And so is outright insanity, apparently.
This week on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, we’re treated to two flawless plotlines of pure hilarity, one featuring a wacko Frank and the other an extra wacko Dennis. But more importantly, after a rather shaky start, Season 8 has found its stride, with its fourth excellent episode in a row.
Right out of the starting gate, “Frank’s Back In Business” feels classic. The company that Frank founded so many years ago, Atwater Capital, is on the brink of being sold. With a floundering infrastructure and fresh out of good ideas on how to reconcile the mess without giving up everything they’ve accomplished, they decide to call in a fixer. Who knew, though, that lovable, bumbling, piggish Frank would be playing the Michael Clayton character, brought in to save what was once his. Did I mention that his business nickname is “The Warthog?”
This allows Frank to march around the office, clad in his Gordon Gekko suspenders, and bark out orders. The scene where he fixes a printer paper jam that a lowly employee was unable to do, berating and firing him afterwards for his idiocy and laziness, is simply priceless.
Frank uses Charlie as an assistant during all of this, making bizarre requests such as eating sushi off a naked Asian woman’s body. (He didn’t phrase it like that, though.) This actually happens, giving their dinner meeting with a bunch of Japanese clients a rather uncomfortably racist feel.
But in the end, the big reveal is that Frank ends up selling the company to these Japanese clients anyway, slighting all of the Atwater Capital people who trusted him along the way just so he can earn his pay. It’s a classic Frank resolution, losing his grip on reality and morality and letting the budding senility take over.
Dennis’ storyline is much, much weirder, though. He, Mac and Dee attend a Phillies game using tickets they found in a unclaimed wallet at Paddy’s. When they get to the ballpark, they discover that they’re sharing a luxury box with two sleazy businessmen (one of them played by Joel Murray). Thinking on his feet, Dennis decides to shift into the persona of the wallet man, with Dee following as his wife and Mac as a bodyguard.
It works, for a long while, as Dennis confidently answers their generic questions, convincing them that he is, truly, the one he claims to be.
Somehow, he conjures the gall to outright reject their business order without even knowing the business in the first place, which, in an act of desperation, leads the two men to invite Dennis, Mac and Dee to spend time at their resort.
It’s quite amazing how Dennis’ thirst for schadenfreude has ballooned from an infantile fixation to a full-on, every-episode-it-becomes-more-apparent obsession. He’s nuts and he’s on some sort of unholy warpath. We learn this when he’s led by the business men to a shirtless boy in a locker-room, taking it to mean that whoever owns the wallet has a sick, sexual Asian child fetish. And, for a fleeting moment, he is willing to go along with it to not blow his cover. But luckily, as he begins to unzip his pants, the boy is suddenly clothed, standing next to a set of golf clubs. Dennis’ embarrassment in this sequence is priceless and brilliant.
The two plot-lines intertwine when we learn that the man with the lost wallet is actually the same person that is threatening to sell Atwater Capital to our luxury box, resort-owning business men.
In the hilarious final scene, Frank gives a speech to the Atwater Capital employees as well as the business men and Dennis (still in disguise), but not before he is interrupted by Mac, who was recently fired from his faux bodyguard position, and Charlie, who was recently fired by Frank.
In a sequence that harkens back to Dennis’ dinner party interruption a few episodes ago, Mac and Charlie pitch a nutty business idea via a ridiculous uncut music video. The product is “Crowtein”: high calcium milk mixed with alcohol to, apparently, satisfy every manly need possible. “Watch your profits soar high as a crow,” Charlie tells the confused crowd.
But just before things can get any stranger (and I know I probably say that every single Sunny recap), Charlie and Mac tell everyone that Dennis’ is not the man he claims to be and that the real wallet owner is currently dead.
The episode ends with Frank announcing that Atwater Capital is no more and that he’d maybe like to invest in Crowtein, now that he is supposedly rich again. I guess we’ll have to wait for next week to see how Frank will piss away his money.
Overall, “Frank’s Back In Business” is brilliant and hilarious, continuing the Sunny hot-streak as we begin winding down to the end of Season 8.
Tidbits:
–Not only is Dennis an apparent sadist, but he’s a reluctant child molester too?
–Frank growling like a warthog is one for the time capsule.
–It was nice to see Joel Murray getting some TV-time. We miss him on Mad Men.
–Crowtein, in the realm of Sunny products, probably ranks way lower than Kitten Mittens.
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