Fuller House Season 1 Review

It’s hard to expect more out of a show literally built on the mantra of predictability, but the new kids just add to the falsity of Fuller House. Jackson is a horny pre-teen, Ramona a vlogging prima donna, and Max a screechy nightmare (I’ll leave the baby out of this), each increasingly exasperating with every appearance. I rewatched some old Full House scenes, and D.J., Stephanie, and Kimmy had real chemistry and charm beyond the shackles of the original’s sitcom schtick. These kids are just precocious one-liners and puns wrapped in neon-tinted hoodies (I dare you not to eye-roll yourself to death after witnessing Max’s attempt at his own zeitgeisty catchphrase).

Blessedly, Cameron Bure, Sweetin, and Barber feel like home again, even when Fuller House is operating at its highest state of unpleasantness. If Stephanie is the most changed, rocking a jetsetting lifestyle and brushing shoulders with Rihanna, Kimmy is exactly as you’d expect: jewelry apparently inspired by a Lisa Frank folder, frizzy hairdos, and a penchant for annoying anyone who isn’t D.J. As the new matriarch of the household, D.J. is the counterbalance, and Cameron Bure does well at balancing the predictability of her plight (dead spouse, full house) with pulling herself, and family along with her, up by the bootstraps. She’s broad, but repeatedly endearing – the sitcom bull’s eye.

The boozy aunt v. soccer mom v. chaotic mess is Fuller House‘s one source of constant comedic fodder, but it rarely feeds from that trough, never placing the three in enough scenes together and, when it does, not giving them anything noteworthy to do. A sequence in a night club in the third episode houses one awkward, downright weird scene after another, leading from an off-putting Macy Gray cameo to what could be argued as the worst rendition of Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze’s seminal dance ever put to film. It’s easy to like the three, but I began to wonder whether I would have gotten on with them without the eight seasons of Full House baggage I walked into Fuller House with; I’m not sure I would.

Netflix’s new show is one of those revivals that sits in a weird no man’s land between For Fans Only and Anyone Can Like It! Those who felt like a member of the Tanner family will get a kick out of seeing where everyone is 20 years later, and some young kids will undoubtedly play right into the Disney Channel-level subplots revolving around everything from stage fright to volcano science fair projects. But Fuller House never commits to either side, nor does it learn how to successfully straddle the middle, and feels all the more false for it (and false, it should be said, is one adjective Full House triumphantly avoided).

Besides exactly one scene in episode six between Sweetin and Cameron Bure, Fuller House also never hits its predecessor’s sweet spot between cloying sentiment, silly fun, and the set-a-timer inevitability of its structure. It feels like a forgery more than a new creation, with tiny details slipping through the cracks – clothespins on the back of Lori Loughlin’s blouse, a DJ table apparently connected to nothing – only adding to the very un-Netflix, second-hand feel.

Of course, all of this could be something I would have said had I been 25 watching Full House in 1992. That show was, after all, a simple set-up about a loving family who learned their lessons and went to bed happy in a succinct 22 minutes. By those standards, sure, Fuller House is functional – even slightly laudatory in its hilariously un-ironic, family-first battle cry. But is it wrong to ask for more from a television show – even a reboot – than basic, building block functionality? Am I requiring too much from a series that’s built on the very idea of basking in an idealized vision of an overly genial, bygone era? Possibly. Probably. But, as the Fullers are well aware, a lot of things change in 20 years. Sometimes you have to change with them, or get left behind.