After waiting for what felt
like an eternity, season nine of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is finally
here and I’m happy to say that the season premiere definitely didn’t disappoint
me for the most part. Right off the bat, I would like to say that I definitely
liked this episode more than the season eight premiere (“Pop-Pop: The Final
Solution”). Don’t get me wrong, I loved the season eight premiere, it’s just
that I thought this episode was a slightly stronger season premiere for the
show. One of the reasons why I love this episode so much is that while It’s
Always Sunny in Philadelphia is an ensemble show, this was essentially a Dee
centric episode, and I tend to pretty much enjoy any episode that’s centered
around Dee or episodes that are centered largely around Dee and perhaps one
other character.
The episode opened with the
guys watching Dee in horror as she was eating a cake that Charlie mentioned
that he had previously thrown it out, while she was also smoking a cigarette
and had also clearly not showered in several days. In typical fashion, Dennis,
Charlie, Mac and Frank all started trying to make fun of her, saying that she
looks like a bird. Only this time, Dee kept finishing their sentences since the
guys have always pretty only primarily used the same set of insults and rude
comments, much to the guys disappointment. After Dee finally left the bar, the
guys came to the conclusion that they had “broken” Dee.
The guys quickly took it
upon themselves to try and cheer Dee up in their own messed up way. Charlie,
Mac and Frank believed the best way to cheer Dee up was to sign her up for an
open mike night at a comedy club, figuring that since Dee didn’t seem to care
about anything anymore that she won’t gag when she’s on stage and trying to do
stand up like she usually does. Dennis disagreed with this plan, saying that he
thought the best way to get Dee out of her funk was to find her a man to be
with. Dennis being Dennis went about this in a very backhanded way, telling Dee
that the guy would at best be simply average, if not below average. While I
loved this episode for being such a Dee centric episode, I also loved all of
the parts featuring Dennis, at times I enjoyed the parts of the episode with
Dennis even more than I enjoyed the parts of the episode that were focused
primarily on Dee. Glenn Howerton always does a fantastic job on the show, but I
especially enjoyed his performance in this episode.
Charlie, Mac and Frank ended
up being right when they thought Dee wouldn’t gag on stage now that she didn’t
seem to care about anything. Her first stand up routine did start out a little
rough though, because at first she was just standing in front of the microphone
sighing heavily and acting completely out of it until somebody in the audience
yelled at her to say something. Dee proceeded to lament about her life and how
the joke always seems to be on her, and the audience apparently thought what
she was saying was funny, because they were laughing. This also led to Dee’s
catch phrase throughout the episode becoming, “I’m Sweet Dee, and the joke’s on
me.”
Given the fact that the guys
have always treated Dee like shit, it was definitely nice to see her finally
have some success with something, especially when it comes to her stand
up/acting career. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took this long for Dee to
finally snap the way that she did in this episode. While I’ve always felt like
the characters on the show aren’t the kind of characters that people should
relate very strongly to due to the fact that they are essentially all immoral
sociopaths to varying degrees, I’ve always felt kind of sorry for Dee when it comes
to how the guys treat her.
The reason I feel this way
is because my dad was very verbally and emotionally abusive towards me as I was
growing up, and that’s definitely something that’s contributed quite a bit to
me constantly struggling with my own sense of self worth and self-confidence.
Honestly, a few years ago it got to the point where I started to feel like I
was absolutely worthless for a period of time until I finally came to the
conclusion that while I may have numerous flaws, I’m definitely not worthless,
and I’m also not a failure, I’m simply insanely flawed. At the same time, I also
like to think of myself as being very lovable and a person with a lot of good
qualities, so I adopted the slogan, “Insanely flawed, insanely lovable…Always
Taylor”. Whenever I start to feel especially insecure, I simply say that to
myself, and doing that has become somewhat of a coping mechanism for me, but I
digress.
Getting back to discussing
the show, I truly believe that Dee is at least trying her best to deal with the
hand that life has dealt her throughout the show’s run, which for numerous
reasons has probably been almost impossible for her to do. After her first show
was a success, a rather creepy guy approached Dee about being her manager and
she even started sleeping with him, because that’s just what Dee does and it
only reinforced how much of a downward spiral she was going through in this
episode.
Dee quickly got a gig at a
local comedy club as the opening act for another comedian, a man named
Landslide whose jokes primarily centered around the subject of diarrhea, which
everybody but Dennis thought was really funny. I don’t blame Dennis for being
grossed out by Landslide’s style of comedy, because while I suppose there might
be some people who find the subject of diarrhea funny, I don’t see how there
could be very much humor behind the subject other than the whole bathroom scene
in the movie Bridesmaids. I’m sure that the writers of Two and a Half Men would
find Landslide’s style of comedy beyond funny though, considering the humor on
that show is typically rather juvenile and low brow.
This is probably good time
to talk about what is pretty much my only issue with this episode. I’ve always
believed that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a great watchability factor
to it, and when I say that, what I mean is that I feel like the show has always
been done in such a way that a person can watch a majority of the episodes of
the series numerous times and still find them about as funny, if not more so
compared to how much they liked the episode the first time they saw it. There
are numerous episodes that I’ve been able to watch more times than I can count without
having my enjoyment of the episode decrease all that much compared to how much
I may have enjoyed it the first time I saw it.
There are also a fair amount
of episodes where my appreciation for them has actually increased over time.
This is especially the case with Dennis-centric episodes since it wasn’t until
season seven that Dennis took Charlie and Dee’s spot as my favorite character
on the show. I definitely enjoy Dennis-centric episodes quite a bit more after
watching the way Dennis was written in season seven compared to how much I
enjoyed those episodes prior to watching season seven. Unfortunately, in the long
run I don’t think that this will be an episode that I’ll feel like watching
again numerous times in the future. Maybe I’ll feel like watching it again from
to time in the future, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be watching this episode
again and again years from now.
What I think hurts the
watchability factor of this episode is that the jokes for Dee’s standup comedy
routines that were shown throughout the episode were all almost exactly the
same. After a while, I felt like I was listening to a person who was telling me
about three or four jokes, and it was as if they were telling me those jokes
repeatedly for about twenty minutes straight. It just got to the point where
the parts of the episode where they showed Dee doing standup got really old and
ceased to be all that funny rather quickly. For the most part, it was
ultimately all of the other characters’ antics in this episode that made me
really enjoy it from the standpoint of the humor featured in this episode.
As Dee continued to have
success with her standup comedy career, Dennis continued to search for a man
for Dee to be with. Unfortunately, all of Dennis’ “selects” as he referred to
them as were rather undesirable, so I definitely can’t blame Dee for being
disgusted with the men Dennis was picking for her.
Towards the end of the
episode, another guy played by Peter Jacobson, A.K.A. Dr. Taub from House,
approached Dee about being her manager, saying that she could potentially
become a big-time successful comedian. He even told her that he had arranged
for her to appear on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, Conan. This was the point in the
episode when Dee’s issues with stage fright finally started to get the best of
her and she started to constantly gag like she usually does as she was on the
flight to appear on Conan.
Given the fact that Dennis
has always acted so cold and mean towards Dee, I found his emotional plea to
Dee to allow him to be her “personal select” as she was getting ready to board
the plane she was flying on to appear on Conan rather surprising. After all,
last season in the episode “Charlie’s Mom Has Cancer” he was constantly saying
that he couldn’t feel emotions anymore. Unfortunately for Dennis, Dee coldly
rebuffed Dennis’ emotional plea and knocked him to the ground with her foot
before she boarded the plane.
One thing that I especially
enjoyed about this episode was definitely the ending. I didn’t see the ending
coming at all. As I was watching this episode for the first time, I kept
thinking that the episode would end with Dee doing something to ruin all of the
success that she was having since the nature of the show is that pretty much
every time something good happens to one of the characters on the show, they
inevitably end up doing something to screw it up by the end of the episode.
Once Peter Jacobson’s character showed up, I guessed that she was going to end
up being overwhelmed by her issues with stage fright and that she was going to
throw up when she went on Conan’s show to perform.
In the end, it was revealed
that all of the success that Dee was having with her career in standup comedy had
been orchestrated by the guys to show her that she could sink lower than she
already has in the past. It turns out Landslide wasn’t even a comedian, he was
actually Dee’s garbage man that Frank had hired along with pretty much
everybody else Dee had interacted with throughout the episode so they could
trick Dee. Frank also admitted that he had arranged to have the jet that Dee
had been flying on fly around Philadelphia for several hours, so Dee would
believe that she was flying to appear on Conan. The most surprising part of
this was that Frank, Charlie and Mac had also kept Dennis in the dark about the
whole thing, because they thought the only way their scheme would work was if
they strung him along too. Given the fact that they revealed that Dennis had
been unaware of the whole scheme, I would like to think that Dennis’ plea to
Dee earlier in the episode was at least somewhat genuine. However, it looked
like their scheme ultimately ended up “breaking” Dennis at the end of the
episode.
When Dee asked them why they
would trick her like that, Charlie and Mac said that they felt like she had
taken things too far when she had said that she wanted to kill herself by
stepping in front of a bus earlier in the episode. Naturally, Dee was furious
when she found out about the truth regarding their scheme, saying that they had
taken things to far and she started going off on them as the episode ended. The
whole ending of the episode definitely felt very natural for the show since I
feel like the writers have always written the show in a way that the show
essentially has a reset button and things seem to always go back to the way
they were before by the end of the episode, especially when it comes to good things
happening to Charlie, Dennis, Dee, Mac or Frank. That’s also definitely a big
part of the show’s charm for me personally.
All things considered, this
episode was definitely a really great way to start off the show’s ninth season,
and the episode had a lot of really great moments in it. It was also great to
see Peter Jacobson on the show since I always loved him on House, so my final
score for this episode is 8 out of 10. The reason why I didn’t give this
episode a 10 is because as I said earlier, a lot of the scenes featuring Dee
doing standup felt redundant, causing my enjoyment of the episode to already
decrease from my initial opinion of the episode after watching it several more
times as a part of my process for writing this review. I definitely think that
in the long run this episode will most likely not be an episode that I’ll often
feel compelled to watch again numerous times in the future. Regardless of that,
it’s still a great episode and a relatively strong season premiere for the show.
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