TV junkies should avoid weak retread
As a TVobsessed child of the late 1980s and early ’90s, I consumed more than my fair share of TGIF sitcoms, making passing acquaintances with an ebullient Greek cousin, a meddling British butler, a nerdy nextdoor neighbor and one exasperated dad after another. These were casual TV relationships — unmourned when the novelty wore off and I moved onto something richer.
So yeah, I used to watch “Full House,” the ABC series that introduced us to the Olsen twins, sanitized foulmouthed comic Bob Saget and snookered us into believing a sportscaster, an exterminator and a struggling comic could afford a threestory Victorian in San Francisco. But the Splendasweet show about a widowed dad (Saget) raising his daughters with his Elvisloving brotherinlaw ( Jon Stamos) and Bullwinkleimpersonating best friend (Dave Coulier) didn’t rate as anything more than a blip in the endless desert of childhood boredom.
I wasn’t hankering for Netflix to reboot “Full House” as a quasisequel 21 years after it left the air, and I wasn’t prepared for the dentistdrill sensation of catching up with the Tanner girls now that they’re grown women raising precocious kids in that same house.
It’s not that “Fuller House,” which dropped the second half of its fifth and final season on Tuesday, June 2, is worse than “Full House.” Even with different ingredients (minus the Olsen twins, the adult daughters have largely taken over for the gueststarring men), the recipe is shockingly intact. It’s just a really bland recipe.
I recently forcefed myself the series premiere from 2016 and two episodes from the final season, and here’s all you need to know: Eldest daughter D.J. TannerFuller (Candace Cameron Bure) has succeeded her dad as the straitlaced widow tasked with raising three kids while getting help from her BFFs — in this case her unintentionally obnoxious sister Stephanie ( Jodie Sweetin) and intentionally obnoxious best friend Kimmy (unsung MVP Andrea Barber).
The show still demands applause breaks every time a series regular enters, the writing still feels like it was done by a bot trying for the snappy patter of a QVC infomercial, and what passes for conflict leaves no cliche unrecycled.
In the Season 5 premiere, Stephanie returns to the coop with her nameless newborn daughter and a shushing doula that rubs D.J. the wrong way. In the final batch of episodes that dropped Tuesday, plans are on for a triple wedding, which are complicated when D.J. discovers the “special occasion suit” of her late firefighter hubby in the back of her closet and — OH WHO CARES?
I would rather listen to a 26episode podcast about Sweetin’s recovery from methamphetamine addiction, Lori Laughlin’s (Aunt Becky) involvement in the college bribery scam and the rumor that Coulier inspired Alanis Morissette’s best breakup song than watch another minute of “Fuller House.”
The only thing that makes this show stand out is its insipid selfregard, which creators trot out in the form of winking references to the original version, as if anyone watched “Full House” with pen and paper hoping that one day their Talmudic study would pay off. That’s not fan service. It’s narcissism.
More and more, it feels like we live in an age of ‘90s nostalgia, with old network sitcoms being revived, retreaded and regurgitated at an opportunistic clip. “Murphy Brown,” “Boy Meets World,” “Will & Grace” and “Roseanne” have all reintroduced themselves, some with more modifications and/or controversy than others.
I don’t begrudge viewers any desire to revisit a simpler time, when three networks competed for television domi
“Fuller House”: Farewell season now available to stream on Netflix.
nance by staging community theater productions before “live” studio audiences.
After all, we all see what’s happening outside our windows. Sometimes it feels like the world is racing someplace that no one wants to go. But you can do better than the cloying, lazy “Fuller House.” The Olsen twins did.