Misspent Youth: Say It Ain’t So, Aunt Becky

Looking back at the pop culture mainstays of this Gen-Xer's gloriously misspent youth.

Aunt Becky always seemed like the sane one in a house full of loons on Full House. She was also like the hot aunt and she married the hot uncle and together they produced perfect looking little children. She had it all.

Despite her recent legal troubles, this meme remains true.

By all accounts, the actress who played Aunt Becky eventually had it all in real life too. Lori Loughlin is married to a fashion designer, has two model-esque daughters, and more money than most of the rest of us combined. And now she and her husband have been indicted on fraud charges pertaining to a college admissions cheating scandal. Netflix and the Hallmark Channel have already dumped Loughlin from their shows, so you know things are serious.

Sitcom couples rarely came more beautiful than these two.

As Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) would say, "Have mercy!"

I bet she didn't disclose everything about parenting in Hollywood.

I'm not here to defend Loughlin because of some wistfully nostalgic memories of Full House. Her lawyers will handle her defense, and, frankly, Full House was never very important to me. I was young when it aired and like most kids my age I watched it regularly. Yet it never achieved anything resembling greatness, in my mind. Instead, it was just something to pass the time, laugh along at the occasionally smart jokes, groan at the mostly bad ones, and admire the otherworldly beauty of Stamos and Loughlin. Seriously, they were impossibly pretty people.

A seriously baby-faced Loughlin in 1981, years before even contemplating white collar crime.

Most of Loughlin's work over the years can be described as pleasant enough if also fairly bland. I once read a review that called her "the poster girl for Reagan-era blandness." Harsh, but I can see where they're coming from. Still, on Full House her presence was usually welcomed, and not only because I couldn't stop staring at her awe-inspiring cheekbones, lips, or hair. Along with the other adults on the show—Stamos, Bob Saget, and Dave Coulier—she seemed in on the joke, that what they were doing wasn't high comedy, but instead lowbrow, feel-good humor that allowed the audience to giggle along and walk away feeling either better than had before watching, or at least no worse than before. Perfectly bland.

It's the Feds on line one, Lori. From Secret Admirer.

Before Full  House, Loughlin had parts in several fun and trashy 1980s teen films, both horror and comedy, including Amityville 3-D (alongside Meg Ryan!), Secret Admirer (featuring stalwart '80s teen movie hot girl Kelly Preston!), The New Kids (with albino James Spader!), Back to the Beach (playing Frankie and Annette's daughter!), and The Night Before (with a very young and adorable Keanu Reeves!).

Just two beautiful people having one wild night in the city.

1988's The Night Before is a fun one to revisit today, with a baby-faced Reeves and a stunningly beautiful Loughlin—reminding me of the sort of "perfect" high school goddesses who roamed the halls never to be talked to by inferior human beings such as myself—as suburban kids whose trip to the prom goes off the rails in the big city, and they wind up in one hot mess after another. Reeves accidentally sells Loughlin to a pimp! He turns comedic action star to rescue her! Loughlin loses her prom gown to a prostitute and, wearing only her elegant Galleria-purchased prom night underwear (because this is an '80s teen movie, after all), gets handcuffed to a dilapidated bed frame in a sleazy motel room that has more than a passing resemblance to a dank prison cell—and ain't that prophetic.

Just the usual '80s teen comedy shenanigans.

The movie is similar to other "one crazy night" films of that era, After Hours (1985), Into the Night (1985), and Adventures in Babysitting (1987). Those films are stone-cold classics though, while The Night Before isn't, but that's not to say it's not a good time. It's a lot of fun—well, when you aren't cringing at the dated "scared suburban white kids threatened by imposing black people in the city" trope that was rampant in movies back then. Just a year away from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and true stardom, Reeves is charming as all hell as Winston, the goofy astronomy club president and unlikely prom date to Loughlin's stuck-up popular girl, Tara. Clearly, we're supposed to ignore Reeve's once-in-a-lifetime handsomeness and pretend Loughlin hasn't noticed either For her part, Loughlin only gets better as the movie gets more absurd. She's laugh-out-loud funny in the madcap final act.

At least she hasn't been indicted for shooting anyone.

This entire post is written mostly as a goof, really. I liked Loughlin in her '80s work and in Full House, but she was never anywhere near a cherished favorite. So then, ultimately, what's the point in this piece? Maybe just to note that, the older we get, the more frequently we're going to learn that actors, musicians, artists, and other famous people we've spent untold hours with—even the ones we've only mildly enjoyed over the years—also happen to be flawed, sometimes monstrous, human beings. Loughlin's alleged crimes might fall on the white collar "rich-staying-rich" side of things—as opposed to the R. Kelly "holy f*ck that's awful" side of things—but they're still incredibly infuriating and terribly disappointing, as they remind us how the (white) privileged few continue to leverage and benefit from their privilege in nearly facet of American life, including the country's seemingly broken-forever higher education system. That sucks. It sucks that Aunt Becky is part of the problem. But should we really be surprised? No.

Being a pop culture enthusiast in the twenty-first century can be a bumpy ride, especially when the real world pokes its ugly head into the fantasy world. How rude!