Whatever happened to predictability?
Full House stars Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber are reminiscing about some of the plot holes and dangling threads that emerged over the eight seasons of their beloved TGIF sitcom. “There’s so many!” Sweetin said on the latest episode of their How Rude, Tanneritos! rewatch podcast.
As fans no doubt recall, Sweetin played middle sister Stephanie Tanner on Full House, which ran from 1987 to 1995 on ABC, and on Fuller House, the Netflix sequel series that ran from 2016 to 2020. Barber also appeared on both shows as Kimmy Gibbler, the oddball bestie of big sister D.J. (played by Candace Cameron Bure).
For Barber, one of the biggest Full House plot holes had to do with Kimmy’s own siblings. She recalled that her character originally had three sisters, but there was later a mention of an older brother named Garth whom viewers never saw. Then a younger brother named Jimmy showed up on Fuller House and ended up marrying Stephanie. (The character can’t believe she ended up with a Gibbler, either!)
Sweetin offered a theory about Kimmy’s family.
“Maybe the Gibblers took [Jimmy] in as an older teenager,” she said. “Maybe the Gibblers were a foster family, and so they had a lot of kids coming in and out. They called them siblings, you know, to really create a family dynamic. Maybe that’s what it was.”
Barber wasn’t buying it, although she joked that Sweetin had married into the Gibbler family, so she probably knew the lore. Barber also said she warned the team behind Fuller House that introducing Jimmy in the second season was going to be a thing.
“They said, ‘Oh, we’re so excited, we’re going to have Jimmy Gibbler,'” the actress recalled. “And I’m like, guys, no, the fans are going to lord this over me. I’m gonna get questions. I’m gonna get DMs. I’m gonna get emails — for the rest of my life! — if you name him anything other than Garth. And they’re like, ‘No, we like Jimmy and Kimmy. We like the rhyming part of it.'”
As predicted, fans had questions. “I’m still hearing about it,” Barber said, “and I will.”
For Sweetin, she also had problems with consistency in the Tanner family. Stephanie’s dad, Danny (played by the late Bob Saget), was dealing with the loss of his wife and the mother of his daughters, which is why he moved in with John Stamos’ Jesse, his late wife’s brother, and his friend Joey (Dave Coulier). But the group felt very much on their own.
“My biggest one seems to be the, like, weird lack of connection between Jesse’s family and Danny’s family, particularly at the beginning of the show,” Sweetin said. “Everything else in the family dynamics of the cast just felt so genuine, and then it just left me with a lot of questions. Besides the fact of, where did old grandma go?”
