Let us have a moment of silence for Kimmy Gibbler’s bacon-and-eggs scarf. It’s not dead, so it’s not like we need to memorialize it, but I just want to make sure that we all take a moment and appreciate that Kimmy Gibbler, the greatest sitcom character of all time, wore a crocheted bit of fake food around her neck like some sort of hero who just conquered breakfast. It was, without a doubt, the best thing about this episode. If you really want, you can get one of your very own on the internet. No, not a Kimmy Gibbler. There is only one of her and you do not deserve to have one of your very own. I meant a bacon and eggs scarf.
While we’re talking about this, why is everyone on this show so obsessed with food? This episode didn’t even contain D.J.’s ex, Steve, whose only personality trait is that he eats all the time. First we have D.J. bribing her kids with pancakes and milkshakes, then we have Stephanie eating cold fried chicken out of the refrigerator where she “spills the beans,†then Uncle Jesse has some of the same chicken, then Stephanie and Kimmy Gibbler demolish an entire chocolate cake in one sitting, and then Stephanie and Kimmy Gibbler are drinking margaritas when they really should be cooking dinner. What is up with this? Are the Fullers convinced that there is going to be a zombie apocalypse and they’re never going to eat again? Also, I can think of nothing more disgusting than eating cold fried chicken. Well, maybe cold soggy French fries. Or warm iced coffee. Wait, that’s just coffee.
Anyway, like I said, the show starts with D.J. bribing the kids with food because she doesn’t want to tell them that Kimmy Gibbler and her daughter Ramona are moving in. What, exactly, is the deal with Ramona? I love that on a show as white as “polar bears drinking organic milk in an Arctic snowstorm watching Frozen,†as Ramona so succinctly put it, has a Latina character. But how come everything about her is some sort of parody of being Latina, just like everything about Uncle Jesse is a parody of an Elvis fan? It’s like she’s basically Charo, but with a Snapchat account. That doesn’t seem realistic and is maybe vaguely racist.
Oh, while we’re on the subject of vaguely racist, what is up with Uncle Jesse’s mildly homophobic joke about living in Stephanie’s bedroom? He says, “That might explain my love of the theater.†Now, is he saying that only gay people can love the theater and that living in a room covered with pink fuzzy bunnies is going to make someone gay and, therefore, be in love with the theater? Surely he did not! Except he did. Having a show as retro as Fuller House is sort of like sitting next to your nearly blind, nearly deaf great aunt at Thanksgiving dinner. She doesn’t mean to be blithely racist and homophobic, but she is just so old-school that she doesn’t know any better.
Kimmy Gibbler and Ramona move into Jesse and Becky’s old room in the attic — complete with ’70s sex-on-a-bear-skin-rug ski chalet fireplace — but Ramona thinks that the adjacent room is too small for her. D.J. comes up with the brilliant idea of having her sons Jackson and Max share a room so she can get her own.
That leads to more food bribing because as excited as Max is to move in with Jackson, the older boy doesn’t want to give up his own room. (I always want to call Jackson “Spencer†instead of Jackson, which is the most Park Slope kindergarten teacher problem that I’ve ever had in my entire life.) After a pep talk from Aunt Stephanie, Spencer Jackson says that he doesn’t think it would be so bad to live with Max after all.
Stephanie does this by recapping an episode from the first season of Full House in which Danny forced the girls to live together so that Uncle Jessie could have a room. Why are people always talking about old shit on this show? It’s like every character is really just a TV recapper. Um, guys, please stop taking the food out of my mouth and leave the hard work to the professionals. But seriously, wouldn’t these moments be better served with flashbacks from the original show rather than boring explanations? And why reference the same episode in back-to-back episodes? You’ve got something like 194 seasons of Full House to work with, why not explore some of those?
Jackson actually decides to run away and hides in Uncle Jesse’s truck, where he is forced to sing “Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love†by this man named Elvis Presley, whom no one under the age of 10 has ever heard of. They certainly don’t know the lyrics to his songs. I guess it might be different if you grew up with Uncle Jesse; you’d learn the virtues of moisturizing, proper manscaping, and Elvis.
When Jackson returns home, D.J. gets mad at Stephanie and Kimmy Gibbler for not being better caretakers for her children. They say that they’re #TeamD.J., but I think that just means that they really want D.J. to hook up with Kristen Stewart in the Twilight movies. (I, personally, would also like to see that, if only because it would really piss off Kirk Cameron. Also, I bet Kristen Stewart would be down.)
Personally I was a big fan of #TeamD.J. The best scene of the episode is when Stephanie accidentally puts her phone in baby Tommy’s diaper. (Wait, or is his name Spencer?) Then she answers the phone and talks to the baby’s butt while he farts because we are all 10-year-olds at heart and that is funny. I’m sorry. Now every time I get a butt dial, I am going to think about that scene.
Stephanie also makes a meta joke about changing so many of Michelle’s diapers she could have sworn that they were twins. Uncle Jesse makes a remark about how they would always hug it out and you could hear violins and, of course, that is just how the episode ends — not just with a hug, but with Uncle Jesse pointing it out. I’m not sure what the resolution is, but Jackson and Max move in together, Ramona (whom I want to call Sophia because Park Slope kindergarten) does some sort of salsa dance, Kimmy Gibbler shares her margarita recipe on Rachael Ray, and D.J. goes up to her room to relax by reading Outlander slash fiction, taking a Xanax, and gulping white wine straight from the box. That is how these things always end, right?