Recap / Full House S 7 E 03 Wrong Way Tanner

"Wrong-Way Tanner" is an episode in the seventh season of Full House.

While playing a soccer game with her classmates, Michelle accidentally scores a point for the opposing team, causing her peers to become angry at her, which, in turn, leads to her being upset with herself enough to feign having a broken leg in an attempt to avoid playing again. The Tanner family get her to overcome it by watching a videotape footage made by Stephanie, who manages to catch an embarrassing moment on everyone in the family while videotaping everyone in her family for a school project.

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Tropes in this episode:

• All Cloth Unravels: D.J.'s necklace is stuck to the sweater Steve is wearing as Stephanie is videotaping her family for her school project. Once Stephanie makes it clear she intends to share her videotaped footage to her classmates, D.J. starts chasing her, leaving behind a trail of sweater thread in her wake, while Steve futilely holds onto the thread. When the Tanner family views the clip late in the episode, the sweater is shown in the footage to have been already in tatters and Steve mentions that his mother can use the remaining parts of the sweater — the sleeves — as leg-warmers.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The latest electronic gadget of choice in the Gibbler household, as Kimmy happily informs Danny, is a bug zapper, which, as she observes, works against flies, mosquitos, and... any squirrels that are near-sighted enough to touch it, though it only stuns the squirrels without killing them.^note  That being said, it doesn't last long after Danny accidentally kicks a soccer ball into it.
• Continuity Nod: After Danny accidentally kicks a soccer ball into the Gibbler residence, Kimmy reemerges and tells him that he owes $90 for the bug zapper that becomes broken due to Danny's action, showing him a charred and deflated soccer ball (which Kimmy calls "exhibit A") for good measure. Danny makes one comment about this once the family views the incident in question while watching Stephanie's video clip.
  Danny: It would have been funnier if I didn't owe Gibbler $90.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: "Her" petard, in this case. The video clip Stephanie shows to her family late in this episode includes her dangling a rubber pork chop at Comet in front of the camera, only for Comet, in his moment of excitement over said rubber pork chop, to knock her over with his body, before licking her all over the face, all of which is caught on film.
  Stephanie: *on footage* I definitely can't use that.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Upon seeing D.J.'s necklace getting stuck to Steve's sweater, the entire team (led by Aaron) starts chanting "Kissy-face! Kissy-face!", before D.J. puts a stop to it by asking them to "stop being immature". The kids stop... but Joey keeps chanting until he notices that he's the only one still doing that, at which point he stops before adding "there's no room for that kind of immature behavior on this team".
  • Once Stephanie reveals that she has secretly recorded Jesse's private pep talk to his own hair and Rebecca tells him to "be a good sport" (itself an Ironic Echo, as Jesse said the very words to her just a moment ago when she complained about Stephanie secretly recording her performance behind her back), Jesse says that he will be... after Stephanie hands her camcorder to him, at which point he starts chasing Stephanie in order to get his hands on the footage.^note  He fails because the footage Stephanie shows the family late in the episode includes said pep talk.
• Informed Deformity: The embarrassing moment Stephanie has caught on video regarding Joey involves his supposedly long nose-hair strands, but the footage shown doesn't indicate him having any nose-hair sticking out.
• Ironic Echo: Played for Laughs.
  • When Rebecca complains to Stephanie about secretly taping her performance behind her, Jesse tells Rebecca to "be a good sport". Once Stephanie reveals that she has also secretly recorded Jesse's private pep talk to his own hair, Rebecca returns the same words to Jesse.
  • Danny tries to prove his athletic capacity to Jesse (who is vocal about his skepticism towards Danny's athletic skills) and Michelle by kicking a soccer ball, which is accompanied by him saying "Plant to the left, swing to the right, and ka-powie!" as he does so. Too bad for Danny, he completely misses the aim and ends up getting the ball into the Gibbler residence, which breaks an electrical appliance in the Gibbler household, which, in turn, destroys the ball. And Danny has to pay for the broken electrical appliance as the result.
    Jesse: (mockingly) "Plant to the left, swing to the right, and ka-powie! Bzzt!"
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Aaron is being his rude self for calling D.J. and Steve "kissy-face", he's not wrong in refuting D.J.'s claim that she and Steve got stuck "studying".
  Aaron: "Studying"... NOT!! They were kissing.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Michelle gets the "Wrong-Way Tanner" nickname after running the wrong way in the soccer game and accidentally scores a point for the opposing team, courtesy of Aaron, who makes sure to remind others of her blunder for the rest of the episode until she exerts some payback for it near the end of the selfsame episode by deliberately running toward the opposite side her teammates are headed to a bit, causing others to worry and tell her she's going the wrong way, before turning back and saying "Gotcha!".
• Right Behind Me: Rebecca catches Alex and Nicky in the kitchen treating the lidded Tupperware and wooden ladles like drums and drumsticks, at one point singing "Bad Boys" (theme song of COPS), without noticing that Stephanie and Jesse had entered the kitchen (with Stephanie holding a video camera), until she turns around and comes face-to-face with them.
  Rebecca: H-How much of that did you happen to see?
• Share Phrase: "You can't use that" is stated whenever an embarrassing act gets caught on video, with many of them saying it once each (though not in unison). Stephanie even makes it the title of her videotape footage.
• Shout-Out:
  • To COPS due to Rebecca singing its theme song — until she turns around and realizes Jesse and Stephanie have been observing her all along (with Stephanie videotaping her on top of it).
  • When Rebecca, Nicky and Alex have a good laugh at the footage of them, she jokes: "Yeah, that's us, Gladys Knight and the Pipsqueaks."
• Tempting Fate:
  • After Joey answers Michelle's question in his coaching session early in the episode, he asks "Anyone else?". Just his luck, Aaron raises his hand, and so Joey is forced to let Aaron ask his question, which is just as annoying to Joey as he already thought it would be.
    Aaron: Are you going to buy us pizza after the game, or are you too cheap?
  • Danny tries to prove Jesse wrong when Jesse casts doubt on Danny's athletic skills by kicking a soccer ball in the backyard. Unfortunately for Danny, he proves Jesse right when he misses the aim while kicking the ball, resulting in it flying far away from the goalie's net — Danny's intended target — and into the Gibbler residence instead. To make it worse for Danny, Stephanie happens to have been secretly videotaping it and got it all on tape.
    Stephanie: THIS is a double two-thumbs-way-up. They'll probably show this on parent-teacher nights.
• Title Drop: "Wrong-Way Tanner", the title of this episode, is the nickname Aaron comes up with for Michelle after she runs the wrong way in the soccer game and accidentally scores a point for the opposing team.