Is Fuller House Really the Most Popular Show on TV?
Though its first season caused, for many viewers, paroxysms of existential despair, a deep, mounting sense of primal dread—as if some bad ancient thing were finally coming for us, or as if the planet were slewing toward some black hole or an obliterating energy field rippling through the universe—there will be more Fuller House, the Full House sequel series.
Yes, Netflix has announced that it will be keeping Jodie Sweetin, Andrea Barber, and the rest of the gang in highlights and Kohl’s tunics for another season, because, I guess, the show’s cheap, unstylish grab for nostalgia bucks worked. Isn’t that nice? It worked, this garish stunt. Enough of us watched the dumb thing that there will be more of the dumb thing. Look, I count myself as responsible for that as anyone else. I watched six episodes, wrote what could be called a bad review of the show, and then, a day later, when the full season was first available on Netflix, I watched the whole rest of the season in one sitting. The whole rest of the thing! Just like that, happily. So I’m as much to blame as the rest of the shameful, grubby saddos who ate this hokey mess up. We all deserve this.
But, hey, I don’t begrudge anyone work, certainly. Good for Sweetin, Barber, the oddly appealing Scott Weinger, I guess two of those kids, and all the writers and crew for picking up another couple months of decent-paying work. That’s great. And actually, maybe this is a good opportunity to make Fuller House into something that doesn’t strain the fibers of humanity’s frayed contract with itself. Y’know? Like, maybe with a second season they can re-assess, figure out what from the first season works (I’m telling you, Scott Weinger works) and what doesn’t (fire two of the four kids—no, I’m not going to tell you which ones, you should know which ones) and go from there. Maybe Fuller House Season 2 really could be something if they put in the time and effort, a TV show that somehow doesn’t feel like some amuse-bouche of the world’s gray, whimpering end. I don’t know! Could be!
Speaking of old things coming back, there is going to be a High School Musical 4. Yes! You remember the High School Musical movies, right? The first one, about a teen basketball star who discovers his love of musical theater, and the love of a good woman, premiered in 2006 on the Disney Channel, was a mega hit, and made two young actors named Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens household names, at least in the children’s wing of the house. (You guys all had a children’s wing growing up, right? Where the maids and nannies would attend to you while Father was away in deepest India during the Raj?) Then there was a Disney Channel sequel, while a third was released in cinemas. Then, of course, Efron and Hudgens went off to do other things—as, presumably, did the rest of the cast—and that was that. It was over.
Or was it? Well, there was a recent High School Musical reunion, which Efron only attended via pre-taped video message. Before that, Efron was quoted as saying that he would be up for a fourth H.S.M. movie (last item), but nothing much came of that possibility. Until now. Disney is currently doing a national casting search for the fourth film, which will once again take place at East High, in the desert wastes of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and will most likely concern some blend of high-school theater and high-school athletics, those two great warring worlds that, in the best moments of the High School Musical saga, fused together with an ecstatic, chastely erotic fizz of song and dance.
So that is exciting, that there will be more of all that. And, sure, a new generation must be ushered into the hallowed halls of East High. But what about all our old friends? Will they return in any capacity? I mean, I think the likelihood of that can be graphed on a gradient. Zac Efron? Not all that likely he’ll show up to do a cameo in a Disney Channel fourquel to something he originally did 10 years ago. Vanessa Hudgens? Maybe! She’s busy, too, though. Then there is, I’m afraid, a somewhat steep drop off. Ashley Tisdale? Yeah, I could see that happening. Monique Coleman? There’s a good chance. Lucas Grabeel, for sure. And only pride would keep Corbin Bleu away.
