The 'Fuller House' pilot represents everything wrong with franchise revivals

The first episode of Fuller House represents everything wrong with reboot culture, this new era in which Hollywood feels the need to resurrect dead franchises for seemingly no reason other than that the cast never found anything better to do. The pilot has no voice of its own whatsoever, and its purpose is simply to remind you that Full House was a show. Over the course of this embarrassing 34-minute debut, the writers do little but reference events from Full House over and over again, relying entirely on our emotional connection to the original to do the heavy lifting. Remember Full House? That existed! This is all that Fuller House has to say.

The Fuller House premiere, entitled "Our Very First Show, Again," opens with the Full House title sequence before we cut to "29 Years Later." It's a cute idea to put us back into the mindset of 1987 for a brief moment before moving on to what the new story has to offer. If only this is where the shameless, forced nostalgia would end, but they're just getting started. We find ourselves in the Tanner household, and for the next few minutes, each cast member is introduced one by one so the audience can give them all their own standing ovation. Stephanie says "How rude," and the audience goes wild. Get it, because that used to be her catchphrase! The same thing happens when Uncle Jesse says "Have mercy" and Joey says "Cut it out." Cool, those are words we've heard before! Again and again these references are beaten into our heads, and it becomes very tiring very quickly.

That's the case with the theme song, too, which combines shots of our actors from the old title sequence with what they look like today. Even this wasn't enough because then John Stamos, Bob Saget and Dave Coulier redo the exact shots, and the old and the new are positioned side-by-side. Jesse is on the bench with his guitar! Danny catches a football! Why? Because that's what happened before! It serves as a perfect demonstration of exactly what a reboot needs to avoid: The updated Carly Rae Jepsen theme implies a desire to update the brand, but that clashes with an episode that's nothing more than a pointless exercise in recreating the past.

But okay, that was just the first 10 minutes. We can excuse a quick trip down memory lane for the cold open, but once Fuller House actually gets rolling, that's all going to fade away, right? Nope. In fact, it gets worse. In their bedroom, D.J. and Stephanie reminisce about events depicted in the pilot of Full House, when they fought over the room and drew a line down the middle. Remember that? Remember? Do you? Reflecting on the franchise's history, as long as it naturally comes up as part of the story, can create effective emotional beats and make us tear up as we recall watching those scenes so many decades ago. But when this is so transparent as to literally just involve the characters listing off things that happened before, it's more cringeworthy than anything else.

And it keeps on going! Jesse sings "Forever" again! Joey plays around with Mr. Woodstock! Why? Because that's what happened before. It all culminates in a truly embarrassing final sequence that must be seen to be believed. The gang sings the Flintstones theme to calm down the baby, exactly as they did in the first episode of Full House. Just having them perform the same actions would be a bit too subtle for these genius writers, though, so we then cut to footage from the original episode playing next to footage from this episode. Really? Could Jeff Franklin possibly cram the idea down our throats any more? Imagine if in Jurassic World, when Zach and Gray explore the visitor's center, Colin Trevorrow threw in footage of the Jurassic Park visitor center to really hammer in the connection between the two films. Imagine if in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, when Starkiller Base fires its weapon, J.J. Abrams made this a split-screen sequence with a shot of the Death Star destroying Alderaan on the left. How stupid does Fuller House think we are that we couldn't just make the comparison in our heads?

With a modern reboot, paying tribute to what came before is appropriate as long as it's subtle and does not overshadow what's happening now. The audience shouldn't spend the entire runtime looking into the past rather than focusing on the story that's currently being told because otherwise we could just be re-watching the original instead. Taking an example from the world of film, Jurassic World alludes to Jurassic Park in brief gags, like when Mr. DNA pops up for a split second, but overall the movie is a completely new story. We're still filled with nostalgia without the filmmakers shoving it in our faces by having characters constantly talk about that nostalgia. Nobody awkwardly says, "Hey, remember the original Jurassic Park, which had the character Mr. DNA in it? Now he's back!" If World were written by Jeff Franklin, that's probably how it would play out.

There are a few moments in the pilot when Fuller House comes close to this more subtle approach, taking ideas from the original and building upon them. There's one scene where Kimmy Gibbler finally gets a hug from Danny Tanner, and she notes that she's been waiting 20 years for that. Now this is more like it. The show isn't recreating a specific event shot for shot, but it still plays on the relationship between Danny and Kimmy that we remember from the old series. It doesn't just reference it; it develops it further by showing growth on Danny's part, as he now realizes he does actually have some affection for Kimmy. The episode takes an idea from the original, bringing it back up in a way that's somewhat sentimental, but at the same time it does something new with it. If only the rest of the half hour were made up of more moments like these and less shot-for-shot recreations.

Even beyond all the individual references, the entire arc of the episode is also virtually identical to the arc of the Full House pilot to the point that it makes The Force Awakens look like the most inventive story of 2015. Our main character has lost their significant other in an accident and is unsure if they'll be able to handle life as a single parent. This character had been spending a lot of time with their own parent lately, but unfortunately that parent is about to leave them and go home. Don't worry, though! One of the protagonist's relatives, in addition to one of their best friends, decides they will move in with the main character in order to help take care of the kids. It all ends with a heartwarming rendition of the Flintstones theme being sung to a baby. Am I describing the pilot of Full House or Fuller House? The answer is, of course, both. And that's exactly the problem. Like The Hangover Part II, Fuller House has no story to tell other than the fact that things we've seen before are happening again. And like The Hangover Part II, it's a complete waste of time.

To be fair, it's almost guaranteed that Fuller House will improve throughout season one, and that this self-referential shtick was only for the pilot. But this whole thing still works as a perfect case study in how not to write a TV revival, and over the next few years as countless other shows like Gilmore Girls make their return, "Our Very First Show, Again" is what we'll look back on as the bottom of the barrel.