Fuller House Recap: D.J. Plays Coachella

Fuller House

Mad Max

Season 1 Episode 5

Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

Candace Cameron Bure as D.J., Michael Campion as Jackson, Elias Harger as Max, Jodie Sweetin as Stephanie, Soni Nicole Bringas as Ramona, Andrea Barber as Kimmy. Photo: Netflix

Kimmy Gibbler is the world’s best online dater. First of all, she knows that sites like Match.com and OKCupid (OKStupid, am I right?) have just too many fish in their proverbial seas. If you want to have success, you have to go niche sites like GlutenFreeSoccerMoms.com. She also knows that the internet is built on a solid foundation of lies. Well, lies, reality-television GIFs, and inspirational Minions macros — but mostly lies. No wonder D.J. gets a date with a guy who stepped off of a Calvin Klein billboard in less than a day. If I had abs that looked like an archipelago off the coast of Japan, I would want to date a neuroscientist Victoria’s Secret model as well.

This reminds me: We have to talk about hot guys on Fuller House. They are the toy inside of the Kinder Egg — not the reason why you show up for the deliciousness, but the treat that makes it just that much more special. Each episode has at least one guy who used to be a shirtless greeter at his local Abercrombie before moving to L.A. and getting his headshots. They are often willing to take their shirts off to show us what happens if all you do is planks while eating egg whites and chicken breasts with the occasional dessert of steamed broccoli. We all appreciate their sacrifice.

There is just one problem with the hot guys: D.J. Tanner. She gets this super buff dude in her bathroom ready to get it on, and she won’t even let him take his shirt off all the way. What is wrong with you, D.J.? Let him remove his top so then he has to stand there for the rest of the scene in all of his glory. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for us. D.J. shoots down hot guys like the rest of us delete spam emails for male-enhancement drugs. She needs to get it together and take at least one of them out on a date. This is already Netflix; all she needs to add is the chill.

D.J. mistaking the hot guy for a plumber and then rushing him upstairs to clean her pipes was, for my money, the funniest bit on the show so far. I actually LOL’d for the first time when our unnamed hot dude — or maybe his name was Trevor? They’re all named Trevor — sheepishly said, “I’m a naughty plumber.” Good work, everyone.

But things are a little sad for my beloved Kimmy Gibber, who is going on a date with Hank, the pudgy plumber. I appreciate that Kimmy Gibbler finds beauty in all of God’s creatures, but she is currently married to Fernando, a man who looks like he could be famous in Brazil for being the model on a popular brand of men’s hair dye. He’s so into her, he’s willing to throw a dance competition to win her favor. If Kimmy is lonely, why wouldn’t she be sending him “U up?” texts at 1 a.m. like a normal person? I mean, has she seen him with her actual eyes? I would give up ever looking at Grumpy Cat ever again for just one mostly nude Snapchat of Fernando with the words “Thinking of U” scrolled across his man regions.

Now on to Ramona, who is the world’s worst vlogger and, apparently, a simpleton. Who would think that it was okay to flush a diaper down the toilet? That’s sort of like a real-sized person trying to wear Leprechaun clothes or trying to fit a grapefruit into a shot glass. We know that Ramona likes to cut school, but they covered shapes and sizes in preschool and I’m sure Kimmy Gibbler signed her up for a good one. But, at the end of the day, Ramona wasn’t a bad babysitter. Fuller House is all about teaching valuable lessons to the kids. Today, we did not learn about responsibility, treating your elders with respect, or how not to use the internet to take boring videos of yourself doing mundane things. But we did learn that it’s a bad idea to flush a diaper down the toilet. I’m glad we could all enjoy that teachable moment.

Speaking of bad at things, Max is really bad at playing the trombone. Why is this kid even playing the trombone in the first place? Isn’t he like five? He can barely hold the thing up, to say nothing of squeaking out “Old McDonald.” However, what he lacks in confidence, his aunt Stephanie makes up for in the old magic-scarf trick, which she learned from watching Dumbo on VHS repeatedly as a child. As soon as the magic scarf came up we knew that Max wouldn’t have it when it came time to play and he would find the confidence anyway and would grow as a person. However, none of us thought that Coachella would be involved.

After seeing a scary Instagram from Chuck E. Cheese, Stephanie’s even sluttier friend Shannon and her perpetually bare midriff show up on their way to Coachella, rescuing Stephanie and giving her a limo ride to the music festival. Fuller House’s renditions of the VIP tent at Coachella and the crowd itself are as laughably bad as when they tried to make a nightclub two episodes ago. The tent sort of looks like something you would rent for a wedding if you were a poor vampire who didn’t want any light streaming in on your big day. And how fake does that grass look? It must have been on sale. Not even a discount mini-golf course would think that it’s good.

What about DJ Tanner’s stage? (I’m not talking about the real D.J. Tanner here, but the fake DJ Tanner who plays Coachella in an Old Navy dress and a wonderfully fake braid, which is the most Coachella thing about this entire episode. It has cheesy backup dancers, a few turntables, and video screens. It is a production designer’s idea of what a music festival looks like, if that production designer has never been to one. Throw in some cute editing with a crowd that was probably 30 people deep — they tried to make it look like 10,000 — and you have yourself a fake music festival.

Here are all the things that they should have added to the crowd to make it look more like Coachella: Sweaty Uggs, a full carpeting of half-crushed plastic Bud Light cups, molly, Kelly Osbourne getting into a spat with Jaden Smith because he won’t give her a sip off the water jug that he carries around all the time, floral crowns, patchouli smell, all of Katy Perry’s gays, molly, a kid passed out with fake Kiss makeup drawn on his face in Sharpie, and Molly (a girl, not the drug).

Stephanie saves the day for Max by getting him to play Coachella via FaceTime and then guilting the crowd into cheering because who wants to break the heart of a cute five-year-old who isn’t really the best actor but you don’t mind because he looks really cute in button-down shirts?

Because she misses the kids, Stephanie turns down going to George Clooney’s birthday party in Italy (note to Fuller House writers: Clooney is now married and settled down, so maybe not so much). Isn’t that sweet? It is so sweet it makes her cry. Well, actually the fact that she can’t have kids of her own makes her cry. D.J. too. Wow, there is actually decent acting happening on Fuller House. It’s like going to McDonald’s and getting a quinoa salad. Luckily, Kimmy Gibbler saves the day like she always does by doing her best chicken impersonation.

Oh, Kimmy Gibbler, the patron saint of infertile mothers everywhere.