"Dennis and Dee's Mom is Dead"/"The Gang Gets Held Hostage"

This second double-part episode in this season started off with a bang in typical IASIP fashion. Frank barges into the bar with a cigar and a devious grin, pops a bottle of champagne and announces that Dennis and Dee’s mom is “as dead as disco.”

In the following scene Frank, Dennis, and Dee are meeting with a lawyer to go over the will left behind by their mother and everyone is vying for the large family fortune. They discover she left the house to Dennis, but all money to the twin’s (Dennis and Dee) real father, Bruce. This leads to a hilarious compilation of the three misunderstanding the concept of wills, and yelling at the lawyer for circumstances that are out of his control (“Tell that bitch it doesn’t make sense!”).

Of course, Dee’s natural reaction to this news is to dress in all black and dig up her mother’s grave in the middle of the night for her jewelry, but Frank has a better plan. The rest of the episode follows their attempts to masquerade as a couple looking to adopt so Bruce will write them a check.

DeVito promises laughs with an unprecedented AIDS freak-out while dressed in hippie garb and a fake ponytail, and an awkward bedroom scene between Frank and Dee makes you cringe with creepy hilarity.

Meanwhile, the three boys make bicep-shaped flyers (that end up looking more like a certain part of the male anatomy) to find new friends to add to their gang--nothing sexual. They turn Dennis’ new house into a “party mansion” and kidnap two college boys to add to their gang.

The concluding scene in the episode is the gang confronting Bruce and Dee screams, “You’re acting like a real bastard, Bruce!” This one line clearly defines the scope of these characters. They do horrible things and truly believe they are never in the wrong. It is something the audience has always known but it is being proved so obviously by Dee. 

The second half, “Hostage,” has its amusing moments, like an epic fall from the bar roof that proves less dramatic than expected, but once again, the episode lost momentum in the second half. The McPoyles hold the gang hostage as revenge and put them through a series of tests to decide who will die first. There was an out of place fart joke, and an un-godly amount of sweat that was more nauseating than comical.

Personally I am not a huge fan of the McPoyles. I found their storyline amusing at first, but after one episode they are actually a bit annoying. They enjoy warm milk, heat, heavy robes and whitie-tighties, and are the same in every episode. No character growth is ever developed with these three family members and they have just gone flat.

Overall, the first half delivers laughs and true character depiction, while the second half slows down the laugh riot that the first 30 minutes effortlessly built up. The only interaction the gang had was with themselves and the McPoyles, and there was not enough variety. When it’s all said and done, I’d rather see my precious gang doing bad than playing the victim.

Stray Observations:

·      “If you’re fat, you should be able to find humor in the little things.”

·      Charlie becomes obsessed with Dee’s middle-school diary and enlists his new Spaniard friend to read it aloud to him.

·      The lawyer reads aloud from the will: “Deandra, you get nothing. You were a disappointment and a mistake.” Her and Dennis are twins.

·      “Frank, that woman is buried down there like Mr. T!”

·      The McPoyle’s hostage demands include a leather planet Hollywood jacket.