet it still smells like Joey in there.  You just know that the stench of old, sweaty socks, cum rags and Funyuns are ground into every square inch of that underground shithole, so much so that even Danny’s obsessive compulsive cleaning could never get rid of it.  It’s worse than a carpeted room that used to have like 15 dogs living in it.  DJ’s middle kid shouts at Stephanie to wake up for Sunday brunch because if there’s one thing a bunch of white ass white people can’t wait for, it’s brunch on a Sunday.  I bet they’ll all do the New York Times crossword puzzle while they eat it.  Regardless of her heritage, Stephanie resists waking up so DJ’s middle son has to shout at her and drag her around.

Meanwhile, DJ prepares a bottle for her baby, Tommy.  I gotta admit that they actually managed to put a cute baby on this show for once.  Tommy is pretty rad.  DJ hands him a bottle and he drinks it for a while as the audience laughs.  I always resented these moments with Michelle and took them as opportunities to point out what an ugly baby the Olsen twins were but now that they have a cute baby on this show I can focus more on how hacky it is to just point a camera at a baby while it’s doin’ stuff.  I wonder if those moments are in the script.  “Point camera at the baby while it does whatever.”

DJ’s oldest son comes downstairs and DJ gets all up in his grill and keeps offering him lots of delicious food and a milkshake in a sort of manic way.

Candace Cameron is looking pretty great these days except that she’s all orange.  What’s up with that?  Are they just doing a really weird job with her makeup or does she sleep in a tanning booth every night in real life?  Anyway, her kid gets suspicious about her being all frantic and offering him bribery food but she won’t tell him what’s going on.

Stephanie comes up from her room and starts talking about how she’s not a morning person because she likes to stay out late and get drunk and cruise around for strange D.  I guess that they’re trying to establish Stephanie as “the party girl” and even though it’s kinda lame it’s at least an effort to make her interesting.  I guess it also kinda makes sense that the neglected middle child who nobody gave a shit about after she turned like 8 would be the most wild and out of control character on the show.  I bet she drinks like 2 whole wine coolers some nights.  Maybe there’ll be an episode later where they have an intervention after she smokes a cigarette or something.

DJ takes Stephanie aside and explains the premise for the episode to her, all recorded through this great from-the-fridge cam.  That’s a new one.  I like it!

They do this crappy bit where DJ keeps misconstruing Stephanie’s statements about what she’s looking at in the refrigerator and it really doesn’t work, especially when Stephanie declares, ” I spilled the beans” as a literal statement but we can see in the foreground of the screen that this did not actually happen.  It is very clear to us that there are no beans there!  Even still, more from-the-fridge cam, please!  I wish all the kitchen scenes ever were shot this way!

Oh yeah also I forgot to say that premise for the episode is that DJ doesn’t know how to tell her boring kids about how Kimmie Gibbler and Ramona are moving in.

One more thing I want to say about inside the refrigerator is that they have totally exposed food in there.  Put some Saran Wrap over that chicken!  I bet all these people’s stomachs are riddled with bacteria!

Kimmie Gibbler and her daughter, Ramona, show up on the porch and they only have like 3 bags between them but I guess this is them moving in.  I really like Kimmie Gibbler’s egg and bacon scarf.  It totally makes sense for her weird early 90’s fashion to have evolved into weird mom fashion.  Like, it’s sort of embarrassing but also totally awesome at the same time in both cases.  Ramona isn’t thrilled about living in the full house and then she protests that they’re moving in with “the whitest family in America.”  WAIT, WHAT!??!  Holy shit, that was amazing!  It’s like someone actually said something that made sense for once!  What an incredible moment of clarity!  This show has been painfully self-referential for pretty much every second so far, but this is the first time that it’s referred to itself in a non-back-patting kind of a way.  I’m totally impressed that they would make fun of themselves without smiling and winking at the camera the whole time, and are showing some actual self-awareness here.  Ramona is totally my favorite character forever now.

Hey wait, I also just realized that Kimmie Gibbler made a point about not telling Ramona about moving into the full house last episode and it seemed like there was going to be some follow-up to that, but now we revisit them with Ramona having already been told about it and the episode is all about DJ not telling her kids.  That seems weird and inconsistent to me.

DJ continues to give her oldest kid sugary breakfast foods while he pleads with her to tell him what the fuck is going on and there are some more shots of the baby while the audience whoops it up.  Kimmie Gibbler and Ramona burst into the kitchen and DJ’s oldest kid somehow instantly deduces that they’re moving in and is pretty upset.  I can’t really blame him.  What kind of a shitty mom is DJ being here?  She’s like, “how do I tell my kids about these life changes?” but I’d say that the worst possible solution to that problem is to not tell them at all and then just spring it on them.  You know what the solution to this problem is?  Talk to your kids.  Tell them what’s going on.  Maybe that’s not as wacky and hilarious as what we get to see here but it’s a very simple, obvious solution.

DJ takes Kimmie Gibbler and Ramona up to Jesse and Becky’s old attic digs, where they’ll be staying.  Kimmie Gibbler puts a big sticker on the wall that’s an image of her head saying, “Do it… Gibbler style” that looks exactly like the one I’ve had on the ceiling above my bed for years.  It’s really good advice.  Ladies be poppin’ like crazy for it.

Ramona is shown Nicky and Alex’s old room and she says that she can’t stay in there because it’s small as fuck.

DJ suggests putting her two boring ass sons in a room together so Ramona can have her own spot downstairs and Ramona’s like, yeah, man, make it happen.

DJ makes a cake for her oldest son to prepare him for the news that he’ll have to give up having his own room.  As she stammers through her disclosure, the middle kid runs downstairs and shouts about the shifting state of the rooms upstairs.  Man, that kid really yells a lot.  I guess that’s going to be one of his defining characteristics.

DJ’s oldest kid runs upstairs to find Ramona moving into his room and is again understandably upset about major shit going down that directly effects him that he had no heads up about at all.  Granted, this is all shit that he’d probably be upset about anyway, but the no prior knowledge thing is a real extra kick in the nuts.  Just tell your kids what’s going on, DJ.  That’s the lesson here.  It is a very simple one.

So I guess the arrangement is that Ramona gets her own room, the 2 boys have to share a room and the baby has his own room, too, just like how Michelle used to have her own room for no clear reason when she was a baby.  Why don’t they just put DJ in the attic room and the baby in Nicky and Alex’s old room and then everyone can have their own room downstairs?  Anyway, DJ’s oldest kid is hella pissed about sharing a room but the middle kid is super into it.

DJ finds Kimmie Gibbler and Stephanie in the kitchen, eatin’ all the cake, and she’s like, “there’s been another plot contrivance!  As if things weren’t already crazy enough, there’s an emergency down at the pet clinic.”  Apparently, a pig’s vagina exploded.  Kimmie Gibbler and Stephanie are like, “go do your job, we’ll handle shit around here.”

DJ’s oldest kid tries to convince the middle kid to share a room with the baby instead of him and it almost works out until the baby takes a big shit in his diaper.

Uncle Jesse walks into the kitchen and the whole audience simultaneously ejaculates.  I think they’d probably be less excited about his arrival if he wasn’t interrupting a scene featuring Stephanie and DJ’s oldest son, who are a couple of fucking duds onscreen.  Jesse says that he came back to the full house because he forgot his guitar and then the oldest kid bitches to him about having to share a room with his brother who won’t stop shouting all the time.  Jesse advises him to hug it out, and adds that they used to do that every day in the 80’s, which was sometimes so sweet hat you could hear violin music because ha ha remember how the old show was just like that?  As if that wasn’t enough of a wink to the audience, he starts chomping down some fried chicken like 2 seconds later.

Stephanie tries to overhaul Jesse’s glib very-special-talk by describing one of the first episodes of the original series (I think it was the second episode, just like this one is for this new series… I wonder if they’re going to continue to structure the episodes of this new show after original series episodes like this), in which DJ got all pissed about having to share a room with Stephanie and tried to run away.  Stephanie says that they managed to patch things up and then DJ’s oldest son says that he’s gonna go upstairs to work things out with his sibling, too.  After he leaves, Stephanie and Jesse jerks themselves off over what great legal guardians they are as DJ’s oldest son sneaks out of the house in the background.  Also, Jesse and Stephanie say each other’s catch phrases, which pretty well encapsulates everything that’s wrong with this series.

Kimmie Gibbler teaches Stephanie how to change the baby’s diaper.  Stephanie recalls changing Michelle’s diapers and says that she had to do it so much that it was almost like there were 2 of her because ha ha remember how there were 2 ugly babies that played Michelle?  I’m sure a lot of you wouldn’t have gotten that if I hadn’t pointed it out.  I wonder if this Tommy kid is gonna grow up to be a talentless emaciated billionaire, too.  Stephanie hears her phone ringing and realizes that she left it in the baby’s diaper and then, instead of just pulling it out like a sensible human being, she holds the baby’s ass up to her ear and proceeds to have an entire phone conversation with DJ.  As forced and ridiculous as this was, I did kind of like it when the baby farted in her ear.

Jesse drives through the grapevine and sings along to Elvis because I guess he hasn’t expanded his repertoire at all in the last 20 years.  While he’s doing this, we see that DJ’s oldest son has stowed away in the back seat, which Jesse probably would have noticed if he gave one shit about anything.

Jesse calls Becky through the dashboard phone thing and serenades her with Elvis songs, which she must be so fucking sick of by this point that I can’t even imagine it.  DJ’s oldest son gets understandably fed up with Jesse’s singing and interjects, revealing his presence.  Jesse’s like, “what the fuck are you doing in my car?” and DJ’s oldest kid explains that he’s hella mad about all the changes in the full house, especially since it’s like mostly broads now.  Jesse empathizes about the struggles of living with women, then he starts rambling about how shitty Becky’s cooking is and then it turns out that their whole conversation was left on her answering machine.  Oops!  Anyway, Jesse tells the kid to text his mom where he’s at and then turns the car around to take him home.

Kimmie Gibbler and Stephanie hang out with the kids in the kitchen, drinking what I thought were margaritas in a refreshingly not-G-rated moment, but then I noticed that the kids are drinking them, too, so it’s probably just like juice or some shit.  DJ comes home after getting the text from her son about how he fled to Southern California and rails on her new co-parents for being such fuck ups.  I guess she got to leave work after getting the text even though she was called in for an emergency, or maybe she just finished reconstructing that pig’s vagina.  It makes sense that Stephanie would be totally useless here but I’m kind of confused about Kimmie Gibbler’s incompetence.  She’s also a single mom, so it seems like she’d have a few things figured out.  That’s a fundamental difference between this series and the original, which featured 2 completely hapless adult men stumbling through their attempts to help a single parent raise kids, whereas one of the adult helpers on this show is actually arriving with some experience.  I guess it would be less wacky and hilarious for her to be portrayed as competent, though, so we’ll still see situations like this, where the her severe negligence and ineptitude is played for laughs.

Jesse comes back to the full house with DJ’s oldest son and then DJ calls everyone into the living room for a family meeting.  Stephanie downs her juice before leaving the kitchen so maybe it is supposed to be booze?  Maybe the kids were supposed to be drinking a no-booze version of it, then?  It kind of feels like there’s 10 seconds missing that would contextualize these margaritas.  Stephanie and Jesse share a moment where they reminisce about the original series some more, harkening back to what a fuck up he was (not that this has changed at all) and then, right before he heads out, he gets a text from Becky that’s like, “I got your message that recorded you talking shit about me to DJ’s boring kid and you can go fuck yourself.”

DJ leads a family discussion where she asks her oldest son what the fuck he was thinking when he stowed away in his greasy uncles car.  DJ’s oldest son says that shit’s been hella hard since his dad died.  Moving into in a giant house for rich people has been a really challenging life change.  DJ tells him that she used to have to share a room with Stephanie and, even though it sucked dick, they’re like all close and shit now so maybe in the long run it’ll be for the best if they build that relationship, like if his wife dies when he grows up, which seems to be a tradition with this family for some reason.  Kimmie Gibbler also consoles Ramona even though she’s just sitting there and doesn’t even seem upset.

Everyone agrees to try their best to adjust to being a part of this terrible new tv show and then they all hug as the audience goes “aww” and cheesy music plays and then Jesse comes back in and smiles and winks at the audience about how they’re all hugging and cheesy music is playing because I guess it’s supposed to be more palatable if they pretend that they’re above all that now.  Way to have your cake and eat it, too, Fuller House.