The general sentiment from viewers of this episode.
I usually don't pay attention to the opening credits since they're like 40 minutes long, but I happened to watch them just now and noticed that the shot from behind of Danny and the girls fishing is totally not Danny and the girls. The camera gets a pretty good shot of the man's profile and it's not Bob Saget, and you can tell they used two random blonde children with different hairstyles to stand in for DJ and Stephanie. I wonder if it's the same man who was originally cast in Danny's role? (Tip: on the first season DVDs, you can watch the pilot they shot with the original Danny. It's weird.) I guess they were too lazy to reshoot the scene, which is even stranger since they did manage to shoot a clip of the real Danny and the girls fishing from the front. They film all kinds of stupid crap for this show, but they couldn't manage to roll the cameras behind the actors for ten seconds?
Anyway, on to the episode. Kimmy Gibbler's back! She and DJ are in the garage saying goodbye. Why in such a hurry, Kimmy? I guess this episode aired out of sequence, since Joey's room is in the now-renovated garage as of two episodes ago. Stephanie appears, much to DJ's chagrin. As Kimmy's leaving, Stephanie hears a really fake animal call and thinks it's a monster.
Upstairs, Joey is cooking dinner in character as a Japanese chef. Jesse joins in on the casual racism. He has his exterminator uniform on to remind us of what he does for a living. The girls come up and tell Jesse about the strange
The monster sound comes on again overnight and wakes up the girls. They run into the hallway screaming. In the only interesting part of the episode, Jesse comes out of his bedroom in a tank top. He investigates the noise and finds nothing. Danny ends up sitting in bed with the girls to help them sleep. He bores the girls to sleep, but can't get out of bed without disturbing them, so ends up spending the night in their room. This whole scene is so pointless - it's not funny at all. If they needed to pad the episode, they could have just filmed Jesse changing into and out of his tank top or shaving his head.
The next day, Jesse and Joey are dressing Michelle for her television debut when the monster makes his noise again. Jesse determines it's a ferret and gets all excited to track it down. Downstairs, the doorbell rings and it's the TV director person, Ronnie. Like I mentioned, Joey's stuff is still in the alcove for this episode. We're supposed to hate Ronnie because she's pretentious. I just hate her.
Down in the garage, Jesse is trying to catch the ferret with a baseball glove, quickly telling Joey he "had to improvise" because he left his exterminator tools in the car. What kind of a stupid excuse is that? When Jesse hears the ferret walking around in the wall, he takes off the baseball glove and tosses it away - so what was the point of wearing it in the first place? Jesse tells Joey he's going to kill the ferret, but Joey thinks that's sad and opens the garage door to free it. The ferret goes up into the crawl space with Jesse right behind him. Joey takes the ladder away and won't put it back until Jesse promises he won't kill the ferret. Instead of insisting Joey put the ladder back, Jesse just starts climbing down headfirst onto Joey's shoulders, which of course Ronnie walks in on. She can't believe she has to shoot a promo with these bozos. I can't believe I watch this show voluntarily.
Later, Danny shows up and sees Joey moving all of his stuff out of the alcove because Ronnie told him he has to pretend not to exist. Joey gets to hold the cue cards behind the scenes. That's not a union job? Ronnie tells Danny she wants to set him apart from the crowd and sell his family with class and sophistication. They run through a quick rehearsal, which has Danny coming home from work, speaking Italian, and being greeted by a strange dog. The camera guy is walking around like he's filming while Ronnie stands right in front of the lens. Nice rehearsing, guys. The girls come in dressed in fancy skirts, carrying violins, and speaking French. Jesse pretends to be the help. (Pretends?) Then "Michelle" comes in, but she's been replaced by another child who's way cuter because Ronnie didn't think Michelle was right for the part. Since Danny hasn't yelled at Jesse and Joey for a while, he yells at them for getting talked into this charade. Ronnie tells Danny that local news is a competitive market and Danny has to make a splash. Danny says he's proud of his family, and he wants to direct the commercial himself. Ronnie gets to hold the cue cards. I'm sure the various unions employed by the station won't object to that!
Some time later, the family watches themselves on TV (with Kimmy). The commercial is really stupid and no station would ever air it. (...Well, I guess ABC did). They go into the kitchen for sundaes when Jesse hears the sound again. He catches the ferret and tells Joey he's going to let it go free.
***
Award for legitimately funny line goes to: Danny says to Ronnie: "You're saying my daughter wasn't right for the part of my daughter?" Joey: "I auditioned for the part and I came that close."
Lines that generated the biggest eyerolls: The girls' "cute" interruptions during the family commercial.
I am baffled by: There are so many inconsistencies in this particular episode, and you could drive Bullet through the holes in the plot, barnacles included.
Further thoughts on the opening credits: The giant family-style spaghetti dinner the gang is sitting down to at the end of the credits always makes me hungry. Also, it cracks me up that Michelle is sitting on the floor by herself in front of a wide open door to the backyard, until Danny finally remembers she's part of the family too and picks her up.
Episode rating: 0.5 out of 5 illogical, improvised methods for catching ferrets.
Photo source: Veehd.com
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