Fuller House review: Netflix’s Full House sequel isn’t just a bad show

Fuller House review: Netflix’s Full House sequel isn’t just a bad show

Emily St. James was a senior correspondent for Vox, covering American identities. Before she joined Vox in 2014, she was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club.
Netflix’s Fuller House, the spinoff/sequel to the ’80s and ’90s sitcom Full House, is not a good television show.

No, what Fuller House is is familiar television. Even when you watch a few episodes in a row — as Netflix surely hopes you will — it feels like just leaving the TV on as rerun after rerun piles up. The laugh lines are predictable. The gags play out exactly as you’d expect. Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) still says, “How rude,” even though she’s now in her 30s.

1) Fuller House begins with a scene that repeats literally every major catchphrase from the original series in under a minute

The audience applauds as the characters shuffle in one by one — older but no wiser. They all say their most famous lines, and it just feels tired. It’s like The Walking Dead: Live Studio Audience Edition.

2) Stephanie speaks with a British accent for a while — until Kimmy’s feet break the spell

One of Fuller House’s reliable go-to “jokes” is that Kimmy possesses many mystical properties. Among those mystical properties are feet so stinky that they can literally rouse Stephanie from a seeming psychotic break — one that makes her believe she’s British — so that she reverts to her good old, “How rude!”-spouting self.

3) The awkward acknowledgement that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen did not sign on for the new series

The twins who played Michelle Tanner aren’t part of Fuller House, which the pilot acknowledges via everybody else saying Michelle couldn’t make it, and then staring at the camera for 15 seconds, like a strange, creepy flash mob.

4) Every time more than three women are in the same room on this show, they dance

There are so, so many dance numbers, including one in the premiere to New Kids on the Block’s “The Right Stuff,” a song as fresh as the show. It’s as if the Fuller House writers don’t really know what women do in large group settings.

5) Everybody performs the Flintstones theme in split screen with their younger selves

This happened in Full House’s pilot, so a variation on it has to happen in the new series, even though The Flintstones doesn’t have much cultural cachet anymore. Maybe the characters should have performed the Full House theme song?

6) Stephanie answers her cellphone through a possibly poopy baby diaper

The logistics of this are too hard for me to believe. While administering a diaper change, Stephanie drops her phone in the new diaper as she’s putting it on the baby, somehow fastens it around the baby with the phone inside, then has to answer it through the diaper — all as the baby is seemingly filling it up. This seems to defy the basic laws of physics.