People Still Think Full House Ended Because the Cast Wanted Too Much Money. John Stamos Says ABC Was Actually Trying to Offload It to the WB
The talks to move it to the WB collapsed weeks before the end, and by then the writers had no time to build a real goodbye. So the series ended with Michelle falling off a horse and losing her memory of her own family.
“We didn’t really know it was ending,” Stamos said on The BobbyCast. “We just kind of threw it together and it was what it was.”
Full House was still a hit when ABC canceled it after 8 seasons in 1995. Season 8 ranked #24 overall, and the finale pulled 24.3 million viewers, good for #7 that week. For years the explanation was that the cast had priced itself out.
John Stamos, who played Jesse Katsopolis, addressed that rumor directly on Bobby Bones’s podcast The BobbyCast. “So they said that we asked for too much money, that wasn’t it,” he said. The show had become one of the most expensive sitcoms on television by then, running around $1.3 million an episode, close to double the going rate, driven by rising cast salaries and escalating producer fees after 8 years.
ABC didn’t want to keep paying it. The network was also shifting away from wholesome TGIF family sitcoms toward edgier shows that pulled the 18-to-49 demo advertisers actually wanted. Producers offered to substantially cut the license fee. ABC passed anyway.
The timeline was messier than it looks in hindsight. ABC had effectively decided not to renew by February, while the cast was still rehearsing later episodes. Warner Bros. spent March trying to move the show to the brand-new WB network for 2 more seasons at a lower fee. Those talks collapsed roughly 2 to 3 weeks before the end.
Different cast members took it differently. “I was sort of ready to go, and I think the twins were ready to move on too,” Stamos said. Dave Coulier said the producers wanted to move to New York and do Broadway instead, which they eventually did. “It was too little too late,” he said. “In our heads, we had already moved on.” Jodie Sweetin’s version was less resolved: “It was hard. We didn’t really have a lot of time to say goodbye. It was only a couple of weeks that we found that we weren’t going to be going to the WB.”
The last episode wasn’t written as a finale. “Michelle Rides Again” was shot earlier in the season as a regular two-parter and aired May 23, 1995. Michelle takes horseback-riding lessons, gets cold feet before a jumping contest, and goes on a trail ride instead. She falls, hits her head, and stops recognizing her own family. Once the WB deal died, the second half was retooled into a clip show, with the Tanners walking her through old home videos until she remembers.
“It wasn’t like we geared up for the final, like some of the great last episodes of television,” Stamos said. The show ran 192 episodes and still pulled 24.3 million viewers on the way out.
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