"The Gang Sells Out"/"Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire"

Helicopter pads, secret tunnels, monorail systems and corporate drones. These are the things the three IASIP boys are arguing over in their usual long-winded conversations. Then the camera pans and shows that they have been arguing like this for god knows how long IN FRONT of a corporate drone. This is why people continue to watch this show.

In “The Gang Sells Out,” the gang is trying to sell the Paddy’s bar to a corporate “fat cat” for the immense amount of money. This leaves Charlie, Dee, and Dennis jobless, and they are forced to pick up work at another local restaurant where they abuse their positions and the manager.

Oh, did I mention their manager is the Waitress?! Yes, these episodes finally brought back the hilarity of the Dennis-Charlie-Waitress love triangle. We still don’t know her actual name (neither does Dennis) and I’m starting to think we never will. Dennis uses his charm to his advantage to land a job as the bartender and pick up chicks, Dee is double-dropping “like a bastard” and Charlie is doing whatever he can to win the Waitress’ heart.

Meanwhile, Frank gets his old do-wop gang back together to hang out in front of the bookstore in hopes of scaring the corporate fat cat out of buying it for his new restaurant—clad in leather jackets of course.

This episode proves that the best Sunny episodes involve people outside the gang, because then the audience gets a side-by-side comparison of normal people versus…whatever these characters are. We love seeing the gang do horrible shit to each other, but it is even better to see them get a reaction out of others. 

In “Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire,” the gang gets hooked on public access and becomes obsessed with becoming more famous than the man dancing in his underwear. Dee wants to get famous for being drunk and disorderly, and Mac wants to be a hero.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of this episode was when Charlie, Mac, and Frank visit the nursing home to uncover bad treatment (aka ass-rapes). An over the top close up of Mac’s face and an old woman telling him her least favorite part of the home is “the blacks” leads Frank to believe their only choice is set the place on fire.

Instead, they trick Sweet Dee into saving a litter of kittens from a building, and then Frank sets it on fire. They trick Dee again into saving a box of kittens in a well and once again, Frank sets her on fire. Too bad she keeps ruining it though by dropping the box once she is ablaze.

It’s always interesting getting a glimpse into the gang’s messed up minds, because clearly anything involving kittens and fire makes you a hero. The scariest part of this episode was realizing we all have something in common with these messed-up people, because who else can’t take their eyes off public access T.V.?!

The woozy camera work from Charlie, the excessive nervous sweating from Mac and the close-ups of his make-up orange face just made me look forward to the upcoming season seven. Even though I’m partial to Dennis, seeing Mac gain 50 pounds (a result from his addiction to Big Macs) is something I’m not going to miss.

Stray Observations:

·      “You sold me a shit ton of shares for half a sandwich.”

·      “I don’t think so Charlie. You make me uncomfortable and you smell bad.”

·      Charlie is hired as the Assistant Sanitation Apprentice, in charge of sugar crisis’, fires, and vomit.

·      “Shits always goin’ down in China Town boys! Keep your eyes peeled for drifting.”

·      Mac has an all too convincing hand gesture involving a conveyor belt, a box full of kittens, and a chopping blade.

·      Dennis and Dee take ecstasy and dance in diapers with underwear guy and finally end up on public access.

"The Aluminum Monster vs. Fatty McGoo"/"The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation"

Seeming to become a habit of sorts, this was a week of double feature episodes again. However, I was surprised this week when, for the first time, I wasn’t disappointed by the second bonus episode.

While shopping with Charlie, Dee runs into a former classmate who, like Dee, had a not so favorable nickname and reputation in high school. Dee was called the Aluminum Monster because of her back brace and Ingrid Nelson, her only pal, was called Fatty McGoo because…well…she was fat. The store just so happened to be owned by Ingrid, making her more successful than Dee. This, of course, infuriates Dee and so she formulates a plan to “take down a fatty.”

Naturally, all of the gang decides to get involved in this scheme. Charlie is enlisted to make the dresses because of his ability to “sew a good hem” (it’s a valuable skill set), Dennis designs the dress to pitch to Fatty McGoo, and Frank and Mac create a sweatshop out of the bar’s backroom. 

Although this episode has some great moments from every character (Mac plays German war propaganda in the sweatshop and Charlie is trained like a dog), Dennis truly makes this episode stand out.

Dennis has always been my favorite character, but the “Fatty” episode just solidified it further. He lies to the gang about dress orders and then has to cover it up the whole episode. His scenes with Ingrid in her office trying to persuade her to buy his dress are outrageously funny, and he has a shirtless mirror monologue (that ends with him putting on women’s lipstick) that had me in stitches.

“The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation” was the second half in this hour-long episode and it did not let us down. Rather than one character shining, the whole group comes together to stop the new Korean restaurant from winning the annual Pub Crawl with their new micro beer. Oh yeah, and Dennis wears a badass black duster without a shirt.

There is a hilarious scene with Charlie and Dennis trying to break down a door marked “Private” (Charlie thinks it says Pirate), and a back-and-forth between Mac, Dee, and Frank about how Dee is talentless. We realize early on that this episode is IASIP at it’s finest.

The gang, as usual, pushes the limits of normal human decency. Charlie gets engaged to a Korean girl and enters her into a wet T-shirt contest (without knowing she is 12 years-old) and Dee sleeps with a Korean chef to get the micro brew recipe, which turns out being a letter in Korean about how she is a whore.

I always enjoy the gang’s questionable morals and typical manic ramblings but there were also some comical parodies. The owner of the Korean bar is a Kim Jong look-alike and there is an American Idol judging panel for the talent show that sneaks up on you and is spot-on. All in all these episodes were an hour-long laugh riot, and an IASIP double feature that finally satiated my thirst.

Stray Observations:

·      “I’m gonna peak so hard that everybody in Philadelphia feels it.”

·      One of Dee’s great one-liners in this episode, “Your breath smells like an old lady fart passing through an onion.”

·      Dennis proclaims that winners don’t listen to words like: no, don’t or stop.

·      Dee catches Charlie “enjoying” Dennis’ designs vigorously.

·      “The only crime being committed is the crime of ugliness, and sadly, you cannot press charges for that.”

·      Dee shows off her sub-par Christopher Walken and Rosie Perez impressions.

"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.

The Gang Gets Invincible

This episode was the second part in the hour-long season premiere and aired right after “The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby.” The first part was a laugh-riot and I expected myself to continue rolling on the floor for the next 30 minutes, but instead what I felt was….Ehhh….

The Philadelphia Eagles decide to hold tryouts for the public like in the movie Invincible. The gang keeps referring to it as “that movie where the guy from New Kids on the Block makes the team,” even though that was Mark Wahlberg, not his brother Donnie.

Sweet Dee dresses up as a guy to tryout for the team, despite the fact that her bones are “like glass” and her body is “90% scoliosis,” to prove to Mac and Dennis that she can make it farther than them. Mac and Dennis pee and smash beer bottles in unison, and Frank and Charlie tailgate the tryouts and drop acid next to the McPoyle trailer.

Considering the McPoyle family is based off incestuous relations and they all share matching unibrows, dropping acid would be an insanely frightening experience around those people. The funniest parts of this episode revolve around Frank and Charlie’s LSD P.O.V. experiences. Frank poops in a trashcan thinking he is locked in the McPoyle family bathroom, and Charlie puts on his Green Man suit—something that a loyal “It’s Always Sunny” watcher has been waiting to see. His erratic dancing as Green Man with the hillbilly McPoyle family was hands down the most laughable part of the episode. DeVito and Day were the most convincing druggies I have seen on television.  

The audience of this show tunes in to see their beloved characters act like miscreants and behave badly, and this episode lacked much of that behavior. Although there were some chuckles during the tryouts (Dennis’ inner, conceded monologue and Dee’s field goal kick) the characters weren’t their typical vile selves. Sure, Frank stands in his own filth, and that is disgusting, but we are used to seeing the gang continually screw people over to benefit themselves.

With that in mind, it was nice however to get a break from their over-confidence and screwball schemes. We saw, for once, the boys genuinely jealous of Dee when typically they just make fun of her mercilessly. Dee is a character I always root for because she is put down so often, so to see her succeed was a welcomed change. However, that didn’t last long. When the Eagles coach came to watch her kick she screwed up and broke every bone in her foot. Mac and Dennis didn’t even have to lift a finger this time to knock Dee back down to the bottom.

Overall, this episode is worth watching because it shows a different side of the five characters but it is not an episode full of loose morals and harebrained schemes. It may take a few episodes for season three to get back onto its evil feet.

Stray Observations:

·      “Want to drop acid with me? I’m gonna trip balls!”

·      “Lizard, am I standing in poop?”

·       “I’m feeling like I have to take a dump” -- “That’s what happens when you take a lot of acid.”

·      “I should’ve popped my shirt off.”

·      “I just want to get black out drunk and relax.”

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.”