Not one thing under the great yellow sun of ours is original. At this point in the scope of humanity’s history, everything is derivative and nothing can be completely and singularly novel. That being said, we’ve got a little bit of a problem on our hands.
Coming soon to Netflix is a sequel series to the beloved 80s-90s Miller-Boyett sitcom "Full House" entitled "Fuller House", which will follow the exploits and adventures of a now adult and newly-widowed DJ Tanner. The series will feature many actors from the former series including Candace Cameron, Andrea Barber, Jodie Sweetin, John Stamos, Bob Saget and Dave Coulier and just like its predecessor, "Fuller House" will appropriate the series dynamic of three adults with three main children they have to look after, just with gender swapping.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a newly-widowed parent of three children enlists the help of two of their closest friends to raise the three young children all the while facing the hardships of living together in a big, but somehow cramped San Francisco house. Sounds exactly like "Full House", right? Well… to be honest, the series is really no different from its (pardon the pun) parent series.
In an odd and even creepy way, the events of the show eerily mirror that of the original show and some of the details are frightening. DJ lives in her childhood home in San Francisco and the set is exactly the same as the one featured in the original show. DJ, like her father before her, has lost her spouse to some kind of tragedy and now has to rely on the kindness of others to raise her sons. Something about this is both scary and tragic but also derivative in the worst kind of way.
Let me preface this a little bit: I used to love "Full House" as a young kid. It wasn’t exactly funny but something about the whole dynamic of the show was comforting to me. The show demonstrated that even in times of great sorrow, such as losing a parent or spouse, a family could carry on and prosper and that was what drew me to the TV screen all those years ago.
But now, I find this whole thing to be kind of a morbid relapse into nostalgic self-aggrandizement. "Full House" while corny and even tooth-achingly sweet at times, felt genuine but "Fuller House" seems to be taking all those warm feelings and packaging them up for those people that fell in love with the original show just to capitalize on their dollar.
"Fuller House" caters to fans of the original show, almost to a fan-service kind of level of similarity. Yet somehow, recreating a classic TV show for the same people who watched doesn’t feel right. It is soulless, it is bizarre and it is certainly the first of many similar reunion shows. Netflix is openly capitalizing on the nostalgia of fans to create “original programming” in line with what was on cable some ten to fifteen years ago.
While this great for fans of '90s TV, it weakens the market by diluting creativity and sacrificing genuine effort in favor of safe and reliable forms of media. I’m not saying that "Fuller House" is the devil incarnate, no that honor could go to any of Miller-Boyett’s other shows, but what I am saying is this: by using nostalgia as a vehicle to make new TV shows, projects like "Fuller House" will make the television market stagnate because there isn’t going to be anything fresh anymore. While I did say that nothing is new under the sun, when all we’ve got is the old remade from the older, something is bound to stink.
