Chatting by using a phone
Disliked by everyone in the Tanner family except DJ, Kimmy is that kind of best friend.
While some members of the Tanner household can tolerate her, other members can’t stand her. Stephanie in particular dislikes Kimmy, who in turn teases her back quite a bit in the early seasons. Kimmy is not above teasing the other Tanners also, calling Jesse “Hairboy” because of his perfect hair at times and calling Danny “Mr. T” (which he sometimes doesn’t seem to mind a bit), and going so far as to play “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” on their organ in the Season 7 episode Is It True about Stephanie? However, the Tanners’ biggest fear is her removing her socks, as her stinky feet (which became a running gag during the later seasons) are her biggest means of torture for anyone.
However, it is DJ who really loves her like a sister. The reason, whether it’s because she can live on the edge a little by hanging around her, or because she gets to practice her leadership skills and guide her, is uncertain. It’s probably more of the desire to help Kimmy, though there is a little of the edge too. For instance, it’s revealed in a later episode that when they were thirteen, Kimmy and DJ hitch-hiked to Berkeley on Halloween. DJ has also prevented Kimmy from getting way too wild, such as when Kimmy got drunk at a party and DJ brought her home for the night (in Season 8’s Under the Influence). Kimmy held a job for a few hours at the brand-new movie theater (in Season 5’s Sisters in Crime), but then presumably got fired. Later, she got a new job as a waitress at the Smash Club in Season 7.
Kimmy’s schoolwork was always average at best, and she copies off DJ all the time. While no mental challenge is ever mentioned, it is quite possible that she had one. It may be that the writers of Full House wanted a prism with which to break the harsh reality of mental retardation into an artful spectrum of subtlety, and Kimmy provided the means for them to do this.
However, bad grades are only part of the Kimmy Gibbler persona. Her tastes in clothing and other things were quite strange at times. Her parents didn’t pay much attention to her, it appears, as they paid for her to go on a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort with the Tanner family, and in the Season 3 episode Those Better Not Be the Days, her mom even punished her by grounding her over at the Tanners.
In the Season 2 episode Tanner Vs Gibbler, DJ throws a surprise party for Kimmy. When Kimmy shows up with her two friends from junior high (Nina and Melissa) who are in her karate class, her companions converse about how they have trashed homes in the past at wild parties. They proceed to pick up the Tanners’ phone and call friends (presumably fellow party animals) such as “The Duke”. DJ angrily seizes the phone, tells him it’s a “prank call”, and leaves Kimmy with a decision: either stay at her house, or go with her junior high friends to the mall. Kimmy chooses the older girls instead of DJ, despite the fact that they call her “Kammy” and don’t seem to care much about her well-being (especially in comparison to DJ). DJ tries to guide Kimmy and steer her in the right direction by telling Nina and Melissa the proper pronunciation of Kimmy’s name, to which Kimmy replies, “They wear lipstick. They can call me whatever they want.”
In the end, the two make up and continue their friendship. This is one of several tumultuous times during their friendship that Kimmy is to blame (and she knowingly did wrong).
Besides her stinky feet, Kimmy is also known to snore, and in many episodes, these issues are addressed. It is made clear throughout the series, even mentioned by Danny, that without DJ, Kimmy’s life would have gone in the wrong direction.
One imagines her as a wonderful support for DJ in the weeks after Pam Tanner’s death; in fact, Danny isn’t quite as annoyed by her the first couple seasons, as he remembered how Kimmy helped DJ through the grieving process after DJ lost her mom in a car accident caused by a drunk driver.
And, despite some arguments over the years — such as when DJ fired Kimmy from her sports reporting job on the school paper for writing an article that belonged in the gossip column instead, or when DJ forgot her sixteenth birthday because it was also her six-month anniversary of being with her boyfriend Steve Hale — Kimmy remained a faithful and trusted friend right up to the end. This is shown when she brings Steve to the Tanners’ doorstep, so he can escort DJ to her senior prom in the Season 8 episode Michelle Rides Again, Part 2.
From Season 3 to Season 5, Danny was often seen telling DJ to make new friends. But in the Season 8 episode Under the Influence, DJ told him that Kimmy had gotten drunk at a frat party the previous night and couldn’t go home (and she had fought her for the keys). However, DJ was afraid to tell Danny the truth at first because she was afraid Danny wouldn’t permit her to see Kimmy again, but that was just fine with her.
He replied, “Well, Deej, I know I say a lot of things about Kimmy being an annoying, obnoxious nuisance, and I mean every one of them. But she’s still your best friend.”
Besides Danny, Joey and Jesse are sometimes very annoyed by Kimmy. However, in the Season 3 episode Those Better Not Be the Days when they switch places with the girls (so the girls step into the adults’ shoes and vice versa) and later look into the future and see what the girls are like as adults, Kimmy is portrayed as a woman who is good-looking and wears a tight dress. She tells them, “Eat your hearts out, boys. Too bad you weren’t nicer to me when I was a kid.”
Then Danny assured Joey and Jesse that their future doesn’t have to happen in the way they saw it, and they could all learn something from what they had seen.
Joey said, “Yeah. I’m going to start being really nice to Kimmy Gibbler.”
In my opinion, DJ and Kimmy are best friends, and always will be.
Back to School in Season 3
Still Friends After a Long Time
