I have been wondering this for a while and I am hoping that someone can help me out. Why is it that in the beginning episodes of the show Full House, Jesse's last name is Cochran but somewhere it is changed to Catsopolous? And if you know why, could you tell me around what episode it changes. This has been driving me crazy for a long time.

Thank you all for your help. It has just been driving me crazy for so long that there are so many things wrong in that show, but that one was the worst.

: I have been wondering this for a while and I am
: hoping that someone can help me out. Why is
: it that in the beginning episodes of the
: show Full House, Jesse's last name is
: Cochran but somewhere it is changed to
: Catsopolous? And if you know why, could you
: tell me around what episode it changes. This
: has been driving me crazy for a long time.

Ah, you've stumbled onto a glaring continuity problem on that show. And that wasn't the only one "Full House" had, either. In the show's first episode, Jesse and Joey move into Danny's house to help with the housework and in raising his 3 daughters, because Danny's wife(I think her name was Pam) had just died. Jesse was Pam's brother, while Joey was an old friend of Danny's. What I think happened was that in the beginning, the actors who played the characters had no input into how the characters would be defined. As the show went on however, the characters' personalities started to reflect the actors playing them more and more. You'll remember that as time went on, the character of Jesse was defined as liking Elvis and the Beach Boys. That was all because John Stamos, the actor who played Jesse, liked them. And since John Stamos was greek, the writers decided to make Jesse greek as well. So they changed his last name to Catsopolous from Cochran. I guess the writers figured they could get away with it since most of the show's audience measured their age in single digits. "Full House" went on to do a couple of episodes that dealt with Jesse's Greek heritage. They showed his Greek parents, and showed some of his relatives from Greece.

They did the same thing with the character of Joey as well. As time went on, Joey was shown as being very child-like and a fan of cartoons, because that's what Dave Coulier was. Another major inconsistency on "Full House": Danny's got dark hair, a few flashback scenes of Pam show her with dark hair, and Jesse(her brother) has dark hair. SO HOW COME THE 3 GIRLS ARE ALL BLONDE?

There's lots of sitcoms that have inconsistencies like that. I remember in one of the early episodes of "Saved by the Bell," they said that the show was set in Indianapolis. As the show went on though, it seemed more and more that Bayside High was somewhere in Southern California.

: since John Stamos was greek, the writers
: decided to make Jesse greek as well. So they
: changed his last name to Catsopolous from
: Cochran.

I always thought that "Cochran" was a stage name. I can't seem to remember if there was an episode that said so specifically. Do you remember John "Cougar" Mellencamp?? Was his name change/correction about the same time? I'm a bit fuzzy there.

Another major inconsistency on "Full House": Danny's got dark hair, a few flashback scenes of Pam show her with dark hair, and Jesse(her brother) has dark hair. SO HOW COME THE 3 GIRLS ARE ALL BLONDE?

Humph!! What color was the grandparents' hair? Great Grandparents? We were never shown them in their youth. I was born a redhead to brown-haired parents. All four grandparents were brunette too. I got my red hair from three of my great-grandparents.(recessive genes!). Because of that I never questioned the girls on the show being blonde.

: I always thought that "Cochran" was a
: stage name. I can't seem to remember if
: there was an episode that said so
: specifically. Do you remember John
: "Cougar" Mellencamp?? Was his name
: change/correction about the same time? I'm a
: bit fuzzy there.

: Another major inconsistency on "Full
: House": Danny's got dark hair, a few
: flashback scenes of Pam show her with dark
: hair, and Jesse(her brother) has dark hair.
: SO HOW COME THE 3 GIRLS ARE ALL BLONDE?

: Humph!! What color was the grandparents' hair?
: Great Grandparents? We were never shown them
: in their youth. I was born a redhead to
: brown-haired parents. All four grandparents
: were brunette too. I got my red hair from
: three of my great-grandparents.(recessive
: genes!). Because of that I never questioned
: the girls on the show being blonde.

Sorry about my assumption that a person's hair colour was directly linked to that of their parents, Kathy. I don't have too much personal experience in the subject since all us people of Asian descent have black hair. The question of how hereditary hair colour is never comes up in my family since our hair colour's all the same.

I do think I'm right about Jesse's last name, though. If he was going to come up with a stage name, I think he'd come up with one a lot cooler than Cochran. I mean come on, Cochran isn't nearly as cool a name as Cougar.

They do some other flashback episodes where Pam's hair is blonde.

: They do some other flashback episodes where
: Pam's hair is blonde.

Do they? I haven't seen those. "Full House" probably did those later only because too many people had already noticed that the girls were blonde, despite having dark haired parents. Anyway, even if Pam was blonde, you could still raise the same questions about hair colour since there are a lot of episodes where Jesse's parents appear, and they both always have dark coloured hair. And since Jesse was Pam's brother, that would make them her parents as well. I guess recessive genes explain why Pam's a blonde then, huh?