Netflix’s “Fuller House” is not good, but that’s arguably the best thing the show has going for it. To make a “Full House” sequel “good” — less formulaic, more innovative — would be like baking an artisanal, organic Hostess CupCake: You could do it, it might be delicious, but it would be a betrayal of the product. This is, after all, a franchise whose theme song begins, “Whatever happened to predictability?”
What Netflix instead promised, with the debut of the 13-episode season Friday, is a memory: the experience of once more ripping open the plastic wrapper, sinking your teeth into squishy cake and feeling the rush of sugar, chemicals and whipped air.
The first bite is sweet and familiar. The second, a little cloying. The third, the fourth… something is off. Maybe the recipe has changed, or you have. “Fuller House” begins as a sitcom family reunion. It becomes a self-conscious, dated and maudlin reminder of the ceaseless march of time and your inevitable demise.
When it aired from 1987 to 1995 on ABC, “Full House” was already a nostalgia show. It was a safe haven of group hugs and catchphrases in the era of “Married… With Children.” The widower Danny Tanner (Bob Saget) raised three adorable daughters with his cool brother-in-law and zany best friend. (The widower device was itself a throwback to ’60s sitcoms, which constantly sacrificed past spouses on the altar of cute family comedy).
The aged-up “Fuller House” brings back not only the original characters (and its creator Jeff Franklin) but also the premise, gender-flipped. Now it’s Danny’s eldest daughter, D. J. (Candace Cameron-Bure), raising three sons in the same house, after the death of her husband, a firefighter. (Her married name, yes, is Tanner-Fuller.)
The premiere is a 35-minute frog-march down memory lane. The studio audience goes wild when John Stamos and Lori Loughlin take the stage and Dave Coulier dusts off his catchphrase “Cut—it—out!” Not returning are Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; when someone mentions Michelle (the youngest sister, whom they played together), the cast turns and glares through the fourth wall.
Mr. Stamos reprises “Forever,” his character’s wedding song. The theme song returns, twice: once in original form, once belted by Carly Rae Jepsen over footage of the characters today and a generation ago. The same split-screen device returns at the episode’s end, which recreates a scene from the original series. It’s not so much a pilot as a premature In Memoriam reel.
But the episode also has to set up a series, as the older characters shuffle off and the middle sister, Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), and wacky neighbor Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) move in to help D. J. Kimmy has a sassy daughter (Soni Nicole Bringas) and an ex-husband (Juan Pablo Di Pace), an excruciating Latin-lover caricature who still pines for “Kimberlina, mi amor.” (Ms. Barber herself is a bright spot, playing Kimmy big and to the cheap seats.) D. J.’s middle son, Max (Elias Harger), has his own catchphrase — “Holy chalupas!” — and the show works so hard to cutesify him that at one point it actually buries him in puppies.
Of course, what “Fuller House” is like on its own is beside the point; it matters only in reference to the original. This reboot — see also “The X-Files” and the coming “Gilmore Girls” — is the ultimate product of our nostalgia culture, the perpetual virtual high school reunion of Throwback Thursdays and “Things Only a ’90s Kid Would Know” listicles.
So your personal experience of “Fuller House” will depend on how it interacts with your memories. If you loved “Full House,” I can no more review this experience for you than I could your first kiss (a little sloppy) or your grandmother’s cookies (raisins, really?).
But you’ll have to adjust to the major change to “Fuller House”: its shiny new coat of cringe-making innuendo. Do you want to know that Kimmy Gibbler is now an expert in the ways of the Kama Sutra? Forget I said anything, then. An online-dating-mistaken-identity plot, in which D. J. invites in a man who she thinks is a plumber but who thinks he’s there for a booty call, might be awkward for grown fans watching with their kids. Or without them.
Then again, it’s not entirely clear who the audience is meant to be for the new “Fuller House.” Are grown-up fans watching with their kids? Or binge-watching after they’ve tucked them in, exhausted and mourning their spent youth?
Either way, I’m not sure that “Fuller House” has more to offer them than the novelty of its reunion-pilot. The good news is, contrary to nostalgia’s things-were-better-back-then plaint, TV in 2016 already has plenty of more-inventive, less-generic broadcast family sitcoms: “black-ish,” “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Bob’s Burgers,” to name a few. Whatever happened to predictability? It’s having a hard time these days. The rest of us are much better off for it.
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