Defying the very mandate of the House in which they live—which must, by law, draw in ever more friends, family members, and half-remembered “classic” sitcom characters until it is not just Fuller, but Fullest—the producers of Netflix’s Fuller House have confirmed that frequent guest star Lori Loughlin will not be appearing on the show’s upcoming final season.
Loughlin, of course, is currently swept up in a high-profile college admissions cheating scandal, one that has already seen her face unwanted attention from both law enforcement and the cruel, tastefully hand-crafted leg-breakers of the Hallmark Channel. THR confirms that the actress will no longer be appearing on the Full House sequel series, where her Aunt Becky has long been a staple, engaging in banter and fun family shenanigans, and never giving any true indications of the crew team-plotting criminal mastermind lurking beneath that smiling exterior.
The show’s producers are maybe kind of playing this whole thing off as though Loughlin wouldn’t have been on the show for its fifth and final season anyway, but that seems pretty unlikely, given how often she’d popped up in the previous four. In any case—and not to downplay whatever crimes Loughlin may or may not have committed—it’s interesting how strong a reaction her part in the scandal has elicited, especially because you don’t see, say, the Shameless producers scrambling to distance themselves from William H. Macy. (To be fair, though, the only thing off-brand about his involvement in the scandal is that his Shameless character would never be caught dead giving a shit about where his kids go to college.)