Recap / Full House S 7 E 02 The Apartment

"The Apartment" is an episode in the seventh season of Full House.

After Steve moves into an apartment of his own, D.J. excitedly joins him, but trouble brews when Danny goes there after D.J. breaks curfew due to falling asleep at said apartment. Jesse and Joey decide to pave the driveway on their own, only to run into some problem for it, and Michelle, desperate for a hobby of her own, decides to collect leaves, much to Stephanie's chagrin, especially when Michelle's "hobby" affects her.

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Tropes in this episode:

• 555: As Kimmy informs Danny, 555-6410 is the phone number of Steve's residence. Unfortunately, his phone line isn't hooked up yet, much to Danny's chagrin.
• Big "OMG!": A back-to-back, three-for-the-price-of-one example takes place when Danny stands on a chair to look through the window above the front door to look for D.J. while she's asleep on the couch with Steve: Once when he finds D.J. and Steve sleeping next to each other on the couch, once by him saying it when the chair he stands on gives out, and once by D.J. saying this when she checks her watch for time after she and Steve are woken up by the noise caused by Danny and the broken chair.
• Brick Joke:
  • When Danny arrives at Steve's apartment, he steps on a chair to allow himself to better look for signs of D.J., who's asleep next to Steve on the couch at the time, before the chair gives out, waking the two up. The chair gets one more mention at the end of the episode, with D.J. telling Danny that he owes $30 to Steve's landlord for the broken chair. This sends Danny on a tirade.
    Danny: What?! That piece of junk? It was old, defective — it nearly killed me. He's lucky if I don't sue him!... *episode ends*
  • Joey's smart watch, which he wears throughout this episode, gets tossed into the cement mixer truck by Jesse in Jesse's moment of annoyance after Rebecca points out that the flawed thinking behind Jesse and Joey's DIY cement-paving would drive up the cost for the project. In The Stinger of the episode, Joey gets his watch back... during Jesse's work (with Nicky and Alex in tow) in chiseling the cement out of the kitchen floor, with said watch being uncovered from the cement.
• Car Meets House: Not the whole "car" this time, as it's the chute of a concrete mixer truck that breaks into the house. The result is still disastrous, however, as the cement gets continuously poured down through the chute into the kitchen, sending Jesse and especially Danny into a panic.
• Didn't Think This Through: Jesse and Joey's attempt to pave the backyard driveway, in which they decide to rent a mixer truck and do the cementing themselves to save themselves the potential cost of hiring professionals to do it, falls into this. The cement-paving itself is fine, except for the part that they start the project at the end of the driveway. Once they finish the project, they're forced to wait out the time it takes for the cement to dry up before they can drive the truck back, so the truck has to stay in the backyard in the meantime. The extra wait time ends up wiping out the money they would have saved by doing the job themselves.
• Dissonant Serenity: Played for Laughs. Joey doesn't react to the cement being poured out of the mixer truck that's slowly but steadily filling up the kitchen due to listening to his self-help tapes through his headphone with his eyes closed, all while Jesse and Danny frantically try to have the cement flow stopped.
• Escalating War: Once Stephanie sees the bags of withered leaves Michelle collects strewn about all over their bedroom, and especially after Michelle tells her about the bugs in some of them, Stephanie decides that enough is enough by tossing Michelle's bags of leaves out of the window, while Michelle, in turn, tosses Stephanie's own items, including her Mr. Bear, out the same way. Eventually, they run to Danny to settle their disagreement once and for all.
• Eye Take: Danny's eyes start to enlarge upon seeing cement flowing from the chute of the mixer truck that has broken into the kitchen.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Joey listens to self-help tapes through a headphone, to the point of ignoring all outside distraction. This combined with trying to pave the driveway wound up getting Joey's feet stuck in cement. The only way to snap Joey out of it was to interrupt his mantras with an insult.
• Hope Spot: Played for Laughs.
  • When Danny calls Kimmy and, upon learning that she's not with D.J. and Steve at Steve's apartment, inquires her for Steve's phone number, Kimmy obliges... only to tell Danny not to bother calling Steve due to his phone having not been hooked up yet. Danny promptly lets loose a rant at Kimmy over the phone before demanding that Kimmy give him Steve's address.
  • Danny settles Michelle's and Stephanie's very easily by just telling them to clean it up, hug and make up since he's too busy watching DJ and Steve. Michelle thinks they got off easy, then Danny sees the leaf collection Michelle accumulated.
    Danny: Look at the mess in here!
• Ironic Echo: Played for Laughs. When D.J. breaks her curfew while still staying at Steve's apartment, Danny says "What kind of father am I?" in his concern about her situation. Jesse, and Kimmy later on, react with asking "What kind of father are you?" upon learning that D.J. is alone with Steve in his apartment late at night, which does nothing to soothe Danny's mood.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: After Kimmy tells Danny that Steve's phone isn't hooked up (and that's after giving him the phone number in the first place), Danny lets loose a rant on Kimmy — while on the phone, at that — until he says: "Get. That. Address. Right. Now!", at which point the scene shifts to Steve's apartment.
• Right Behind Me: At one point during Jesse and Joey's DIY driveway cementing session, they start to sing The Addams Family theme song. Danny and Rebecca, who watch Joey and Jesse at it from behind, oblige with the finger-snapping, which catch the attention of Joey and Jesse.
  Rebecca: So... Lurch, Gomez, how's the project coming along?
• Shoe Phone: Kimmy's personal phone is one of the Sports Illustrated Sneaker Phone, an actual working corded phone built into a sneaker, which was given away as a promotional item with subscriptions to their magazine for a time in the early 90s. Hilarity Ensues when she fumbles her way for her phone, which is next to one of her real shoes, after Danny wakes her up with his call, with her grabbing her shoe by mistake initially.
  Kimmy: Whoa, nasty!
• Shout-Out:
  • While D.J. and Steve decide what to do inside Steve's apartment, Steve holds up two VHS cassette tapes they could watch.
    Steve: The Terminator or Indecent Proposal?
    [Beat]
    D.J. and Steve: (in unison) The Terminator.
    • For bonus points, the part of the movie where T-800 Model 101 says "I'll be back" plays right as Danny shows up to check on D.J.
  • To The Addams Family, as Jesse and Joey sing its theme song while smoothing the cement for the driveway.
• Skewed Priorities: When it's clear Jesse's and Danny's attempts at containing the cement flow aren't working, Jesse tells Danny to "turn off the truck". Danny then starts a spiel as to why he hadn't thought of it sooner, before Jesse, who's waist-deep in cement at this point (due to him kneeling down with a drawer in a futile attempt to stop the cement flow), reminds Danny with "the truck", stopping Danny's speech and getting him into the backyard to get the mixer truck turned off.
• Teen Pregnancy: D.J. mentions to Danny about Kathy Santoni, a girl in the same year as herself and Kimmy, being pregnant. While D.J.'s delivery of the news is Played for Laughs via her stating that Santoni got extra credit in the Home Economics class, it also sets up for dramatic effect later in the episode, as Danny panics upon seeing D.J. sleeping next to Steve at Steve's apartment unit ("until the chair gave out", says Danny), worrying about D.J. possibly getting pregnant herself should she be alone with Steve, which he confesses to D.J. is the reason behind his behaviors towards them afterwards, near the end of the episode.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Early in the episode, D.J. asks for permission to go to Steve's apartment. Danny agrees, on the condition that she returns home by eleven, which D.J. promises him. Unfortunately, D.J. and Steve fall asleep while watching a movie and don't wake up until Danny accidentally makes a loud noise right outside the apartment door when he comes looking for her at one A.M.
  • One of the perks of having one's own apartment, as Steve informs D.J., is being able to "crank up the stereo as loud as I want, whenever I want", which he demonstrates to turning up the stereo volume, only to relent and turn it back down after a neighbor knocks on the door and tells him "Turn it down, you punks!".
  • As Stephanie and Michelle complain to Danny in D.J.'s room about the aftermath of Michelle's leaf-collection "hobby" and Stephanie's reaction to it, Danny, who's in a hurry to keep monitoring D.J. and Steve, who have already left the room due to Danny's nonstop surveillance, makes a concise advice for them to apologize and make up before leaving the room. Stephanie and Michelle believe that they might have got off easy... until Danny sees the state of their room.
    Stephanie: Wow, he really streamlined the dad talk.
    Michelle: (happily) Yeah, we got off pretty easy.
    Danny: (off-screen) LOOK AT THE MESS IN HERE!
    Michelle: (smile fading) Maybe not.
  • After Danny witnesses the mess in Stephanie and Michelle's room as the result of Michelle's leaf-collection "hobby", Danny meets Jesse in the kitchen and asks him if there's anything worse than leaves on a carpet. Then they see the cement truck pouring cement into the house as the result of Car Meets House.
    Jesse: Yup.
    Danny: My kitchen!