It’s become customary on late night to ask celebrities who are promoting a project to confront criticism of their work (as well as other less tangible qualities). So when Seth Meyers interviewed John Stamos on Late Night Thursday, it seemed inevitable that they would discuss Fuller House, the sequel series Stamos helped spearhead that hasn’t broken new ground so much as squandered the nostalgic goodwill lingering from the original. Stamos acknowledged that Fuller House had garnered some harsh reviews, so naturally, Meyers launched into reading snippets of them aloud.
After allowing Stamos to rebut criticism from The Hollywood Reporter (whose writer predicted it would be the most “painful” episode of TV this year) and The Washington Post (which dubbed it the “point where nostalgia becomes necrophilia”), Meyers read from The A.V. Club staff writer Joshua Alston’s review. Though the host prefaced the excerpt by telling Stamos that it was “nice,” the once and future Uncle Jesse was left speechless by Alston’s description of the questionable undertaking as “a porn parody without the porn.” They debated how charitable an assessment this was, but Meyers regarded the writing above all else, telling Stamos the (superb) title of the article was “a nice turn of the phrase.”