Let me begin by
saying that while I thought that the previous episode was good, it wasn’t
great, but I’m happy to report that this episode was truly excellent and was
perhaps one of the best episodes yet of season eight. Although, I have to say
that it’s hard to believe that this is the seventh episode of season eight,
which means that there are only three more episodes left in the season since
season eight is only going to have ten episodes.
The premise of
this episode revolved around the fact that a company that Frank apparently
founded was having problems, and they called him asking him to come back and
help them try and save the company from going out of business. Frank made
Charlie his right-hand man, and I have to say that I loved Dennis’ reaction to
Frank telling the rest of The Gang that he had made Charlie his right-hand man.
When Dennis pointed out that Charlie can’t read, Frank simply told them that
Charlie would adapt. I have to say the idea of Charlie being Frank’s right-hand
man is absolutely hilarious. Dennis was right. How would Charlie “adapt” to
reading? This was yet another great moment on the show stemming from Charlie essentially
being illiterate, and the show has definitely had a lot of great moments
throughout its run thanks to Charlie’s illiteracy. The only thing that I found
a little disappointing about that storyline is that I feel like the writers
missed an opportunity to have something really bad, yet really funny happen at
the end of the episode due to Charlie’s illiteracy, especially given the fact
that he had been taking notes for Frank for most of the episode until Frank fired
him. Although, Charlie is pretty much the only one who can make sense of the
things he writes, so I’m sure that he would be able to make sense of the notes
he took.
At the beginning
of the episode, Dennis, Dee and Mac were looking through a man’s wallet with some
Canadian money and skybox tickets to a Phillies baseball game in it that they
had found in the bar, which is what kicked off their storyline at the beginning
of the episode. The wallet belonged to a man named Brian LeFeve, and after two
guys also came to the sky box that they had tickets to for the Phillies game
Dennis started claiming to be Brian LeFeve. Glenn Howerton was great in that
scene, but I do think that Kaitlin Olson was great in that scene too,
especially when she started talking with a fake Canadian accent. I have to say
that really made me laugh. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like Dee didn’t have
much of a presence in this episode, because other than the scene at the bar
when Dennis, Dee and Mac were looking through the wallet, the scene where
Dennis, Dee and Mac were in the sky box and the scene where The Gang was at the
press conference that Frank was holding for the company, Dee didn’t really
stand out to me in this episode all that much.
All season long,
the writing for Dennis has made him seem much more dialed back compared to last
season where the writers had Dennis go full on sociopathic in terms of his
behavior. I had really been wondering if the writers decided that didn’t want
Dennis’ behavior to go that far this season. Dennis did show signs of still
being rather sociopathic in last week’s episode with all his talk about not
feeling any emotions, but he still felt rather dialed back in my opinion. The
writers made it clear in this episode that just when I thought that there are
still some boundaries even Dennis wouldn’t cross, he showed that he’s
completely ready to cross them if he feels the need to.
At one point in
the episode Dennis and Mac were meeting a guy in the men’s locker room at a
country club. Dennis and Mac were initially led to believe that the guy wanted
to have sex with them, which freaked Mac out, prompting him to run off while
Dennis surprisingly stuck around because he said he wanted to see how far he
could go with the whole thing. It turns out that the guy wasn’t there to have
sex with them; he was simply there to be his golf caddy, which prompted Dennis
to tell him that he needed a minute to shift gears. The way Glenn Howerton
played Dennis’ reaction to finding out that the guy didn’t want to have sex
with him was absolutely brilliant.
I have to say
that I was really surprised that Dennis was willing to even consider having sex
with the golf caddy given the fact that Dennis is such a womanizer. However,
given the fact that Dennis was in full-on sociopath mode in this episode I
suppose he would be willing to do just about anything in order to carry out one
of his schemes. The fact that Mac ran off after he thought the guy wanted to
have sex with him also really surprised me. When Mac tried to kiss Dennis in
episode 8x02 “The Gang Recycles Their Trash”, it really made me think that the
writers might be planning to have a slow buildup to Mac coming out of the
closet at the end of the season. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mac came
out of the closet at some point in the show’s run given his on again-off again
fling with Carmen, A.K.A The Tranny. However, given the fact that they haven’t
really done anything else since that episode to reference the possibility of
Mac being gay, I don’t think that’s going to happen, at least not this season.
After Frank
fired Charlie because he was obsessed with wanting to know what kind of product
the company manufactured and Mac had left Dennis at the country club, they
teamed up at the bar saying that they wanted to create their own business that
focused mostly on creating a product of some kind. Throughout the episode Mac
was obsessed with thinking of himself of as being a bodyguard for Dennis named
Vic Vinegar as he was pretending to be Brian LeFeve. Mac’s obsession with body
guards continued as he and Charlie were trying to brainstorm about what kind of
business that they could have, which felt very fitting coming from Mac
considering the long running gag regarding Mac’s delusional view of his
athletic ability. Plus, I just love how Mac’s delusional view of his own athletic
ability played such a large role in this episode, because that’s always been
one of my favorite things about the character Mac.
Everything came
to a head at the company press conference that Frank had arranged. Mac and
Charlie quickly crashed the press conference to show everyone a commercial for
a product that they had come up with called Fight Milk, which was basically
milk with alcohol in it. They also told everyone that Dennis wasn’t actually
Brian LeFeve. It turns out that the real Brian LeFeve had been brutally
murdered in the alley behind Paddy’s Pub, and all that remained of his body was
one of his fingers, which they showed to everybody. Just as all of that was
unfolding Frank told everyone that he loved the company, only to immediately
tell them that he had sold the company because he loved money more. He also
told them that the company was going to be broken down into parts, which meant
that they were all fired. I have to say that whole scene was brilliantly done,
both in terms of the writing and the acting from everyone who was in the scene,
and it was definitely a truly brilliant way to end such an amazing episode.
All things
considered, this was a truly wonderful episode that had a lot of great moments,
but Glenn Howerton was once again the shining star of this episode for me
personally. I really do think that Glenn Howerton deserves an Emmy for his
acting on the show, and his performance in this episode was definitely Emmy
worthy. It was also great to see Frank and Charlie interacting with each other
so much in this episode, because I’ve always loved the dynamic between the two
of them. I’ve also found Frank and Charlie’s relationship throughout the show’s
run to be a constant source of laughter for me. Mac also had a lot of great
moments in this episode, particularly the commercial that he and Charlie filmed
for Fight Milk.
While Dee was
the one character that didn’t really stand out to me in this episode, I do
think that she had some great moments in this episode though, mainly when Dee
and Dennis were interacting with each other throughout the episode. I’ve always
thought that Kaitlin Olson and Glenn Howerton play off each other very well. My
favorite Dee and Dennis exchange in this episode was definitely when Dennis
told Dee that he had gotten off sexually a bunch of times as he was watching
everything that was going on at the press conference. That was just both beyond
weird and beyond priceless all at the same time.
That being said,
I give this episode a rating of an A+
No comments :
Post a Comment