Wolf Gnards
Nerding Pop Culture
Greek Tragedy: The True Paternity of the Girls on Full House
John Stamos is Greek. He’s really Greek. As in he’s really into being Greek, and he plays Greek roles, and he promotes Greek products. John Stamos is so Greek (How Greek is he!?), he’s so Greek that he had the producers of Full House change the character of Uncle Jesse from Jesse Cochran to Jesse Katsopolis. Now I have no problem with Greek pride or Jesse being Greek—the world keeps spinning, the Rippers keep ripping—my problem is are we seriously supposed to believe that those three little blonde girls are half Greek?
D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle are three very blonde and very blue-eyed girls. It is, of course, possible to be blond and Greek, but three of them!? That’s highly unlikely. As a pop cultural scientist and amateur sleuth (and an honorary member of the Mary-Kate & Ashley Adventure Squad), I’ve found that recessive genes like light hair and eyes are much harder to pass down to the next generation. For every trait we have—be it blond hair, blue eyes, or general Greekitude—we inherit a gene from both our mother and father with one being a dominate gene and one being a recessive. So, you need two recessive pairings to create blond hair and blue eyes. For more information on hereditary traits, please, consult your local library. I’ll wait.
What this all means though is that it would be difficult to pass on light hair and blue eyes in a very dark hair, brown eyes Greek culture. However, their mother, Pam (Christie Houser), was shown to be blonde on, at least, one very special episode. So, she would have inherited two recessive blond genes and two recessive blue-eyed genes from her parents (who were depicted as stereotypically Greek), and while I said before it is unlikely to happen in Greeks, it is still possible. About a 1 in 16 chance at best. Now the greatest way for Pam to pass on blonde hair and blue eyes to her girls would be to mate with someone who also has those same recessive genes. Since, Bob Saget’s Danny Tanner (and I guess to a larger extent Bob Saget himself) has brown hair and brown eyes; the best they could possibly do to have a child with both blue eyes and blond hair is 1 in 4. This means while he himself has the dominant brown hair genes, he does possess the blond genes within.
The following chart should help demonstrate this. Dominant genes are shown by a capital letter. Recessive genes are lowercase of the same letter.
Pam & Danny Mix
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(H) stands for dark hair, (h) for blond hair. (E) stands brown eyes, (e) for blue eyes.
So, the odds of D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle all being blonde with blue eyes are not good. (And for any geneticists reading this, bare with me OK, I said I’m an amateur sleuth) If Pam wanted a brood of mini-mes, she would want to mate with something else also with blond hair and blue eyes. Who in her circle of friends possess those qualities? Who in the world fits that description? Oh, someone like Joey Gladstone perhaps.
Pam & Joey Mix
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Follow up:
Dave Coulier Fathered the Girls on Full House
This starts to explain something about Full House like why Joey stuck around all those years. At some point you’d think he'd want to sleep in a regular bedroom or bring a girl home. Or own property. Helping out his widowed friend is one thing, but devoting his life to a family that wasn’t his is another. Or was it? After seeing blonde baby after blonde baby being born, he probably knew what was up. This is why he lived with them for so many years; it was so he could be close to these girls who he knew to be his illegitimate daughters.
The Full House theme song offers several clues when seen from Joey’s point of view:
Whatever happened to predictability?
The milkman, the paperboy, and evening T.V
Who’s the father of these children? The milkman? The paperboy? A TV news anchor? (Remember: Danny Tanner was a news anchor)
Everywhere you look (everywhere)
There's a face of somebody who needs you.
Everywhere you look there’s a face of someone who may or may not be your biological daughter.
When you're lost out there and you're all alone
A light is waiting to carry you home
Joey may be alone, but his biological daughters are the light, and while they can never know that he’s their real father, he can still make a home with them.
Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh Chity Chi bob botta
Shhhh... don't tell Bob Saget.
Let’s not overlook Joey Gladstone’s/Dave Coulier’s sex appeal. Remember he is the man that rocked Alanis Morissette’s world. She wrote like 3000 hit songs about the passion that is Dave Coulier. She had a fever and the only cure was more Dave Coulier. Let us never forget that Ryan Reynolds dumped her, too, but I don’t remember any hit songs about that. Dave Coulier > Ryan Reynolds.
Other reasons the Ladies Love Coulier:
- Sense of humor is the #1 trait girls pretend to want in man.
- Blond mullet is the actual #1 trait girls want in a man.
- Woodchucks are the sexiest of woodland creatures. Just try not to think about either wood or Chuck Norris.
- “Cut. It. Out.” means “let’s cut the small talk and go back to my place” in sign language.
- Hockey players are the most fertile of athletes because the ice creates optimum temperatures for sperm production.
- Popeye imitations are very appealing to women because he’s a sailor and the ladies like a man in uniform. And he eats a lot of spinach, also known as nature’s Viagra.
And let’s not forget…
Uncle Jesse’s kids were also Blond!
John Stamos’s Uncle Jesse character, as mentioned before, is super Greek. Dark black mullet… all the works. His wife, Becky (Lori Loughlin), is a brunette. There is almost no way they were producing little blond twin boys. Unless, of course, Joey got there first (and by “there” I mean her womb). In fact, I suspect Kimmy Gibbler is also his child. Also, their dog, Comet. As well as the kids on Home Improvement, Minkus, and Zack & Cody. It’s pretty safe to say Dave Coulier spread his seed all over the sitcom universe.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Wolfie G. Nards on 09/09/11 at 09:00:57 am . Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
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09/09/11 @ 09:52:17 am
Well.. Actually Alanis Morissette wrote a number of songs after she split with Reynolds, among which 'Torch', apart from having had a massive nervous breakdown. These songs are collected in 'Flavours of Entanglement'.
09/09/11 @ 01:18:33 pm
I love this post. You are SO right in every way. I almost died laughing when I read:
Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh Chity Chi bob botta
Shhhh... don't tell Bob Saget.
Way to go!
09/09/11 @ 01:29:27 pm
Best post ever.
Not only have you refreshed my memories of 9th grade Science class, but you have revealed to me an important truth about my least favorite Tanner household guest. It all makes so much sense.
Don't ever let anyone tell you your time could be spent more wisely.
09/09/11 @ 03:27:48 pm
Wow! That brilliant! I have not laughed that hard in a while.
09/10/11 @ 04:18:49 pm
holy. shit. this is incredibly hilarious. thank you. it's good to laugh again.
09/11/11 @ 12:45:40 pm
A flaw in your logic is the episode 4x01 "Greek Week" when relatives from Greece come to visit. It's a small part of the episode but one of the relatives is Melina, played by Mary Kate Olson. Are you suggesting that Joey also fathered the little Greek girl?
Also, as to Pam's blondness? Maybe she's adopted and ethnically, but not genetically, Greek.
09/12/11 @ 07:25:40 am
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA this is genius!
09/12/11 @ 09:57:49 am
@TR Cunningham
If memory serves (and it usually doesn't), Michelle's Greek cousin had black hair (whichever Olsen in a wig). Joey fathered only the blond children of TV Land. However, this does demonstrate that a father with a blond gene would be need to create Michelle.
And an identical Greek twin also suggests that Pam was not adopted (because that twin was from her side of the family). Unless, of course, Pam was adopted and Jesse fathered the girls (which opens up a whole other can of worms I'd rather not think about).
09/27/11 @ 05:53:35 pm
This was hilarious - I agree - Joey was the father - there aint no way dark eyed, dark haired Jesse fathered those kids. There are some generalized inaccuracies you made about the genetic makeup of the Greek populace: A significant amount of Greeks, mainly from northern Greece, have light colored eyes, although most have dark hair. I used to date a Greek girl with strawberry blond hair and blue eyes (she was from Thessaloniki, in the north)
11/21/11 @ 09:29:20 am
Major flaw in all of this. I get that you're saying that because Jesse was supposedly Greek, it would insinuate that Danny was Greek..
BUT
There is never any confirmation that Uncle Jesse is actually Danny's blood brother.
In real life, many people will call men they are close to "brother". I had many "uncles" when I was a kid, none of them are blood.
Since there is never any confirmation that Danny and Jesse are brother's, this entire post is flawed.
11/21/11 @ 09:50:47 am
I'm not sure if this wasn't made clear in the article (and for that I apologize), but it was certainly made clear on the run of Full House: Danny was married to Jesse's sister. The were BROTHER-IN-LAWS and not brothers.
Jesse and Danny's wife were brother and sister, while technically there is a chance that one of them was adopted, it was explicitly stated they were brother and sister (as in the were both raised by the same mother and father, who they both recognized as their parents), and not just close friends.
11/26/11 @ 06:01:39 pm
Maybe Danny just always dyed his hair because he got tired of hearing blond jokes?
01/01/12 @ 12:08:58 pm
There ARE some blond greeks and even more that have blue eyes but still the dark hair. In fact...John Stamos has blue-gray eyes himself.
01/15/12 @ 08:15:40 am
Can you not see the truth? The seed is strong! They're not Coulier's kids...they're LANNISTERS.
01/22/12 @ 01:38:01 am
Get a life weirdo.
03/19/12 @ 06:46:53 pm
you are saying that all greeks have to be dark with dark eyes? are we all short as well? would you like me to wave my hands in your face as i speak to you?? FYI i have 2 aunties in greece who are both blonde and blue eyed and add to that i come from a family of tall greeks (most of the guys are 6 ft tall and over) and this whole post is just ridiculous... my husband and i both have dark eyes and one of our daughters has blue eyes - we carry the gene on both sides ... i'm with wildsoda - maybe they are lannisters?
06/08/12 @ 11:54:03 am
While basic genetics can point in this direction, my family is living proof that this kind of speculation is not always right. My mother has brown hair. My father had brown hair. They had 4 children. The three boys? All redheads. My sister? Blonde. And there's absolutely no dispute that we're all my father's children. Every Pediatrician/OB/GYN that were involved in our births said something along the lines of "If they hadn't come out of you Ma'am, I wouldn't have thought you had anything to do with these babies..." Yeah we all look like my dad (blood tests also prove this. ;D )
07/25/12 @ 11:28:36 am
This article is hilarious, I must admit that. It's a tv show, so we can all suspend as much reality as we'd like. But I should mention... sure the odds were against the blonde hair blue eyed kids, but like you wrote it wasn't impossible. I have DARK brown eyes and brown hair. So do both of my biological parents, as well as both of my siblings. My husband was blonde as a kid, but his hair turned brown as he got older. He has blue eyes. Both of our kids have blonde hair and blue eyes. It's all just playing the odds. So while it looks weird that DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle were blonde/blue - it can happen. Same thing for the boy twins - Aunt Becky could have had lighter hair as a child that turned darker as she aged, paired with the recessive genes in the Katsopolis family. Or not. But it was super weird for Joey to live there for so long...
07/25/12 @ 11:59:29 am
This post was quite funny, but I have to disagree. My mother is Greek/cyprian. Her father was so dark skinned that when he came to the US the citizenship people originally thought he was black. My mother married my father, who is half Irish, half Italian. They, obviously, had me. I am blonde, blueish/grey eyes and tooooooo pale. I burn, and don't tan. I am half (1/3?) Greek. So it is completely possible that the girls of Full House are also Greek :)
07/25/12 @ 12:24:07 pm
Amazing display of journalism. I have always been annoyed by Joey, but now I just realize my subconscious was trying to protect me from his sexy ways.
07/26/12 @ 06:22:25 am
Wasn't Danny's mother blond?
07/26/12 @ 01:21:15 pm
My boyfriend's half-Greek... blonde hair and blue eyes.
07/27/12 @ 08:13:55 am
There IS a hole in your theory. Jesse's mom was first played by the lady who played Tony's old neighbor on "Who's the Boss" before she was replaced by Yvonne Wilder. In those episodes on, it was always mentioned his mom was ITALIAN.
07/27/12 @ 09:56:27 am
Funny enough, but Jesse and Danny weren't blood brothers.
07/27/12 @ 02:37:34 pm
Who could blame her. Danny or Joey - I know who I would pick!
07/30/12 @ 08:31:23 am
too funny....who'd thought the riddle solved in the lyrics.....of course!
09/18/12 @ 03:53:35 pm
Hmm, funny and entertaining but in reality very flawed. My husband and I both have dark eyes and dark hair and we had 2 boys with blonde hair and blue eyes--and yes, they are his without a doubt!-- I would imagine with them having a mother with blonde hair and blue eyes it would be common for them to all take after their mother.
12/27/12 @ 07:50:09 pm
This whole thing is flawed. There was a comment that Pam was adopted, she couldve been. But the girls are Dannys because if you remember his little sister is blonde. So it's possible those traits from him moved on from a blond gene and Pam also being blond. So this proves false. And Jesseys twins are blond, it's possible that Rebecca was blond as a little girl and as she grew up her hair got darker. Like my cousins son. He's blond but my cousin and her husband are brunette. But her husband was blond when he was younger. Though this would make a great episode it's false, false, false.
01/21/13 @ 04:32:51 pm
That was freaking HILARIOUS!!!!
02/08/13 @ 08:26:28 am
Awesome post. (I came here after googling "blonde Greek" because my blonde Greek-American roommate and I were discussing why Helen of Troy/Sparta was blonde--I told her she's described as fair and blonde in the original Homer.) BTW Michelle looks redheaded in that picture--even her eyebrows and lashes are red! The Olsen twins must've gone blonde as they got older (not uncommon for babies' hair to change color.)
Kind of sad that the girls didn't ever seem to get much exposure to their Greek heritage :( Jesse really should've been on the ball there!
Love the Lannister comment!