Hey everyone! Thanks for visiting the blog. Sign up for email updates on the right to see more awesome content. 😉A while ago we reviewed the first three seasons of Fuller House, recognizing that the show has a lot of flaws, but is decent for the most part. Season 4 has been very consistent with this Full House and Fuller House formula, but I feel that season 4 was much better than season three. I'll tell you all about this and more about the show below!
So, season 3 felt awkward and made some pretty hard passes at characters like Fernando, who others in the house thought of as strange. Season 4 still made fun of certain characters, but was more sensitive to their humanity, which I appreciated. For example, although people still made jokes about Fernando, we actually got to know him better and started to actually feel like he's part of the Fuller House family. I really appreciated this. Actually, I think he's the funniest character on the show, so I liked that they sort of recognized this and put more eggs into the Fernando basket.
One major critique I have is that most of the jokes on the show felt like they were either written for or by moms/dads, which is understandable because the protagonists are all mothers. However, the mom jokes spilled over into almost all aspects of the show, which I thought made it somewhat bland. At the same time, the fact that almost all the jokes were the same (and frankly not very funny, if at all) made the few actually LOL-worthy jokes stand out and made the good comedy in the show more recognizable. But I do have to ask myself if there should be so many jokes that miss the mark that make me desperate for a joke that's a hit. Overall I thought the comedy needed to be written better. This is something I hope they do better at in the next season!
Also, I am so freaking grateful that the Steve, DJ, Matt love triangle is OVER! That lasted way too long and got very annoying, culminating in an awkward trip to Japan in season 3. Season 4 felt a lot less cringey because they finally were over with a plot point that I feel was not worth their time. Btw, I was more in favor of DJ choosing Matt over Steve anyway, as that would have opened SO many doors for the show to break away from the nostalgia at least a little bit. So, that whole fight over DJ really irritated me. This season however, there was the best plot point yet--Stephanie's baby being born. The birth of Stephanie's child was a really great, modern event, and brought up some important issues about using a surrogate to bring a child into the world. I thought this was really cool to watch, but the fact that Kimmy and Stephanie live with one another caused some competition over the baby duties. I'm wondering if this will be an issue in future seasons? I mean, where Stephanie and Kimmy both feel like they're the mother of this new kid. That will be really interesting to watch. And a good breakaway from relationship drama!
The fact that Stephanie and Kimmy, the biological and surrogate mothers respectively, live together makes the potential upcoming story very unique as well. The reason why this may be is because one of the most famous TV surrogate moms we know of, Phoebe from Friends, was related to the biological parents of her surrogate children, but they hardly ever saw Phoebe. So, she didn't really have the option to feel like the true parent of the triplets she gave birth to. On the other hand, there's Kimmy, who has already voiced some desire to parent the kid and who sees Stephanie all day every day. This could create some actually intriguing drama coming up.
Another critique I have of season 4 is that, just like its preceding seasons, it was very predictable. True, it's just like Full House, but I almost feel like the latest Fuller House episodes don't know what to talk about that's not predictable and so try to create strange excuses for musical numbers and what not. Kudos to the show for being more self aware of this, but they basically said "we know this is weird--deal with it" in their self aware comments. I wasn't the biggest fan of their decision to stick to the same type of strange events in season 4, but I do like that they've dialed it down from season 3.
Also, the kid who plays Jackson was written suddenly as a football star this season. Okay, the actor doesn't look at all like a football star, and should have been written as something else. By the way, that would have been so much cooler if he was written as something else, especially since the big football player has been done so many times. And there is also the fact of the actor's inability to even act like a football player. All of that characterization was a complete miss. They should have gone more with what that kid could actually do and would realistically be good at. For example, he could have started a really great band, or joined the cheerleading or dance team. That would have seemed more appropriate and would have been more interesting to watch.
One more complaint that I have is that, although it's great that the original actors return frequently for appearances, I am really sick of the audience applauding them every time they come on screen. They may as well make characters like Jesse, Joey, and others regulars so we don't have to give them a round of applause just for entering the scene every time.
Although I don't have a high opinion of the writing this season (it's probably a 3 or 4 out of 10), the show did make improvements from prior seasons. That said, there are glaring issues that could have been avoided and should be made note of. In my last post, I give the show a 5/10 (season 3 being a much lower score on its own) because it does some things right, but not enough to be very entertaining. I'm sticking to 5/10 for this season too because the quality wasn't amazing and didn't make so much of an improvement on all prior seasons to be considered for a better overall score.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading, Pragmus fans. :)
--Corey Cherrington
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