The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby

The gang tackles an unpopular, taboo subject in the season three premiere with the title “The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby.” Without giving too much away, the gang…well….finds a dumpster baby. The oh-so original title reveals only one-third of the plot of this episode, as every character winds up trying out an unfamiliar lifestyle.

As controversial as the episode title may be, the cast of “It’s Always Sunny” brings their usual slapstick humor and witty banter to sensitive, dark topics. In this episode, abandonment and abortion are addressed in such a way that the audience finds themselves laughing at these situations without realizing they’re morals are being hilariously compromised.  

The events in this premiere episode are all sparked by Dennis’ newfound urge to recycle and “go green.” By discarding a Big Gulp in the dumpster behind their bar, all the characters veer off into their new lives. Mac and Dee raise the dumpster baby (D.B.) together, Frank and Charlie become homeless dumpster divers, and Dennis infiltrates a radical environmental group full of hippies.

To risk “looking like a narc,” Dennis adapts the hippie persona to fit in. He wears Birkenstocks and a poncho and gets the hippies on his side by sharing a bag of weed with them. However, he ends up screwing them over in the end in his usual Dennis fashion (“Oh by the way, I banged your girlfriend.”).

Mac and Sweet Dee get off to a shaky start raising D.B. until they both reach a similar conclusion about the benefits of parenting: they need put D.B. in commercials and profit from him. The only problem is: white babies aren’t selling these days--All the money is in Latino babies (they’re a growing market), and so the search for a way to make D.B.’s skin darker begins.

Frank and Charlie visit the dump with Dennis and their obsession with people’s discarded trash begins. What’s worse is that this isn’t the worst for Charlie. In a deep conversation with Frank, Charlie learns Frank impregnated his mother, forced her to get an abortion (that didn’t take) and then ditched her. Charlie survived the abortion! The whole plot comes full circle with one line uttered by Charlie’s mother: “If it were up to him, he would’ve made me throw you in a dumpster!”

The episode ends with child services barging into the bar only to witness Dee and Mac painting D.B. brown and the rest of the gang fighting over an “Ali Baba sword” inches from the baby.

The way all the plots intertwine with just one single line is what made this episode brilliant. The randomness of the three plots and the haphazardness of each characters actions is all brought together and we get to see why they act the way they do. These characters are immoral, vile, and vicious but their circumstances make them endearing, and we feel for them (God knows why). The directors have managed to create a show full of relatable characters, because let’s face it—each one of us has a little evil in us.

Stray Observations:

·      “You want to do good?! You’re not good at that!”

·      “Who has better lives than child stars? Nobody! My God, they're the happiest people on earth!”

·      “I think I just got punked out by a bunch of hippies.”

·      [Written in note] “Taked baby. Meet at later bar night or day, sometime.”

·      “God damn, this dumpster baby is heavy.”