Fuller House Episode 8, “Secrets, Lies and Firetrucks”

Kimmie Gibbler wakes up on the couch next to Fernando and she’s like, “aw shit, what have I done?”  Fernando is startled awake and quickly provides very naturalistic exposition about how they just fell asleep next to each other while watching a movie, because even married people can’t have sex on a family friendly show like this, apparently.  Or maybe married people can, but people who are separated can’t.  Where’s the line?  I do not know.  Anyway, they contemplate getting back together but decide that it could really make for a wacky premise if they kept their goings-on a secret for a while, so they agree to smuggle Fernando out of the house, unseen by everyone else.

DJ’s kids walk in on the dog tearing up the couch and they each shit one brick.  The younger kid is like, “game over, man” just like the dad from Big Love in Aliens but then they older kid is like, “we can just lie our way out of this.”  The younger kid is so pure of heart that he cannot quite grasp the concept but the older kid quickly schools him in the art of fibbery.  Basically, you can just say whatever you want.  The younger kid tries to frame the baby for destroying the couch and when DJ finds out she doesn’t really get mad or reprimand him at all for trying to pull a fast one on her, which may not be great parenting, actually.

Kimmie Gibbler makes an effort to distract the family as they eat breakfast while Fernando’s legs dangle conspicuously from the roof  in the background for way too long.  He falls, which is also incredibly conspicuous and loud, and then he shambles into the house all covered in leaves and nervously babbles for like a minute straight, making a serious of totally unnecessary statements that make it painfully obvious that he just crawled out of Kimmie Gibbler’s window upstairs.

He’s like, “I just came over to bang Kimmie Gibbler and then crawl out the window, I mean, pick up Ramona.”  You have to imagine that in a really over-the-top Latin sterotype accent, though, where all the e’s are eee’s and there are a bunch of extra h’s at the beginning of words.  Even though it could not be more overtly clear what is happening here, no one suspects a thing.  Instead the exchange becomes about how Fernando wants to take Ramona to the zoo and she’s like, “I don’t wanna do that little kid shit anymore.  Let’s go get our anuses bleached instead.”  There’s a bit about Fernando being sad that Ramona doesn’t want to go to the American Girl doll store anymore and it reminded me that Fernando has a little sprinkle of delightful femininity inside of him.  There was a whole thing in an earlier episode about him being a hairdresser and that, coupled with this new moment, is enough to make him slightly more than completely one-dimensional.

Danny shows up at the door and, man, you never heard an audience whoo so hard in your life.  Those motherfuckers went whoo with such enthusiasm, I couldn’t believe it.  Danny and Kimmie Gibbler go right back into their spirited interactions, including yet another meta-routine.  Danny is apparently in town for the Wake Up, San Francisco reunion show (although didn’t he just leave to do a national version of the show?  Why would they have a reunion show so soon afterwards.  Also, shouldn’t Aunt Becky be on this show, too?  Where is she?  And they really didn’t need an explanation about why Danny is visiting anyway.  They could have had him just show up to visit because this is his family.  They didn’t need some half-assed excuse that doesn’t even make sense.  The absence of an explanation would have made more sense than the one we’re given) and Kimmie Gibbler makes a comment about how sad and lame it is when old, shitty shows have dumb ass reunions.  It’s delightfully self-deprecating, even if Bob Saget can’t stop grimacing his way through all of his lines.

Danny discovers that the dog fucked up the couch and he takes a big ol’ dump right in his pantaloons.  He calls the couch a “classic antique” and it made me wonder if this is the same couch that they had throughout the original series.  I mean, I’m sure it’s a reproduction, but did the old couch look like this one?  I really can’t remember.  They coulda had a bunch of different couches on the old show for all I know.  What did strike me is how small that couch is, considering  that like a billion people seem to live in that house at any given time.

The next scene is another one of those weird ones where one of the kids is hanging out with his friend and a bunch of other kids are there, too, but they’re all off to the side, not saying anything.  They’re just standing there like a bunch of rubes (in order of height) while DJ’s middle kid and his friend talk shit to each other.  It’s really weird.  The only speaking kid keeps talking about how cool his dad is but DJ’s middle kid is like, “my dad’s dead but before that he was hella cooler than your punk ass dad”.  DJ’s middle kid concocts a lie about how he can get a ride from a firetruck whenever he wants because his dad was such a cool fireman but then his friend is like, “you’re a lying cocksucker.  The only way you can prove that this isn’t fucking bullshit is if you bring a firetruck to my birthday party tomorrow.”  DJ’s middle kid is like, “it’s on, bitch.”

Danny laments the passing of the couch and he shares some fond memories with Stephanie, who wistfully recalls all the times that she got fingerbanged on that nostalgic piece of furniture.  At least that’s what I think she said.  I was pretty distracted by Bob Saget’s big, puffy head.

DJ comes in and asks Danny for advice about dating after ones partner’s tragic death.  What an odd thing for them to have in common.  Anyway, DJ says that her co-worker, Matt, makes her pussy turn into a big sloppy puddle in her tight mom jeans whenever he’s around but she’s having reservations about letting him stick it in.  At least that’s what I think she said.  I was pretty distracted by Bob Saget’s big, puffy head.

DJ’s middle kid confronts the older one about how the repercussions of his tutorial in dishonesty have really fucked his shit up because now he’s gotta figure out how to get a firetruck to show up at his dumb friend’s birthday party.  The older kid is like, “too bad our dad’s a smoldering corpse or he coulda hooked that shit up, no problem.”  He decides that, rather than let his little brother deal with the consequences of being a shitty liar, he’s going to figure out a way to make the fire truck fabrication become the truth.

Danny takes the boys down to the fire station to take advantage of some unfortunate firemen.  The middle kid practices his “cute” expressions that will supposedly convince a fireman to let him ride in the truck and it’s the first time this new show has really matched the original series’ overbearingly smug attitude.  Like, I don’t wanna watch some shitty kid demonstrate how fucking cute he thinks he is.

So apparently a new fire chief has been hired since the kids’ dad was horribly burned alive  and he has actual standards for his practice so he’s not just gonna let some shitty entitled kids borrow one of his firetrucks just to cover up some totally unnecessary lie.  Good for him!  I mean, really, what the fuck did these kids think was gonna happen?  Why did Danny even agree to take them down to the station?  Did they explain to him that they were doing all of this just to make some kid look like an asshole at his own birthday party?  Anyway, the fire chief recognizes Danny as the host of Wake Up, San Francisco and it turns out that he was supposed to be on the show like 25 years ago as “the singing fireman” but he got bumped so he refuses to help the kids because he’s petty and bitter, rather than all of the completely logical reasons that he should decline their request.

Meanwhile, down at the pet clinic, DJ and Matt have totally raging boners for each other.  She is really charmed when he spits an eggroll back into the container, probably because it shows that he can be as tactless and obnoxious as the people that she loves most.  They talk about their mutual hesitation to get back into dating after DJ’s husband’s horrible, tragic death and Matt’s divorce and then, just as DJ is about to head home, they start making out and the audience goes whoo so intensely, you’d think that Danny had just shown up.

After their smoochfest, DJ says, “oh my lanta” and I thought I’d mention it because I’m cursed with recognizing it as her deeply unpopular catchphrase from the original series.

Ramona comes home with Fernando and shows Kimmie Gibbler a video of the race car course he let her drive on.  This show really has a lot of shots of people’s hands holding phones while something happens on the screen.

Kimmie Gibbler gets hella pissed at Fernando for letting their daughter take part in such a dangerous activity and then her act of reprimanding him turns into some weird, gross courtship thing for them.

Stephanie wonders why DJ and Kimmie Gibbler are both walking around all daydreamy and shit and she asks, “you didn’t find my brownies, did you?” which isn’t a great adult joke, but points for trying, I guess.  DJ and Kimmie Gibbler both say that they have a really big secret to share even though whatever they’re going to say can’t really qualify as a secret given the fact that they’re about to tell literally half of the people they ever talk to in the world.  Anyway, all the hot schlong that Kimmie Gibbler and DJ have been getting is revealed and then Stephanie is hella mad that she’s the only one that nobody is stickin’ it to so she leaves to go cruise for some strange d.

Danny plays poker with DJ’s kids and declares that he has a full house but then DJ’s older kid has higher cards, making for a “fuller house” and I think that’s enough self-referential moments.

DJ’s middle kid walks over the to the other side of the room to pout and DJ’s sort of starts to tell him about the repercussions of being a shitty ass liar but then she just starts talking to both of her kids about how much they look like their dad and how his memory will live on in them or some shit like that and I’m really not sure why that’s the direction this scene took.  For a show that’s so often about heavy-handed, moralistic lessons, they seem to have really lost track of what they were supposed to be teaching us here.

Stephanie takes Danny into the living room to unveil the new couch, which looks exactly like the old couch.  When the audience sees it they all go whoo and I couldn’t really figure out why.  She also gives him a jacket made from the covering of the original couch and he loves it because he’s the tackiest motherfucker who ever walked the planet.

So it turns out that Danny got his cameraman to film the fire chief singing under a false pretense that it would air on his show and in exchange DJ’s stupid kid gets to drive to the party in a firetruck and give everyone else rides, too.  I wonder how many people died in a fire while this truck was being used to help DJ’s stupid kid get away with some fabrication he pulled out of his ass.  Well, DJ’s kid probably would probably have ultimately resorted to setting the birthday kids house on fire to get a firetruck there so I guess this sort of breaks even. Seriously, though, what the fuck is the takeaway supposed to be here?

Well, at least they filmed an actual outdoor scene of the firetruck pulling up to the party.  It looks like it may have actually cost something to produce.  So, points for that at least.