Some Fast Thoughts On Season 1 of Fuller House

Fuller House is a show that serves as a gender-swapped follow-up to the late 1980's and early 1990's ABC sitcom Full House.  The latter of the two shows just named was met with critical acclaim and had many fans, however the former has been met with mostly mixed reviews.

I'm not here today to chronicle the entire first season for you, as there are articles that do that, rather I'm just here to share some fast thoughts both good and bad on Season 1 of this show, as I have just started Season 2.

A good thing to mention right away is that the show was quite hard for me to get into at first.  The first episode, while nice for exposition, was not much more than that, and the next few episodes, while some of the best when looking at the season as a whole, seemed to be lacking in some places too.  I had been sporadically watching the first six episodes over two months, as to me it was something that was only good in very small doses every once in a while, and it didn't seem to click with me as well as it might with other fans.  However, starting in Episodes 7 and also 8 a somewhat continuous plot developed that wound up seeing me finishing the last five episodes in one sitting (9-13).  This alone shows how inconsistent the show is in my mind.  It would bounce back and forth between a heartwarming episode that would make me wait a shorter amount of time but then follow up with a poor episode that would have me turning towards other shows on Netflix to see what's up.

With that out of the way, let's turn to the good and the bad of this show's inaugural (freshman) season.

The Good

• Some Moments Have A Lot Of Heart: There are times where the show will kick the cheese out of the room for a few minutes and focus in on something down to earth, although it does sometimes come out of nowhere.  A great example of this is in Episode 5 (Mad Max), where it is noted that Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) is unable to conceive and therefore considers her sister's children as her own, and while the episode does end with one of the "group hugs" the old show was apparently featuring heavily (have yet to see Full House beyond the Pilot), you could tell there was a lot of heart put into this moment, and there are several more like this throughout the season.
• Humor Geared Toward Both Adults & Children: In my opinion, a family show needs to have something that makes the show worth watching for kids and adults, and there are several areas where Fuller House nails it on the head and it's amazing.  Good humor for the kids comes from Max, while young teens might resonate more with Jackson and Ramona.  Adults on the other hand will side with characters such as DJ, Stephanie, and Kimmy, and the various other adults that pop up throughout the thirteen episodes.  This makes the show a family show.
• A Season Finale With A Good End: Love Is In The Air (Ep. 13) is kind of a mixed bag of things going on.  Several characters are trying to pair up and there's a wedding going on. While I won't spill any major details here in case some of you are considering watching this, I will say that there is a big character moment at the end for DJ (Candace Cameron Bure), and it is something that you might actually see in the real world, although I don't think the "contest" between which guy gets the girl is all that great. 
• Appearances From Full House Cast: While Jesse and Joey don't appeal to me much as characters here (they might when watching the original show), any appearance by Bob Saget is welcome, and sadly he is the most underused of the original three.  The couch subplot in Episode 8 is great as is the part of the main plot about Saget's character running into an old fire chief that he avoided on his old morning show.  All of it plays out so well.  Lori O Loughlin as Jesse's wife Becky is great too, especially in Episode 9 where the three main characters are trying to figure out who sent roses to the Tanner household.  Becky reminds me of Allison Janney's character from Mom but without the vulgarity and adult references.  The episode plays out to perfection.

I apologize for the poor quality, but this was the only picture I could find of this awkward moment.

The Bad

• The Pilot Episode: Episode 1 could almost be skipped when thought about as a whole.  I watched it because I thought it was where things actually got going, and I now consider it a mistake.  This episode acts as more of a reunion show than anything and provides little to no exposition.  It is a character showcase centered around a barbecue, and I found this episode to be a little long.  I feel that this episode and the next one could have been mixed together to create something with better flow.  Maybe that movie they were talking about making in 2009 wouldn't have been a bad idea for right now for the Pilot?  Oh, and in all the cheesiness the entire cast takes a moment to single out Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) for not "coming to the reunion" (appearing in the show), and two seconds later the entire cast glares into the camera, and it's very cringe-worthy.  I think that it's totally ok that the Olsen Twins didn't want to appear, and that was not how the writer of this episode should have responded.
• Too Many Callbacks: You can always tell when something happened in the old series, because the laugh track will be dialed up to clapping and cheering that at times seems very awkward and out of place.  I get doing it the first time, but does it have to happen every time? Catchphrases are overused, two people kiss and the crowd goes wild, and things like fridge-raiding are even worthy of this.  I feel they hit the nostalgia angle a little too hard here.
• Overacted Characters: Acting that's a little on the downside is always apparent, and so are moments when a character is literally taking their acting up a few notches too far.  There are two characters this is most apparent with, one of them being Max (Elias Harger), who will yell lines for no reason and sometimes look expressionless.  While some of his reactions are delivered quite well, others are not the ones best suited for the moment in the least.  The other example here is Kimmy's ex-husband Fernando (Juan Pablo di Pace), who is a tad bit feminine. He seems to communicate almost everything in a whiny tone in some of his appearances, and it can make a scene difficult to watch.  There are better ways to act out some of these scenes, and I'm hoping some of them might have been noted and looked at for Season 2 (I'm three episodes in at this point). 
• What Is Love?: I feel that the subject of love is handled very poorly in Fuller House, especially the later episodes when we run into plots of Matt and Steve taking DJ out on dates, Jackson randomly falling in love with one of Ramona's classmates, and Fernando and Kimmy suddenly getting back together with little to no discussion and a scavenger hunt that ends with him proposing they sign divorce papers only to get re-married in the next episode only to hold it off until later (smart decision writers).  There seems to be no sign of attempts to connect, instead we seem to snap our fingers and suddenly someone's in love and they're together or at the very least contemplating it.  I'm sure stuff happens before that, but the writers don't put it in, and while the last five episodes get their continual plot line from this, the flow of things gets really thrown off at times and you find yourself wondering how something happened.  And yes, love NEVER happens like it does on the screen, but when you have moments like these fueling real-life situations of people just thinking it will happen (referring to the teenage audience mostly here), you get awkward moments similar to what we see in the first few episodes of Season 2, which there'll be more on when I get through it. 

Fuller House is (at it's best) a family comedy that is sure to delight both fans of the original series and new ones just checking it out for the first time.  At it's worst though, the show is a cheese-fest with too many callbacks to the past that will leave new fans like me wondering what they just watched and not too eager to continue on.  Perhaps Season 2 will be more consistent?

The Best Episodes Of Season 1

Moving Day (Ep. 2) - Watch this one as a Pilot if you want to avoid the Pilot, it works out.

Funner House (Ep. 3)

Mad Max (Ep. 5)

Secrets, Lies, & Firetrucks (Ep. 8)

War Of The Roses (Ep. 9)

A Giant Leap (Ep. 10)

The Mediocre Episodes Of Season 1

The Not-So-Great Escape (Ep. 4)

Partnerships In The Night (Ep. 11)

Love Is In The Air (Ep. 13)

The Worst Episodes Of Season 1

Our Very First Show, Again! (Ep. 1)

The Legend Of El Explosivo (Ep. 6)

Ramona's Not So Epic Party (Ep. 7)

Save The Dates (Ep. 12)