Season 3, Episode 13, “No More Mr. Dumb Guy”

Pre-Credits Gag:  The girls do Michelle’s hair so she’ll look nice for Grandma.  Seriously, what’s with this whole off-screen Grandma thing?  If they can’t be bothered to ever bring her back on the show again why do they always gotta mention her?  Anyway, the baby looks in the mirror and expresses disappointment that she still looks like herself.  She finds a blonde wig that’s in a basket in her room for some reason and decides that it makes her look like a movie star, which cheers her up.  Sometimes these pre-credits gags are just fluff but then there are times like this, when they seem like windows into the Olsen Twins’ deep-routed psychological problems.

The episode opens with an airing of Wake Up, San Francisco, wherein Rebecca Donaldson sits back as Danny desperately fumbles through a barrage of sexual advances towards their guest, a woman named Cynthia who is putting on a cultural arts festival.  He even goes so far as to spill juice all over her dress and try to dab it up with a towel. What a shameless way to cop a feel.

After the taping is over Danny asks Cynthia to be his date to the festival and for the sake of moving the plot along she says yes.  Meanwhile, Jesse shows up all covered with grease because he’s just repaired Rebecca Donaldson’s car.  She invites him to the arts festival, noting that her old college professor will be there, and at first he doesn’t want to go but then she talks him into it.  It’s funny because he says he wants to prove to her that there’s more to him than just motorcycles and rock ‘n’ roll, but that really is all there is to him.  If you really wanna dig deeper you can find a love of fried chicken in there but, believe me, once you’ve mined for that little nugget there’s nothing left in that cold hard ground.

Joey makes spaghetti for the girls and the baby calls it “spissghetti.”  Oh, spissghetti! Stephanie learns a new trick where she can make the baby say shitty stuff to DJ and then DJ retaliates by getting the baby to call Stephanie a “cheese head.”  This is interesting because first we have Uncle Jesse acknowledge his complete lack of depth as a character and then we have a scene that basically demonstrates that the writers know that they can win over the audience by having the baby say pretty much anything.  It’s like the writers are offering us an inside view of what they’re thinking, and what they’re thinking is, “I hate everyone who watches my tv show.”

Jesse comes home with hella books and when Joey axes him what’s the dilly-o, Jesse explains that he has to go to that smart people party with Rebecca Donaldson and he wants to bone up on his reading so he doesn’t look like a fucking moron.

Danny introduces the girls to Cynthia before their date and Michelle calls Cynthia “cheese head.”  Danny explains to the girls that if they don’t deprogram that kind of language from the baby by the time he gets home he’s gonna beat them with wire hangers and make them scrub the bathroom floor all night.

Meanwhile, Jesse crams up in his room so he can seem smart for the party.  He decides at the last minute that everyone is gonna know what a worthless fuckhead no-nothing asshole he is so he feigns illness.  Just as he tells Rebecca Donaldson that he can’t make it, her old college professor shows up at the door and he’s all sophisticated and handsome and totally wants to fuck Rebecca Donaldson.

After everybody leaves, Jesse decides that he must crash the party.  While he puts his suit on, Jesse does the dumbest thing imaginable by asking Joey to help him to come up with some smart people small talk.  There’s an interesting moment where Joey provides some Shakespeare trivia by telling Jesse that all the women’s roles were originally played by men, to which Jesse responds, “you mean like that weird show we saw in Vegas?”  Poor Full House.  We all know that you’re gay…  when are you going to come out, and learn to love yourself?  This whole homophobic closet queen routine is very unbecoming.

At the smart people party, Danny spills caviar into Cynthia’s hair and picks it out as she miraculously remains unaware of the situation.  This bizarre subplot about Danny abusing this poor, wafer-thin androgynous woman only further supports the self-loathing queer theme of the episode.

So Jesse shows up to the party and acts like a gigantic asshole by being really pushy and misquoting everything that Joey told him.  It’s actually kind of a lot like every episode of Home Improvement.  Jesse gets into a pissing match with Rebecca Donaldson’s professor and ultimately challenges him to an arm wrestling match.  After a bunch of showboating Jesse wins the match but is confused when Rebecca Donaldson is all pissed off at him afterwards.

Meanwhile, back at the full house, DJ and Stephanie attempt to deprogram the baby so she’ll stop saying all the shitty stuff they taught her.  They all hug and proclaim their love for one another but then the baby belittles their emotions by declaring her love for an assortment of inanimate objects.  She wanders across the hall and finds Uncle Jesse, who’s all pissed off after the party, and the two of them engage in a heart to heart talk.  Jesse stresses the importance of intelligence and prompts Michelle to recite the ABC’s, which she complies to in a lovely time-wasting segment.  Seriously, how could they possibly put less effort into this show?  It’s a fucking baby saying the alphabet.  Anyway, Jesse decides that he was being a prick so he goes over to Rebecca Donaldson’s to win her back.

Jesse sits below Rebecca Donaldson’s window and sings a terrible song that he wrote for her.  She is touched by Jesse’s sappy bullshit and then he admits that he got all threatened because he’s a dumb ass moron and she likes to kick it with them egghead muthafuckas.  She says that even though he’s borderline retarded, can’t nobody bang her walls like him and then the music comes on and then they make out.

Well, I’m glad we got to see Rebecca Donaldson again, as she’s probably the least irritating regular cast member and she’s been conspicuously absent for most of this season.  It’d be nice to see an episode that focuses on some aspect of her other than her relationship with Jesse but something tells me we wont see that once in this whole fucking series.  You get like 2 characteristics on this show and that’s it.

First:  Rebecca Donaldson’s place (exterior only)