Netflix’s Full House revival brings back the same plot (with a gender twist!), jokes and theme song to make us remember why we left the cheesy 90s show behind
What’s the name of this show? Fuller House
When does it premiere? All 13 episodes stream on Netflix starting Friday 26 February.
This is the Full House reboot, right? Exactly.
What’s the same? Everything.
What’s different? Nothing.
Are you being reductive in your answers or just boring? Seriously, absolutely nothing has changed except now DJ Tanner (Candace Cameron Bure), Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin), and Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) are living in a house in San Francisco raising DJ’s kids instead of Danny Tanner (Bob Saget), Uncle Jesse (John Stamos), and Joey (Dave Coulier) raising three girls.
Is everyone back for the revival? Everyone is in the pilot, including more secondary figures from later seasons, but they don’t stick around for long. But people occasionally make appearances throughout the series. Michelle Tanner (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) doesn’t come back because she’s “busy in New York running her fashion empire”, the cast tells us as they mug directly at the camera.
How does everyone get back together? Danny and Jesse’s wife Becky (Lori Loughlin) are moving to LA to start their own morning show, so everyone is in town for a going-away party. DJ already lives in the house with her three sons Jackson (Michael Campion), Max (Elias Harger), and baby Tommy (Dashiell and Fox Messitt). Her husband, a firefighter, died in the line of duty a year before. When she can’t handle the child rearing on her own Stephanie, a successful DJ ironically named DJ Tanner, and Kimmy Gibbler move in. Kimmy also brings her daughter Ramona (Soni Nicole Bringas), so the house is even fuller. Get it?
That sounds mighty different! But, you see, it’s not. It’s the same old house, just with a few different throw pillows. The theme song is the same, even though now it’s sung by Carly Rae Jepsen. All the same old hoary jokes from when the show went off the air in the early-90s are still there and the same exact studio audience, chained to their seats since 1995 is there too, still chucking along (possibly). DJ is still the sensible one (like Danny), Stephanie is the cool aunt (like Jesse), and Kimmy Gibbler is the crazy one (like Joey). Thankfully, with Kimmy, there is never any ventriloquism involved.
It can’t be said that Bure, Sweetin and Barber didn’t have a good training ground, because they still hit all their marks, deliver jokes with excellent timing, and make up with the same group hugs at the end of the episode. It isn’t that they’re good actors, they’re just trained ponies, going for one last ride before the glue factory.
Is it good? Ecto Cooler is coming back …
Why are you talking to me about some Ghostbusters-themed Hi-C drink? Just bear with me.
Ecto Cooler is coming back and I really loved it as a kid. Was it good? Probably not, but I loved that tangy-sweet green booger juice whenever it appeared in my lunch box. Now that it’s returning I’ll buy one just to remember the old times and I will be satisfied. It’s just been so long and there is such a scarcity that I have built it up in my mind and think what I really want is Ecto Cooler all the time, but what I really want is just one box of it and be good forever.
That is exactly how Fuller House should have been. The first episode is fun enough, checking in with everyone and seeing the familiar house is like visiting old friends. For those of us who grew up on it, it’s strange how those atavistic memories of little girls saying, “How rude!” come rushing back to you like one of Proust’s madeleines. But you don’t want to move into that house. No, life has moved on everywhere except there and Fuller House just sits there in that old San Francisco painted lady, accruing value until some Google bro pays $40m for it.
There is nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, but Fuller House is wallowing in it. It’s worse than the lead singer of Flock of Seagulls who is still sporting that ridiculous hairdo after all these years. It’s so bad on Fuller House that every episode entails the old characters telling new characters about a plotline from an episode of Full House. There’s no flashbacks, just them recounting the minutia of when DJ and Stephanie had to move in together or that time DJ ran away and just went to the garage for a few days. It’s the same thing but still insecure about the past, channeling its glory days even as its revival fades away before us.
The problem is nostalgia? Yes and no. The problem is, it turns out, Full House wasn’t a very good show in the first place, so recreating it brick by brick is a little bit like restoring a Ford Pinto. You know, sooner or later, something really bad is going to happen. We were all just young and stupid and thought it was good. Now it’s just like a kids’ show, one of those three-camera sitcoms with a laugh track that explodes for no reason whatsoever and pre-pubescents find funny because they don’t know any better.
What are the worst parts of the new show? I hate to pick on children, but the child actors are just horrible. They have zero timing, line delivery that sounds like it’s coming through a megaphone, and a lack of cuteness that is almost impossible to believe. They should have been replaced by three Shiba Inu puppies in pink blankets and it would have been better. Also Kimmy’s ex-husband Fernando (Juan Pablo Di Pace) occasionally pops up and for the one character of color to have a thick accent and handful of stereotypical traits isn’t as cute now as it was in the last century. But really, the worst part is the jokes, which just aren’t funny.
Is there anything good about it? There are a few lines of meta-humor that show that the show is self-aware, but if it’s aware of itself, is it also aware of how clunky the dialogue is? But even that is a little too precious, like when Stephanie jokes that she thought her younger sister was really twins or DJ talks about her love for Dancing with the Stars (Bure came in third in 2014). Even when it’s trying to be clever it’s stifling.
Should I watch this show? If you want to remember your childhood, then yes, watch one episode just to remind yourself why you have moved past ABC’s TGIF lineup. If not, just skip this. There are enough bad sitcoms to while away a quiet hour (paging Dr Ken), you don’t need one that happens to be stale as well.
