Quite frankly: Pop culture has a long memory and a license to use it

If Hollywood has taught us one thing, it’s that it’s never a good idea to reawaken the dead — unless, of course, it’s highly lucrative.

A little more than a week ago, Netflix rolled out the first 13 episodes of “Fuller House” — the much anticipated revival of the TGIF staple that turned the likes of Bob Saget and John Stamos into household names.

The timing could not have been better.

“Girl Meets World,” the gender-swapped update of another TGIF favorite, is entering its third season on the Disney Channel.

In February, Sarah Michelle Gellar signed on to reprise her role from the 1999 film “Cruel Intentions” in a TV pilot for next fall.

Even NBC’s recent on-air tribute to director James Burrows, a titan of television who helmed multiple episodes of classic series such as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Cheers” and “Will and Grace,” was billed more as a reunion for the cast of “Friends” than anything else.

The ’90s are getting a lot of love right now — or, better put, it’s a good time to be the recently undead.

If you recall the basic plot of “Full House,” then you’ll already be a step ahead of the game when it comes to its Netflix offspring.

The basic structure is still there — a widower, a too cool for school uncle, a wacky best friend and an entire brood of ridiculously precocious youngsters with a flair for catchphrases.

This time, it’s eldest daughter, D.J., who finds herself in need of a little help after her husband unexpectedly dies and she is left to raise three young boys with the help of her wacky best friend, Kimmy, and too-cool-for-school sister, Stephanie.

They even live in the same set ... Er ... I mean house.

Sequels in popular entertainment are nothing new. Where would we as society be without “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” or “The Whole 10 Yards?”

“Fuller House,” though, seems to consist entirely on a diet of pure nostalgia, a smorgasbord of familiar faces, places and lines. It’s taken the resurgence in mid-’90s memorabilia and concentrated it down to its purest essence, which in a nutshell could be summed up as been there, done that.

It doesn’t seem particularly interested in doing anything with its characters except trotting them out one by one for the sole amusement of audience members who enjoy turning to one another and whispering “that’s still his natural hair, you know.”

I realize that I am perhaps missing the point entirely. After all, these things are like high school reunions. You don’t go for the hors d’oeuvres, you go to tell old stories and laugh at inside jokes.

Still it’s hard not to wonder about the fate of a culture that keeps eating and regurgitating itself in an endless loop. It’s the moral of the Frankenstein story, the non-beating heart behind every zombie tale.

There’s a cycle to things, a natural order to the world that begins with life and should end six feet under with a shovel full of dirt.

This story was originally published March 5, 2016 at 10:48 PM with the headline "Quite frankly: Pop culture has a long memory and a license to use it."