When the full length trailer for Netflix’s new family comedy Fuller House hit the internet a few weeks ago, I was struck with a strange sense of deja vu. Yes, the show is clearly a copy-and-paste reboot of the ’90s series Full House, but there was something in the trailer that I knew I had seen elsewhere. It wasn’t the hackneyed jokes or the cheesy punchlines. It was Kimmy Gibbler’s absurd desperation to be liked by the rest of the Tanner crew. As she pushed her way into DJ’s house, as she proceeded to do all sorts of embarrassing and strange things, and as everyone around her rolled their eyes, it became clear that there was more to Kimmy Gibbler than stupid ’90s jokes and stinky feet jibes.
Kimmy Gibbler is a comedic progenitor of Rafi from The League.
You might argue that silly Kimmy and the absolutely psychotic Rafi have nothing in common. After all, Andrea Barber‘s Kimmy Gibbler is an annoying, if PG-rated, joke machine on a family-friendly multi-cam, while Rafi is practically the Devil incarnate. Jason Mantzoukas plows through every scene on The League with the single-sighted mission to upset, disrupt, and transcend all boundaries of moral decency. But if you pull back and look at the bigger comedic picture, you’ll see that they fulfill the same roles on their respective shows.
Both Full( and Fuller) House and The League focus on the internal rhythms of a closed off family of friends. Both groups are upper middle class white Americans, who insulate themselves from the world around them with their own traditions, rituals, and catch phrases. And in both series, there is a regular interloper who crashes in, bringing an annoying dose of zaniness: Kimmy and Rafi. The big difference is the amplitude of their antics. Kimmy keeps everything sweet and PG, while Rafi has to resort to truly horrific lengths to outdo the already raunchy humor of The League.
In an interesting parallel, both characters were only meant to join their respective shows for an episode or two. Barber told The Hollywood Reporter, “I think Kimmy was just supposed to be a quirky neighbor at first, but it kind of developed into this really eccentric personality. I think that took a few years, to develop all of her eccentric quirks and her one-liners and her unapologetic insulting of everyone around her.” Mantzoukas told Splitsider that Rafi was originally a nebbish character named Sheldon who was only set for three episodes. Both actors infused their bit roles with a bit too much sauce and the rest is history.
At the heart of both characters, though, is the deep desire to be best friends with the shows’ leads. Rafi gloms onto the members of The League with an almost cultish intensity. “We are all best friends,” he often maintains. It’s this blind ardor that makes the otherwise despicable character so winsome. Kimmy has this same ardor for the Tanner clan and it’s fueling her character’s return in Fuller House. The trailers see Kimmy invite herself into the home and as she moves in, she admits that this is what she’s always dreamt of: being one of the Tanners.
