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Fuller House: A True Family Show?

I watched the original “Full House” quite a bit when I was little. My parents didn’t let us watch just anything, but “Full House” seemed to be a no-brainer for them to allow. Cheesy, sure. But pretty darn clean.

And now we’ve got its sequel streaming on Netflix, with part 1 of season 3 having recently come out. Like its predecessor, “Fuller House” is rated G and touted as being a show the whole family can watch together. What a concept!

If it’s true.

So, is it true?

After watching the first two seasons, my conclusion is kind of.

The show picks up a couple decades after the original, with oldest daughter DJ now a recently widowed mother of three, while middle sister Stephanie and neighbor/friend Kimmy move in to help her. They’re in the original house, with a similar family dynamic to the original. And there are lots of typical “Full House” type “awe” moments and warm fuzzies. They poke fun at how huggy and mushy they are, and there’s lots of good clean fun.

And… some other stuff.

In a way, I hate to give a laundry list of its moral faults and seem to reduce the show to what’s wrong with it. But on the other hand, this show is rated G and yet is not something that I think should be popping up in my toddler’s list of suggested shows beside his innocent “Octonauts” and “Dinotrux.”

And so, I give you my list of the troubling aspects this “family” show includes:

  • Insinuations that Aunt Stephanie parties, gets drunk, sleeps around, and eats pot brownies.

  • A double-entendre joke that uses the word “seamen” to refer both to sailors and to Uncle Jesse’s procreative functions, along with the implication that he had a vasectomy.

  • A pretty crude bit in which the mom DJ thinks the blind date that showed up is her plumber and he thinks she’s sexually propositioning her.

  • Discussion of a male guest character that DJ thinks is cute actually being gay.

  • An implication that the main female characters went together to a male strip club.

  • A confusing situation in which Kimmy and her husband are actually divorced but now back together and apparently shacking up (super morally confusing from a Catholic viewpoint).

  • A reference to the kama sutra from Kimmy’s ex/husband.

  • Discussion between Stephanie and her boyfriend about the two of them having kids in the near future – with no mention of marriage.

If it weren’t for the G rating…

I don’t think I’d really have a problem with this show if it were rated PG. A PG rating on a show like this would tell me that, even though it’s about a family and has some cheesy kid-like aspects to it, there might be a few morally troubling issues. That would be pretty accurate.

But being rated G tells me that I should be able to let my kids watch it without having to monitor it super closely. That is definitely not the case with this show. My toddler is only three, so as we watched this show together and these things showed up in it, he was pretty oblivious. But if he’d been a couple years older, that would definitely not have been the case.

Don’t get me wrong…

I’m all for family shows being made. And this show, when you compare it to the majority of what’s out there, is really not that bad.

But if they were really trying to make a show the whole family can watch together, a show that deserves a G rating, I don’t think it was exactly a mission accomplished.

2 thoughts on “Fuller House: A True Family Show?

  1. I wanted to love this show so much … a big fan of Candice since Hallmark days. ha ha. But , alas, it was NOT something I felt comfortable watching and definitely couldn’t allow my 11 year old to enjoy with me. I agree with your review wholeheartedly

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