Full House: Back to School Blues

Oh, the tween angst! It’s the first day of junior high for D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron Bure) and she’s learning the hard way that she’s not in elementary school anymore.

The new school year is starting. Stephanie, who is entering 2nd grade, is the only Tanner left in her school, and she expects a bad day at school. But instead, against her expectations, it turns out to be a good day for her (including being chosen as the Room 7 official fish feeder).

The same can’t be said for D.J., who is entering 7th grade, which is a step closer to becoming a teenager. On her first day at Van Atta Junior High, D.J. is separated from her best friend Kimmy except for sixth period Spanish, humiliated by a mean girl Colleen and her gang, a squad of girls dressed like tarts, discovers that she’s wearing the same outfit as Mrs. Agbabian, the annoying lunch lady, and has to eat lunch in a phone booth.

The next morning, D.J., along with Kimmy, decides to put on makeup. The reason why is because she believes the only way to fit in among the other students is to do what virtually the other 7th graders are doing when they put on makeup - look twice as old as she really is. Danny thinks D.J. is overdoing it, so he lets Rebecca help D.J. with the makeup.

The next day, Kimmy’s schedule changes so that she and D.J. can have the same lunch, especially with D.J.’s new friends from her English class, Karen Sykes and Susan Ericson, who are sitting at Colleen’s gang’s table. Colleen refuses to sit with scrubs (her name for people like D.J.), saying, “I’d rather eat in a phone booth”. So she and her gang split up and go eat at different tables.

Meanwhile, Joey tries to teach Jesse how to play golf in order to impress a golfing client.

Full House: Please Don’t Touch the Dinosaur

Michelle and her class are going on a field trip to a local Museum of Natural History and Danny is one of the chaperones. When the other chaperone, Ms. Gwelch, cancels because of illness, Danny finds himself in over his head with being the only adult in charge of sixteen kids.

Desperate to find a replacement before the trip, he persuades Jesse to come along. However, Danny’s feelings are hurt when Michelle chooses to be in Jesse’s group instead of his.

At the museum, Danny acts like a drill sergeant by constantly making up new rules and keeps his group on a tight leash. Jesse, on the other hand, lets his kids run wild throughout the exhibits. Danny also treats Jesse coldly and constantly lectures him on how to handle things, creating more tension between the two. While in the dinosaur exhibit, Michelle and Denise start playing a game of tag and accidentally knock over most of a $4,000,000 skeleton, effectively ending the field trip when the museum kicks them out.

Back at the house, Danny explodes at Jesse, berating him for letting his group get so out of control. Jesse snaps at Danny to get off his back and to stop treating him like a little kid, stating that the dinosaur is going to be fixed, and that he’ll be doing community service at the museum for “the next ten weekends in a row” to make amends. He also says he was just trying to let the kids actually have some fun, which was the last thing Danny was doing. However, Danny continues to lecture him, asking Jesse when he will stop trying to be “Mr. Cool” and start taking his responsibilities more seriously. Jesse asks Danny when he is going to get off his back. As the fight escalates, Michelle, becoming more and more angry, finally snaps at them to stop fighting. She tells them that she knocked over the dinosaur and that it was her fault, before running to her room in tears.

Realizing that their arguing did no good except hurt Michelle’s feelings, Danny and Jesse follow her to her room. There, they apologize for their behavior. They say that while she did knock over the skeleton, the real reason the field trip was a disaster was because neither one of them did a good job at being in charge (Jesse with being too flexible and Danny being too strict). Danny admits that the real reason he was so hard on Jesse was because he was jealous that Michelle wanted to be in his group instead of being with Danny, and apologizes to Jesse for his behavior. In the end, Jesse promises to be more responsible when it comes to being in charge, but will still hang a little loose, while Danny promises to tone down the sergeant behavior and be more reasonable when it comes to making rules.

Full House: Yours, Mine and Ours

DJ: (thinking) Oh, I hope that my friends better not see me here with my family. If they do, I’ll never live it down.

Your face is turning bright red. You want to hide yourself in shame. You’ve just done something totally embarrassing (or maybe it’s your mom, dad or younger/older sibling who have done that), and it feels like everyone is staring at you and giggling. Maybe everyone is staring at you and giggling. Hey, it happens to everybody.

Let’s face it. Teens can be embarrassed by their parents. DJ Tanner experiences this in the Season 5 episode Yours, Mine and Ours when she’s in a pirate-themed restaurant with father Danny, his best friend Joey, and her sisters Stephanie and Michelle.

Danny arrives home from work, and notices that the girls are in a bad mood because they haven’t had a good day. Neither has Joey, who would rather forget that day’s “Ranger Joe” episode. Danny suggests that they take a little time off from this stress and go out as a family for what he refers to as “Tanner Family Fun Night”. Jesse and Rebecca stay at home with Nicky and Alex. Danny takes Joey and the girls to a pirate-themed seafood restaurant. When they get there, D.J. is afraid she’ll be embarrassed in front of her classmate Shelly Phillips, who is also at the restaurant, and Joey and the girls seem to get a little more bitter, but they finally lighten up and have fun when, because of not eating a thing, they are forced to “walk the plank” — right into a pit full of balls, that is.

Meanwhile, at home, Jesse and Rebecca are having a disagreement as to how Nicky and Alex should be raised, and complicating things is the fact that Alex is sick and has a fever for the first time in his life. Luckily, however, they talk things out and apologize to each other after working together to help Alex get better.

This is a really neat episode, as well as very inspiring, too. I like it, mostly because being embarrassed is one of the themes of the episode. And embarrassment is very realistic, as it is found quite often in real life.

Full House: Our Very First Christmas Show

The family is on a flight to Colorado to spend Christmas with some relatives, and this is a trip that Danny has spent months planning. But on the way to Colorado, a blizzard forces an emergency landing at an unfamiliar airport. The family is forced to spend Christmas in the baggage claim room, where everyone thinks Christmas is ruined this time around. Jesse’s father Nick tries to get Jesse to kiss Rebecca (who had been expecting to go to her home town of Nebraska to spend the holidays) under a mistletoe, and D.J. is upset when she discovers that the gifts the family brought along on the flight with them have somewhat gone missing. 

Jesse, becoming ever so frustrated by everyone’s sour attitudes, speaks to the people in the baggage claim room about the true meaning of Christmas (which is, in my mind, a really awesome thing, especially for a Christian like me).

“What’s the matter with you people? The first Christmas was in a manger. They did okay. I mean, so what if we’re stuck in this crummy dump? Christmas isn’t about presents, or Santa Claus, or cows. It’s about a feeling. It’s about - It’s about people. It’s about us forgetting about our problems and reaching out to help other people. Christmas doesn’t have to happen in one certain place. It happens in our hearts. So if you think about it, we could have Christmas anywhere.”

The next morning, the real Santa Claus shows up and shows the family where the missing gifts are.