Fuller House Episode 9, “War of the Roses”

Aunt Becky comes downstairs to greet the family for breakfast and the audience loses their minds.  I’m not sure if it’s because this is the return of an original cast member or because of the way that her ass looks in profile.

Oh, Aunt Becky’s ass, you’ve aged like the finest of wines.

DJ delivers a few lines of exposition about how Danny came by the house before the Wake Up, San Francisco reunion and now Becky is there after, but they really don’t explain why their time there is divided up like that.  Wouldn’t they be there for the reunion at the same time?  Well, whatever.  They start up a bit about Becky sounding all insane while she talks to the baby that’s sort of a holdover from the series’ pilot and will carry on throughout the episode.  Apparently Becky’s menopausal uterus never met its quota.

DJ’s middle kid suddenly appears and starts yelling about how there’s something really cool in the living room.  He really does just appear out of nowhere.  It’s really oddly edited.  Actually, a lot of moments with this kid have quick edits, like they get a moment that they like from him but he fucks it up right after delivering the line or something, so they just cut it real quick.  This one’s extra weird, though, because it looks like he jumps out from behind the counter.

The moms all go into the living room to discover that a thousand flowers have been delivered to the full house.  I guess that’s a romantic gesture and everything but, like, think about what it would be like once all those flowers started wilting.  It would be a huge pain in the ass to get rid of them.  Anyway, Nobody can find the card because the dog sneaks away with it (no fooling!) so everyone is left to speculate about where they came from.  Kimmie Gibbler assumes that they’ve been sent by Fernando as a reconciliatory gesture but Stephanie thinks that they could be for her, but she remains unsure of whether they’re from the guy that she recently contracted syphilis from or the guy that she recently gave syphilis to.  DJ wonders if they’re from Matt but concludes that they couldn’t be because that would really be an over-the-top gesture, given that they just made out one time.  Then it’s hypothesized by the group that they could be from Steve, who is more desperate than ever, after all these years, to finally see DJ’s tit.

Becky calls Steve and hands DJ the phone, which was a pretty dickish move, and then I had a really hard time hearing anything that Steve said on the phone because he’s at his podiatrist job and the fake foot that they’ve got him working on is really distractingly fucked up looking.  Regardless, I was able to take in that the flower sender guy was not Steve.  That’s right, you guys, he’s never gonna see that tit.  Never.

With the mystery of who sent the flowers looming larger in the fuller house, Becky declares that she cannot leave until it’s solved.  She says that her marriage has run out of excitement so she needs to live vicariously through this event, and then she starts talking to the baby in a baby voice about how she always has to unload the dishwasher because Jesse won’t do it.  This is only a small glimpse into how badly being married to Jesse for all these years has fucked her life up.  It is only the tiniest of glimpses, and yet is so very hard to watch.

Ramona comes home with her friend, Lola, who DJ’s oldest kid has a real raging boner for, and Lola greets him with, “hi, dude.”  Ramona takes DJ’s kid aside and tells him that being called “dude” means that he is now in the friend zone, and therefore has Steve-level chances of ever gettin’ to second base.  After a thread of logic that I was unable to follow, DJ’s oldest kid decides that he will make Lola an offer of 1,000 M&M’s so she will finally learn to see him as more than friends.  I can’t really evaluate the quality of this logic because I was just completely lost.

Down at the pet clinic, Matt confronts DJ, letting her know that he really wants to get all up in that sweet puss puss, and he’s willing to pay for a dinner to make it happen.  DJ agrees to go out with him and then he makes a passing remark about how she didn’t mention the flowers that he got her, which DJ assumes to mean that he is the 1,000 flower sender guy.  I mean, it’s a pretty reasonable deduction, based on what’s presented.  She decides that he’s a big creep, which, all things considered, is kinda fair, really, and then she fakes a tooth injury in order to break the date.  Although I can understand her desire to get out of this obligation, this was a pretty weasely way to do it.

There’s a really brief scene of DJ’s oldest kid finishing his count of 1,000 M&M’s and then we see Stephanie on the phone, talking to the last potential guy who may have sent the roses for her.  When she finds out that she is not the recipient of the flowers, Stephanie wonders if she’ll ever find a real relationship, and then she gets a text from someone who she claims is her husband.  When Becky’s like, “your whaaaAAAAAaaat!??!” we get a flashback of the episode where Stephanie gets pretend married to her little Asian friend Harry.

The clip is pretty great because it’s long and I don’t feel obligated to describe it since I reviewed the whole episode like 4 years ago.  The only thing I feel compelled to mention is the weird blurring effect they do over the edges of the frame, presumably because the old show had a different aspect ratio.  Or maybe it’s artfully done, to make it feel more like a memory.  Yeah, that’s why.

So, anyway, Stephanie gets a vague text from Harry, which she decides must mean that he is the one who sent the roses.  She wonders if she shouldn’t give Harry a chance after all these years and tries to talk herself into being interested (always a good sign), finally reasoning to Aunt Becky that, “he was a lot of fun in bed.”  Becky is shocked by this statement but Stephanie clarifies that she is referring to how they used to jump on her bed together, which is a pretty forced innuendo.  It’s also pretty weird to see how shocked Becky is by this statement, and how relieved she is to find out what it really means.

Like,  the show has made quite an effort to make it seem like Stephanie goes out cruisin’ for strange d on the regular, so who cares if she banged Harry, too?

DJ’s middle kid walks into his room and finds the oldest kids collection of 1,000 M&M’s and a note written for Lola that looks just like the one that Mary Kay Letourneau wrote before the first time that she got arrested.

He assumes that the note and M&M’s are for him and immediately starts devouring the candy.

Fernando comes over and Kimmie Gibbler is all up on him immediately.  She thanks him for sending the roses and, since there doesn’t seem to be any way to prove that he didn’t, he takes the credit.

DJ goes into the baby’s room to talk to Aunt Becky but the whole scene gets derailed by a lengthy sequence of Becky showing off the baby in a variety of different outfits.  Despite Becky’s unnerving, manic enthusiasm, the sequence is pretty alright because it’s edited together so that the baby is suddenly wearing a new outfit every time the camera cuts to him, giving the whole thing a sort of humorous, surreal quality to it.  I also have to admit that the baby is pretty darn cute, so as much as I feel like my intelligence is being discredited, I do find myself kind of enjoying his little outfits.

Anyway, DJ talks to Becky about how freaked out she is about Matt sending all the flowers and it’s one of those scenes where one person does all the talking, reaches their own conclusion and then thanks the other person for their advice.  In this case it does seem like it’s in DJ’s best interest to only listen to herself because Aunt Becky has clearly lost her damn mind.  DJ concludes that she has to break things off with Matt because guys who make such grand gestures that early on are usually like serial killers or something.

DJ’s oldest kid finds the Mary Kay Letourneau note, which was filled out by the middle kid, but he assumes that Lola was the one who checked “yes” and so he goes into Ramona’s room to spit some more game.  Having discovered newfound confidence due to this hilarious misunderstanding, DJ’s middle kid confronts Lola and starts saying all sorts of weird, out of character shit, like calling her “boo” and referring to himself as “J-money.”  The best (and by best I mean worst) part is when he says, “it’s gon’ be off the chain, bae.”  I don’t even know what they’re going for here.  My best guess is it’s just an old, out of touch writer’s attempt to be like, “kids these days… this is how they talk.”  Anyway, DJ’s middle kid enters the scene and the weave that has been woven is untangled.  The oldest kid asks Lola out and she’s like, “sure, whatever” so they set up a kid date that’s basically just them hanging out at the mall with a bunch of other kids.  The middle kid ends up getting to go, too, because he’s all about ruining everything.

The dog comes in and stashes a shoe under one of the beds, which leads the kids to discover that a whole bunch of shit is hidden under there.  There’s a joke about Ramona’s One Direction pillow being one of the excavated items, which she’s supposed to be embarrassed to have, I guess.  I didn’t really know what to make of it because I have no context for One Direction.  I felt as out of touch as that off the chain author.

Stephanie comes downstairs all dressed up because she wants to bag Harry and then DJ and Kimmie Gibbler come into the room and they all debate who the flower sender guy was some more.  Suddenly, each of the flower sender guy suspects shows up, one by one but also in rapid succession.  One of them is grown up Harry!  Check it out, guys!  It’s grown up Harry!

Becky makes all the men sit on the couch and interrogates each of them even though this whole thing could be wrapped up in about 5 seconds if a simple, straightforward question was posed to the group.  The interrogative way that Becky is questioning them is also really weird, considering that sending the flowers wasn’t a crime or anything.  Anyway, it turns out that when Matt said that he got DJ flowers he was just referring to a few that he left for her at work.  Becky continues her inappropriately angry questioning of the men and it turns out that none of them sent the flowers.

DJ’s middle kid comes in with a pile of stuff that the dog stashed under his bed, including the note that came with the flowers.  Unfortunately, the dog chewed up the signature on the note, leading this revelation, and this whole dog-hiding-stuff sub-plot, actually, to be completely irrelevant.

Each of the women have an interaction with the man that they suspected of sending them the flowers, one after another, which is just how people interact in real life.  Whenever I’m paired up in a room, me and the person I’m with say some stuff to each other, and then we stand there in silence because it’s another pair of people’s turn to talk.  Kimmie Gibbler and Fernando have another dysfunctional flirtation, DJ clears things up with Matt and they make a plan for an actual date, and Stephanie finds out that Harry was only getting in touch to invite her to his wedding.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Jesse walks into the house and it’s revealed that he was the flower sender guy.  I guess he decided to not be a completely shitty husband for once, if only for the purpose of creating a lot of confusion in the fuller house.

After everything’s all cleared up, the moms drink away their failed adulthoods in the dining area.  Stephanie worries about her shallow existence and DJ feels weird about dating again after her husbands horrible death.  That guy would probably be spinning in his grave right now except that he got all burned up, so he’s probably just a pile of ashes.  Maybe there’s like a little whirlwind in his urn right now.  Everyone hugs and consoles each other and it’s not really that mushy or emotionally manipulative.  This show’s way better at delivering genuine emotional moments than the original series, probably because the actors are more seasoned and there isn’t gentle music playing.  By not trying as hard to make you feel a certain way, it’s actually doing a way more effective job.  Anyway, each of the moms reveal that they stole some of Becky’s flowers and then that’s it.