Everywhere You Look, Things Get Awkward in Third Season of Fuller House

FULLER HOUSE continues to recapture the feelings of 1990s sitcoms -- or at least our sappy sentimental memories of them. Sometimes it seems like the show is a bit too huggy, a tad heavy on recalling tropes. For instance: the front door. Anyone can walk in, to the point that the response to the doorbell is someone calling, "It's always open!" How has this family never been robbed? Because it's FULLER HOUSE, where everything from broken legs to ruined weddings are all part of the puzzle to a happy ending every thirty minutes.

CANDACE CAMERON BURE continues her role as perpetually perky D.J. Tanner-Fuller: professional animal doctor and mother to three young boys, taking care of a house that also includes her younger sister Stephanie Tanner (JODIE SWEETIN), her best friend Kimmy Gibbler (ANDREA BARBER), and Kimmy's teenaged daughter Ramona (SONI BRINGAS). They also host Kimmy's ex-husband Fernando (JUAN PABLO DI PACE) despite the fact that he's bought th house next door and refuses to actually live in it.

The season is full of romantic entanglements, as D.J. and the crew prepare to go to Japan to attend the wedding of D.J.'s old boyfriend, Steve (SCOTT WEINGER), even though D.J. still harbors feelings for him. Meanwhile, teenagers Jackson (MICHAEL CAMPION) and Ramona both have relationship breakups to recover from. Even youngest son Max (ELIAS HARGER) has a Romeo and Juliet style relationship with his crush, Rose (played by the super-busy MCKENNA GRACE, whom you've seen as young Sabrina Spellman in CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA and will see later as young Carol Danvers in CAPTAIN MARVEL).

The other arc of the season focuses on Stephanie, the out of work musician who has been told she is incapable of having children. But she gets new hope this season when she learns she has some viable eggs that could be used with a surrogate. Together with her boyfriend, Jimmy Gibbler (ADAM HAGENBUCH), a clone of Ashton Kutcher's Michael Kelso character, they find a surrogate -- in Jimmy's sister, Kimmy. Yeah, that seems kind of weird to me, too.

Of course part of the attraction to the series is bringing back the former series regulars, like BOB SAGET, JOHN STAMOS, DAVE COULIER and LORI LOUGHLIN. This season we also get to see the return of Jesse's former band, THE RIPPERS, and Danny Tanner's old girlfriend, Vicki (GAIL EDWARDS).

While the situations may seem a little unrealistic even for a sitcom, the series as a whole still seems to work -- if, perhaps, a little too hard. I get that the creators are giving the viewers what they want, and that's exactly what they should do. But perhaps they might stretch a bit and, in the process, give the viewers more than they want?