Here's part two of my four part overview of my thoughts on season 7. I've included links to the other three posts at the bottom of this post.
7x07 (Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games)
This episode is perhaps my favorite episode of season seven, or at least one of my top favorite episodes of the season. Glenn Howerton continued to amaze me with his portrayal of Dennis in this episode, especially the part where Frank throws the dart directly into Dennis hand and Dennis just stands there, pulls the dart out of his hand and looks at Dee, Charlie, Mac, and Frank again with a rather blank stare all without giving an indication that he’s in any sort of physical pain. As I was watching the show this season, I frequently found myself thinking how Ilene Chaiken and Angela Robinson said in a video blog post for season four of The L Word that they decided to just have the character Jenny become a bit of a villain and a character that was completely over the top in terms of how she acts since she had always teetered on the line of being that way to begin with. I’m wondering if the writers of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia decided to do a similar thing with Dennis and just have him become a complete and total narcissistic sociopath since he’s always kind of been that way before this season. Although, his narcissism has always been much more pronounced than his sociopathic tendencies were until this season. After watching season, Dennis Reynolds has joined Jenny Schecter in a tie as being my all-time favorite fictional character.
One of the things that I love the most about it is that it essentially defies one of the most important things that I’ve been taught in all of the writing classes that I’ve taken at school over the years, and that would be that in order for a story to be good, the plot needs to have conflict of some kind. In my opinion, this episode didn’t have a real sense of conflict; it was basically The Gang playing a homemade board game for pretty much the entire episode. Although, I suppose people could consider Dee and Dennis competing against Charlie, Mac and Frank to win Chardee MacDennis a source of conflict in the episode.
This episode also featured two of the things that I love the most about It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which would be The Gang being willing to betray one another for their own personal gain, Mac trying to trick everyone into giving him their money is a classic example of this also. Also, the episode followed the recurring trend of having the ending of the episode be rather abrupt and chaotic. The ending of this episode wasn’t chaotic, but it was definitely fairly abrupt, much like almost every other season seven episode up to this point, with the exception of episode 7x02 “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore” and episode 7x05 “Frank’s Brother”. Often times I don’t like stories or episodes of TV shows with abrupt endings, but personally I think the writers of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia have mastered the craft of writing endings to the episodes that are often times abrupt and chaotic, but they are still great endings to episodes.
One last note that I’d like to make about thoughts on this episode now that the season is over is that I’ve never been a huge fan of episodes that can be consider a bottle episode when shows do them due to the limitations that they can place on what the writers are and aren’t able to do for the episode, but I personally think that this episode showed that a TV show can do a bottle episode and still have it be a great episode. Although, I think that it’s a lot easier for It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to do bottle episodes and still have them be good, because most of the episodes of the show pretty much only use the same pre-existing sets for the filming process in the first place. I’m wondering if the reason why they made this episode a bottle episode was so they would have a bigger budget for the remaining episodes for season seven since they all pretty much take place mainly, if not entirely outside of Paddy’s Pub.
My rating: A+
Link to my original thoughts post for the episode:The Random Thoughts of a Writer: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: This has got to be one of the best episodes ever! (My thoughts on episode 7x07: Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games)
7x08 (The ANTI-Social Network)
From where I’m standing, both the writers and cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia cranked out another A+ episode with this episode. One of the things that I’ve always loved about the show is that it has always reminded me a lot of Seinfeld, and I think whoever the critic was that described It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia as being Seinfeld on crack nailed the description for the show perfectly, and this episode was definitely an episode that I felt lived up to that description. The whole thing with The Gang spending the entire episode trying to track down the guy who shushed them at that gin bar definitely reminded me a lot of Seinfeld, and I’m a huge fan of Seinfeld. Frank’s “virus video” was hilarious. Dennis continued come off as a complete sociopath in this episode, and I absolutely loved that. The creepy smile that Dennis/Glenn Howerton had on his face when the guy who shushed them walked into Paddy’s at the end of the episode was downright priceless and downright creepy.
My rating: A+
Link to my original thoughts post for the episode:The Random Thoughts of a Writer: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Whatever you do, don’t shhh a member of the Gang! (My thoughts on episode 7x08: The ANTI-Social Network)
7x09 (The Gang Gets Trapped)
This was yet another great episode, and it’s definitely one of my favorite episodes from season seven. Like “Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games” and “The ANTI-Social Network”, this episode was very different from the typical episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, perhaps even more so since this episode took place entirely outside the bar. Also, usually when The Gang comes up with a scheme of some kind, we get to see how they come with the scheme. Instead, this episode began while they were in the middle of their scheme to steal the vase from its owners so they wouldn’t be able to give it to charity after they ran into a problem with their scheme to get the vase and realized that the owners were home. They spent the whole episode trying to figure out how to get out of the house without being noticed by the owner. I loved the scenes with Mac and Charlie in the van fighting over chips, and the interactions between Dee and Dennis in this episode were equally priceless as well.
This episode featured my favorite kind of ending to an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia with the falling action and resolution for the episode being very rapid and abrupt. I love that Dee, Dennis, and Frank decide to simply walk out of the house after Charlie comes into the house just by walking into the house using the front door and managed to find them without the owners spotting him because the owners are too preoccupied with the fact that the wife is planning to take her daughter and run off with some guy she’s apparently having an affair with only to have her husband come home and demand that they talk about everything before the wife and her boyfriend are able to leave for the trip to Disneyland that they are planning to go on with her daughter or Dee, Dennis, Frank and Charlie are able to get out of the house. The whole thing got even better after Frank spots the vase they were trying to steal while they are leaving and ends up smashing it with his whip that he was trying to grab it with and the family and the wife’s boyfriend are just sitting there watching them in confusion as The Gang just awkwardly walks out of the house. I love that Dee says that she wasn’t expecting the family to be Asian once they are outside the house.
Even after thinking about this episode for about a month now, I still can’t decide I think they should have shown Dennis’ speech that he gave that convinced the rest of The Gang that they should steal the vase. On the one hand, I’d like to have seen it since they all kept talking about how great his speech was, but on the other hand showing the speech would take away the unique structure of this episode of the episode beginning with their scheme to steal the vase having already gone wrong. Also, not showing the speech allows the viewers to imagine for themselves what Dennis’ speech was like and not potentially end up being disappointed by Dennis’ speech. I know one thing for sure about how I feel about this episode, and that would be that this was another one of the many season seven episodes that I felt Glenn Howerton gave an Emmy worthy performance in.
My rating: A-
Link to my original thoughts post for the episode:The Random Thoughts of a Writer: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: For the love of God, just give Glenn Howerton an Emmy already! (My thoughts on episode 7x09: The Gang Gets Trapped)
7x10 (How Mac Got Fat)
This was apparently a reworked and edited version of the unaired episode from season six that they used to explain how Mac became fat. Since it bothered me that they didn’t really explain how Mac became fat in the season premiere, I’m glad that they more or less devoted this entire episode to telling the story of how Mac became fat. One of the things that I liked the most about this episode is that it addressed the fact that Paddy’s Pub doesn’t usually get very much business at all, which I talked more in depth about in my original thoughts posts. For me personally both Charlie Day, the actor, and Charlie Kelly, the character, is what stole this episode for me personally and how Charlie Day portrayed Charlie as having more and more of a meltdown as the episode progressed because he was having a hard time dealing with the fact that Paddy’s was inexplicably getting a ton of business all of the sudden. Glenn Howerton also deserves an honorable mention for being the other main highlight of the episode in terms of how he played Dennis. It was classic Dennis for him to believe that his physical appearance was the cause of Paddy’s sudden success.
What surprised me the most about this episode is the fact that most of Dee’s scenes, with the exception of the scene where Mac is showing her a map of all the places he wants to go if he buys a boat now that they are successful is what brought down my level of enjoyment for this episode. Her reaction to the fact that pretty much every country outside of the United States, as well as a few areas in the United States were crossed out, indicating that he didn’t want to go to those places was beyond priceless though.
One last thing that I thought was funny about this episode was Frank’s crazy ideas that he came up with to maintain the same level of success Paddy’s was suddenly having, because they made no sense at all, especially the whole thing with him adding two extra stop signs on the street, therefore creating a four-way intersection outside of Paddy’s. That was hilarious. :)
In a nutshell, the story of how Mac got fat was basically that Dee suggested that they get replacements or “avatars” of themselves to do all of their work for them. (Basically people who looked like them and had their personalities) However, Mac felt like he needed to bulk up in order to look more like the guy that he wanted to hire to be his avatar. Unfortunately, soon after that the bar went back to getting very little business, which is when Mac showed up at the bar, fat, and everyone laughed at him. That is ultimately what led to Mac visiting the priest. Personally, looking back on this episode I think that’s both a funny, yet kind of stupid explanation as to how Mac got fat. It was still a pretty good episode though.
My rating: B
Link to my original thoughts post for the episode:The Random Thoughts of a Writer: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Here’s a lesson for everyone, if you get fat, don’t blame yourself, blame The Gang! (My thoughts on episode 7x10: How Mac Got Fat)
Links to the other parts of my overview of Season 7
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