Considering the death of Pam Tanner kicked off the plot of Full House, why did the ABC sitcom ignore her absence for most of its eight-season run? Fans don’t know why, and, as it turns out, cast members Andrea Barber (Kimmy Gibbler) and Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie Tanner) don’t either.
Barber and Sweetin discussed Pam’s short shrift during the February 20 “minisode” of their podcast, How Rude, Tanneritos!, as they reacted to Reddit users’ complaints about Full House. And one of the quibbles is that the show hardly mentioned Pam.
As fans know, Pam welcomed daughters D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure), Stephanie, and Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) with husband Danny Tanner (Bob Saget) and died in an automobile accident before the events of Season 1. Following his wife’s death, Danny enlisted brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) and best friend Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) to help raise his kids.
Barber and Sweetin pointed out on the podcast that viewers get a brief glimpse of Pam in a VHS tape recording shown during a Season 1 scene, when the character is played by Christie Mossman, but that’s about it. And Pam deserved more of a posthumous presence, the actors argued.
“It doesn’t need to be morbid or down,” Sweetin said. “It would [be like] naturally, over time when you can tell stories about somebody that are funny. Like, I would have loved to have heard more stories about Pam with the kids or something she did with Danny … because that’s kind of what you do when someone passes. You keep them alive with the stories, and I feel like Pam just really got, um, sort of… It was like, um, you’re dead, bye. You know?”
Barber agreed, saying, “Yeah, It doesn’t have to be sappy with the violins and crying. Like, no, you could just have a casual mention in these later seasons.”
Plus, as the actors said, Pam was conspicuously absent from picture frames around the Tanner house. Stephanie even had a headshot of her dad by her bed but no photo of her mom.
“Pam was kind of erased by season 4,” Barber said.
“By Season 4? By Episode 4!” Sweetin quipped. “They were like, just wipe her name off. Yeah. Bye.”
In a recent Reddit thread on the topic, fans suggested ways Full House could have incorporated Pam into storylines. One fan proposed flashbacks and “maybe even seeing some of D.J. and Stephanie’s memories of their mother,” especially in the sitcom’s early years, “where they could’ve shot flashbacks with the girls [because] not that much time has passed.”
Another fan said Pam could have appeared in dream sequences “where she visits each of the girls for very different reasons that include major life changes, struggles, and achievements.”
“I’d also have her come to Danny in a dream to approve of Vicky so he would feel more reassured in dating her and proposing,” that fan wrote.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, Full House writers!
