Are these the men you would trust to remove your solid waste? No? Good.
The gang is back and it feels like they never left!
Two Thursdays ago, FX’s stable, sloppy sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia began its 8th season. This is a testament to the show’s compelling stupidness and strange universality. It’s never been pegged as biting social commentary, but you’ll laugh a lot during It’s Always Sunny (and chances are hate yourself later for doing so).
Season premiere episode “Pop-Pop: The Final Solution” is as outrageous and crass as its title suggests, boasting not-so-subtle references to Hitler and the Holocaust. Unfortunately, though, the entire thing is pretty flat.
The plot centers on Dee and Dennis’s need to decide whether or not to kill their ex-Nazi grandfather, who has slipped into a coma. The B-plot, which is much goofier, is about Mac, Charlie and Frank’s attempts to find the grandfather’s “buried treasure,” which we learn is a painting of a German shepherd that may or may not have been crafted by Hitler himself.
Dee and Dennis spend most of the episode trying to muster up the courage to kill their grandfather, the highlight of this coming in a scene where they visit a dog kennel, run by the immortal Rickety Cricket, so that they can practice putting down homeless pups first before they do the same to their senile relative.
This fares much better than the subplot, which is essentially another muddled Mac and Charlie adventure. In attempt to find the painting, which Frank claims he threw away because of “bad vibes”, they end up in a dingy dentist’s office, where the walls are plastered with hundreds of German shepherd paintings. We really don’t know why Mac and Charlie are here or what they plan to do, but we just accept their nuttiness and go with it. Yet in “Pop-Pop: The Final Solution,” this becomes difficult to do.
The biggest gripe of all, though, is the lack of Frank. He is the best character on the show and deserves more than an underused part in the episode’s B-material. We get one, wacky gag where he tells the gang that he forgot to dispose of the soup he had feeding to Pop-Pop while in the hospital, but other than that, we barely see him.
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Luckily, this week’s episode “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” is a massive rebound. The story picks up in the midst of a garbageman union strike, the streets of Philadelphia lined with bags overflowing trash.
This gives Frank the idea to have Dennis, Mac and Charlie go door-to-door and offer to dispose garbage for a fee. While this is happening, he and Dee try and undermine the union and get the contract themselves to get rid of the trash. Foolproof plan, right?
The main plot revolving around the experiences of Dennis, Mac and Charlie is nutty and brilliant. Fearing customer preconceptions and perhaps even legal trouble if they used a creepy white van, they decide to do the job using a limo and tuxedos instead. This gives them the inspiration to announce their presence at each door by singing a goofy jingle in the style of a barbershop trio. And, as predicted, hilarity ensues.
Meanwhile, Dee and Frank encounter the corporate homosexual who tried to buy Paddy’s pub from them while attempting to negotiate a garbage contract in lieu of the striking union. These scenes prove to be funny, especially one at a gay strip club where Frank prods him on his lack of apparent homosexual tendencies and Dee gives a rather long soliloquy on sexual orientation as it relates to wild animals.
Overall, “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” is a solid improvement on the season premiere, reminding us why we missed the gang and how happy we are to have them back.
Tidbits:
-They probably used the word “trash” over 100 times.
-Charlie does an impression of either Hannibal Lector or Frank Booth in “Pop-Pop: The Final Solution,” but it was too bad to tell.
-That old soup in Pop-Pop’s hospital room looked pretty damn disgusting.
Frank Did What?
-In “Pop-Pop: The Final Solution,” he gets his head stuck in both an empty cardboard box and a window while trying to break into the grandfather’s house.
-In “The Gang Recycles Their Trash,” he rips apart Dee’s yellow jacket because she isn’t ‘slutty’ enough for the corporate meeting. We always seem to forget that he is the adopted father for Dee and Dennis.
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