Holy shit. It’s here. The first episode of Step By Step. I actually don’t think I’ve seen this first episode since it originally aired. Most interesting to note here is that TiVo calls these earlier episodes “Comedy, Drama, Sitcom” while later episodes are just “Sitcom.” Does this mean the writers actually gave a shit about these shows and tried to make them a little more substantial? We’ll find out, I guess!
The show starts off with the great opening theme we all know and love. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I needed to psyche myself up to tackle this episode. I didn’t want to squander it. Weather that happens or not remains to be seen, but I did a lot of thinking on this. This led me to read the IMDB trivia page for this show and it pointed out something I NEVER NOTICED BEFORE: THERE IS A DIFFERENT KID PLAYING MARK FOR HALF OF THIS OPENING THEME. It’s a fucking scream! This poor kid is acting all happy and excited only to get all his close-ups cut and be replaced by Beethoven’s least-favorite puppy. Look at first shot of the whole family, the one where STEP BY STEP appears over them? There’s basically what looks like a second Brendon but with straight hair and Mark’s outfit.
Also this opening features the two fat ladies who only appear in this season. Sorry gals, Television has no use for women of your girth. The shot of Mark with Fat Lady #2 would later be replaced with a similar shot of him and Cody.
We open with a shot of Frank’s house. In the one second it takes for the “His House” subtitle to appear I thought “whoa they sure went with a REALLY DIFFERENT LOOKING house for the pilot!” When we go inside we see JT, Al, and Brendon in an extremely realistic-looking Kitchen set. It’s almost jarring how good this set looks. This is how houses actually look, everyone. Shitty and full of trash and slightly awkward when a camera is involved.
Frank, the father of these terrible watered-down Bundy children enters. He’d previously been away on vacation and has only been home for a short time. The kids moan because they are out of cereal, but JT finds a bowl of fruit loops and milk in the sink that has completely solidified to the point that it looks like a gag gift. “Never leave a dish in the sink for more than four days!” Frank scolds them. This is literally the only thing I remember about this episode from when it first aired.  It’s time for the kids to go to school, and Al tries to get out of it by half-heartedly faking a fever. When Frank doesn’t buy it, Al goes “Drats (okay she doesn’t say “drats,” but I can tell she was thinking it) I knew I shoulda gone with a spastic colon!” Hey Al, I’ll give you a spastic colon, with my d--- oh wait, this is pre-puberty Al. We can’t talk about her like that anymore. Drats.
We now go to Carol’s house. Her softy children hang around the kitchen table. Mark doesn’t know if his science project is good enough, establishing him as a nerdy worry-wart. “Mark, I doubt any one in fourth grade are doing anything on genetic research” Dana quips, establishing her as the sensible, sarcastic one. Genetic research? It looks to me like Mark just constructed a level from Mega Man 2 out of Styrofoam. Karen sits off to the side looking into a mirror applying make-up, which establishes my dick in her mouth. I mean, that she’s the vain one. Carol enters; also freshly back from her vacation. She’s late for her very important hair appointment. See, Carol runs a hair salon out of her house, where she’s also a stylist. My guess is that it’s a converted garage? Who knows, there’s never any establishing shots from outside, so it’s all a fucking mystery.
Carol greets the two fat ladies. One is her sister, and one is her mother. Here we find out through their line of questioning that Carol went to Jamaica, and they yank it out of her that she met a man. They squeal obnoxiously and remind me why any place where there are a LOT of middle aged women is a place where I always desperately do not want to be. This includes family functions, weddings, hair salons (luckily being old enough to not be taken to places with my mother has helped me avoid this last item on the list) etc. Immediately following the red-haired fat lady’s sitcom soliloquy about how desperately she needs a man, Frank enters, beginning the running gag of redhead longingly saying “hello” to Frank. Her hopes are dashed when he mentions that he has an appointment with Carol.
Carol and Frank go to the kitchen, SUPPOSEDLY to get coffee. But instead they have a sexy make-out session. In this pivotal scene we are finally clued in to the premise of this sitcom. You see, these two got married in Jamaica and now they have to deal with it. They also knew each other before they both ran into each other in Jamaica: She’d been cutting his hair for 3 months. “You convinced me to keep the braid!” I think Frank says. He doesn’t have a braid in this episode, and furthermore, it sounds more like “You convinced me to keep the brain.” By brain maybe Frank means nut sack? Maybe Carol knew all the boning that was in store for her down the pipeline and talked Frank out of becoming a eunuch? Frank also reveals that he actually FOLLOWED Carol to Jamaica, figuring out the specifics of her trip from her travel agent. Carol finds this completely romantic. At first Carol wanted to divorce her mistakes away, but Frank convinces her that they can get away with not telling anyone that they are married. They can simply tell their kids that they are dating, and then eventually they get engaged, and then eventually get fake-married to make their real-married official and everyone’s happy. Now that’s sort of an interesting premise for a sitcom! I wonder how long they keep it up?
When we come back from commercial we see... HOLY SHIT! A filmed shot of Frank in his Truck outside, pulling up to Carol’s house! Way to get cinematic, Step by Step! Inside, the two families have an awkward meeting. For some reason Dana is late to this scene: when she comes downstairs it’s discovered she and JT have a rivalry at school. She calls JT “the rat boy.” You think they’re getting the facial comparison out of the way because the audience has probably been too distracted thinking about it themselves, but no, she’s referring to the dead rat he put in her locker. Also, 15-year-old Dana is looking pretty good. I’m sorry. It’s time for me to take a step outside myself and realize that this write-up is going on for way too long. But this shit is important, sort of. This is the basis for the whole series! Every character trait needs to be noted. Every plot point needs to be described in great detail. Even if it doesn’t yield any funny jokes or insults, I NEED TO WRITE ABOUT IT. Please, think of me writing this! I could be doing something else with my time! Remember the episode of Family Matters when Carl kicks the racist guy out of his poker game? I could be making fun of that! How about the episode of Fresh Prince where Carlton takes speed and almost dies? I’ve had a fucking field day with Gran Papouli’s death episode on Full House in private, and I could easily replicate that for this website. But I’ve committed to tackling the Step By Step problem head-on, and that’s what I intend to do; by relishing every single detail. No scene gets breezed by. Not a one.
So a barbeque happens. JT calls Carol a bimbo, Frank burns the burgers, the fat redhead lady finds out that Frank and Carol were in Jamaica at the same time and blabbermouths it during a food fight, and Frank stupidly lets it spill that he and Carol and married. Also: you can see Dana’s nipples poking out.
Back from commercial, Frank and his children are moving in to Carol’s house in the final filmed location shot of the whole series. Carol tells the girls go to help them bring in boxes (She knows Mark can’t be outdoors for too long without melting, which is also the explanation as to what happened to his face between Season 5 & 6). Karen objects, but Dana quips “maybe they brought a mirror. You can look at yourself all the way up the stairs.” Karen sighs and goes to help, but you fucking know if this was season 7 the writers would have her get all excited and be like “OKAY!” and the audience would laugh at what a delightful cartoony vain ditz she is.
So one interesting thing worth noting in this scene is Al owns a pig! In fact, that cast photo at the top of this very page? You can see she’s holding it! I just thought it was a weird fleshy tumor that the actress had removed before they went to series (when the producers tell ya you need to drop five pounds sometimes you gotta make it easy on yourself and just get rid of that dang tumor you love so much), but now I see clearly it’s a pig. Carol is nervous and doubtful that this family is going to work out, but Frank reassures her with a lot of boring lovey-dovey nonsense. The scene ends with the fat red-haired lady screaming that there’s a pig in the salon. Huh. Something tells me there’s a joke somewhere in there. But what could it possibly be? The next morning, Frank is loving life at his new home. He accidentally calls Dana Donna, the same mistake that Amanda Dank would make 6 years later. Wait, not Amanda Dank! Rich’s lesbian friend played by Linda Cardellini is the one who does that! Man, I owe her an apology for that mix-up. The point is they both made like Too Much Joy and saw Donna’s everywhere (goddamn it, this joke is for nobody except Bobo Adobo. Where the fuck has he been?).
Al comes downstairs moaning about her hurt tummy. Frank, like in the opening scene, doesn’t believe her (See IDIOTS, I wasn’t mentioning it in this write-up for my health, IT PAYS OFF) and jets off to work. Carol though, takes her word for it and takes her to the doctor.
Sometimes it takes emergency surgery to bring a new family together. Al’s appendix was on the verge of bursting. The rest of the family is in the waiting room. Dana says something nice to JT, who pats her on the shoulder. “Don’t ever touch me” she shoots back (hahahaha). “I hope your sister is okay” Mark tells Brendon. “Having your appendix out is no big deal. See, I had mine out!” Brendon opens his mouth and points to the back of his throat (hahahaha). The doctor comes in and says Al is recovering and the surgery went fine. She wants to see her mother. Carol: “She said that? She called me mother?” “Well... actually, she asked to see ‘the bimbo’” (hahahaha). Carol and Al have a touching talk. “I’d like to be your friend, because that’s the first step to becoming a family” says Carol (hahahaha – oh wait). They hug and oh boy is it ever heart-worming.  The End: So that’s the first Step By Step, in the fucking books. How does it end? Why, with the very first in a series of disgusting Frank-is-about-to-bone-Carol-but-we-cut-away-before-insertion scenes. They must’ve had a board up in the writers room that was just full of creative ways Frank could broach the subject of putting his wang in his wife’s box. There’s one coming later in the series that will make your fucking heads spin. I can’t wait to see it again. But no spoiling. Here’s the very first one: Carol and Frank sit in bed. Carol is trying to finish her shopping list, listing all the things the children enjoy. Frank is impatient. “I’ve got JT’s frozen burritos, and Brendon likes double-stuffed Oreos, Karen wants jumbo-sized Clearasil... is there anything you want, Frank?” “Yeah.” Frank says, in a very Charles-Grodin-esque delivery. Frank takes the list and adds something to it, probably drawing a stick figure performing cunnilingus on a lady (Frank loves to give head more than anything, they never say it outright because TGIF was a bunch of puritanical pussies, but if you look for all the right clues you’ll see them very clearly). “Frank, the kids might see this!” Carol blushes. “Well then let’s get it crossed off the list!” Frank says lustfully. Then they start screwing. So there we fucking have it. The Pilot to Step by Step. Sorry if this was exhausting to read, because it sure was exhausting to write. I promise you: More jokes on the following episodes.
In these old episodes, a children's choir sings along to the chorus of the theme song. Is it supposed to be implied that these are the Lambert/Foster kids singing? Maybe they took their "this generation's Brady Bunch" tagline too literally. I'll forgive them for that sappy scene of Carol reaching out to Al at the end, because I guess that's what you have to do if you're a pilot for a TGIF show and you want to prove to ABC that you can have emotions to go with the laughs. But I had BETTER not see any more of these, Step by Step, or else... Not intended to be used as a note but I just feel like sharing: The only thing I remembered about the pilot was when Frank says "Ah, so you two know each other" to JT and Dana. I didn't remember anything else about that scene just that one line. Also not really intended to be used as a note but can be used as one maybe: Do they ever explicitly say who is the oldest Foster child? I always thought it was Dana but Karen would make sense as the oldest and Dana being middle child would explain her Darlenieness.
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