Kimmy Gibbler

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Kimmy Gibbler
First appearance	The First Day of School
Information
Gender	Female
Age	10-18
Portrayed by	Andrea Barber

Kimberly Louise "Kimmy" Gibbler is a character on the sitcom Full House.

[edit] Biography

She is D.J. Tanner's best friend and the Tanners' next door neighbor. Kimmy was portrayed by Andrea Barber. While the character was just a recurring guest star early on, she soon became part of the main cast in response to the success of Steve Urkel on Family Matters.

Kimmy is an enigma. While some household members can tolerate her, Danny, Jesse, and especially Stephanie can't stand her. However, it is D.J. who really loves her. 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 a 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 D.J. hitchhiked to Berkeley on Halloween. D.J. has also prevented Kimmy from getting way too wild, such as when Kimmy got drunk at a party and D.J. brought her home for the night ("Under the Influence"). Kimmy holds a job for a few hours at the brand new movie theater ("Sisters in Crime") and also works at the Smash Club.

She is mentioned in the first episode, but we first see her in the third, when D.J. tells Stephanie "Kimmy's not an airhead, she just doesn't like to think." Kimmy's schoolwork was always average at best, and she copies off D.J. all the time. While no mental challenge is ever mentioned, it is of course possible that she had one. 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 one episode, her mom even punished her by grounding her over at the Tanners. In one of the earlier episodes of the series, D.J. throws a surprise party for Kimmy. When Kimmy shows up with her two friends from Junior High, 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 party animals) such as "The Duke". D.J. angrily seizes the phone, tells him it's a "prank call", and leaves Kimmy with the decision to stay at her house or go with her friends from Junior High to the mall. Kimmy chooses the older girls instead of D.J., despite the fact that they call her "Kammy" and don't seem to care much about her well being (especially in comparison to D.J.). D.J. tries to guide Kimmy and steer her in the right direction by telling her they don't even say her name properly, to which Kimmy replies, "D.J., they wear lipstick! They can call me anything 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).

D.J. met Kimmy in kindergarten, but the math from another later episode speaks of a friendship going back to when they were nine or so. It is imagined that age nine is when their being best friends started; perhaps this coincided with her moving next door. This is quite possible, because in one early episode, Kimmy remarks that her family would live in a place for about five years, trash it, and then move out. Mentions of roller blading in the living room and such lead one to believe that is true, while since they lived next door all eight years, something - most likely owning the home instead of renting - led them to take better care of it so they wouldn't have to move out. And, what would cause them to have the money to buy the house next to the Tanners? That is not certain, but the speculation is as wild as Kimmy's 1970s clothing, and one suspects the answer may be as weird as Kimmy herself.

Stephanie in particular can't stand Kimmy, who in turn teases her back quite a bit in the early seasons. Kimmy is not above teasing the other Tanners, too, calling Jesse "Hairboy" because of his perfect hair at times, and calling Danny "Mr. T." and going so far as to play "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" on their organ in the episode after Danny and Vicki broke up. However, the Tanners' biggest fear is her removing her socks (her feet in general) as her stinky feet (which became a running gag during the later seasons) are her biggest means of torture for anyone.

However, underneath that comical, joking exterior is a true friend who is as much a support for D.J. as D.J. is for her. One imagines her as a wonderful support for D.J. in the weeks after Pam died; in fact, Danny isn't quite as annoyed by her the first couple seasons, perhaps remembering how she helped D.J.. And, despite some arguments over the years - such as when D.J. fired Kimmy from her sports reporting job on the school paper for writing a gossip column instead, or when D.J. forgot her sixteenth birthday because it was also her six month anniversary of being with Steve - Kimmy remained a faithful and trusted friend right up to the end, when she brings D.J.'s boyfriend Steve to the Tanners' doorstep so he can escort D.J. to her senior prom.

There have been mentions often of Kimmy's family, but they have never appeared on the show. Based on what she says about her parents, it seems that they are just as eccentric and strange as her. For example, in the episode "On The Toad Again" in the final season, when D.J. wants to sneak off to see Jesse's band play (mainly to see Viper, Jesse's guitarist, whom she is dating at the time), she asks Kimmy what she is doing that weekend, to which Kimmy replies "Going to the landfill with my pop to shoot rats". Despite an early indication of having 3 sisters and a brother in the first season, the rest of the series focused only on Kimmy's frequent mentions of having just an older brother, named Garth. As with her parents, we never see Garth, but hear a lot about him. In the episode "I'm Not D.J." in Season 6, when Stephanie wants to get her ears pierced, Kimmy reveals that her brother is working at the Piercing Palace at the mall and brings the ear gun back to the Tanner house to pierce Stephanie's ears. In another episode, when Kimmy gets her driver's license, she and the Tanner girls borrow Garth's car, a green-and-orange Convertible nicknamed "Wild Thing", and then get locked out of it while playing a game called "Ring Around The Chevy". Though from what she says about her brother is seemingly normal, considering the oddness of both herself and the Gibbler adults, one can only assume that Garth has his oddities. Because of Kimmy's frequent mentions of her family's eccentricness, it is assumed that is where Kimmy's overall personality and attitude comes from. In the last season, she had a boyfriend named Dwayne, who said nothing else but "whatever," (though in the last episode, Kimmy mentions that he has a love for Shakespeare and he did recite a section from Romeo and Juliet).

Full House
Episodes/Seasons
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
Characters
Danny | Jesse | Joey | D.J. | Stephanie | Michelle | Becky Nicky and Alex | Kimmy | Comet | Steve
Other
Full House books | Full House chronology