It’s Always Sunny, “Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats,” and “The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods”

“Gatsby believed in the good joke, the kick-in-the-nuts future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. … And one fine morning —- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the MEH.”

This altered quote was one of my first brushes with literary depth when I was 13 years old. The Great Gatsby opened the door for a year of reading One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Scarlet Letter, Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn and some accompanying bleak short stories that would reaffirm my cynical world view and remind that I am not the first person to think people are inherently disappointing and terrible. My father had done his best to remind me to cultivate a basic mistrust of people outside our inner circle, but to know that Mark Twain agreed people sucked was a powerful thing.

For some reason, as I sat through a long backlog of recorded shows after the Thanksgiving holiday, the altered quote above kept rushing back. I prefer TV comedy to any other option (sorry zombies, vampires, crime procedurals and Two and a Half Men), but want to have at least 2-3 wow/lolz moments per 30 minutes invested. This can be as simple as a wiener in a mousetrap or as elaborate as hiding $200,000 in a banana stand – just bring the funny.

As low a bar as this sounds, you’d be amazed how often TV fails to reach it. The last two episodes of Sunny left me with a few laughs, but, when combined with the other dross clinging to my DVR, just left feeling like I would spend most of my TV time borne back ceaselessly against the meh.

So, now that I’ve journaled my feelings, let’s look at two exciting episodes of Sunny…together. Two weeks ago, Charlie killed a bunch of rats and went into a depression. I enjoyed his funk because it reminded me of my friend who reminds of Charlie getting depressed, well at least until I felt bad for everyone involved. Anyway, the gang decided they should be nice people and plan him a birthday party – but not really try – and then a bunch of boring crap happened that proved they weren’t really nice, which is totally shocking six seasons in. There was a friend who lives under a bridge and smokes crack and just made me feel dirty about myself who was on screen for awhile and something about a gifted shirt that was quickly returned and replaced for a better shirt. Oh and Charlie and Dee decided to go to a spa together (more on that later.)

It wasn’t bad or anything, but it just never resonated with me. I did laugh out loud when Dee asked Charlie to go to a spa with her. His response: “What is this word ‘spa?’ I feel like you’re starting to say a word but not finishing it. Are you trying to say ‘spa-ghetti?’ Dumb Charlie will always have a special spot in my heart, which is why the end of the episode made me at least end happy.

After an episode of teasing references, we got to see Charlie’s “Dram Bok” (or dream book.) This contained everything that goes on in his head between when he sniffs glue before bed to when he wakes up again the next day with cat food breath. Charlie’s book shows us ridiculous sketches for his denim chicken, teeth bird and worm hat. Sunny has always had the market cornered on denim comedy (remember the work out episode where Dee wears jeans to work out), but the idea of denim chicken really spoke to me. I would like to put one on my desk tomorrow. If you’re a coworker reading this, there are now 19 days until Xmas (Futurama, whaddup!?) Still, the meandering of the rest of episode cannot simply be redeemed by a bunch of teeth glued to a bird or a rat stick.

The next episode was going to be even ZANIER. You see, the commercial said the gang was going to get lost in the woods! Can you imagine those crazy kooks trying to survive a night in the wilderness? How would they find food, shelter and beer (because they like to drink!!!!!)? How would they escape? It’s all so darn zany!

So yeah, my attitude wasn’t the best at this episode and the part in the woods pretty much went how you would expect – except for the bunny. Dee, Frank and Mac decide to capture and kill a bunny, but they soon become convinced it is stealing their souls and grow to love – even worship it. Dee even names him Peter Peter Nickel Eater (which I imagine I will enjoy referencing later around small animals.)

Meanwhile, Dennis and Charlie are paired up to hitchhike to safety away from the wilderness and deliver a pretty good A Plot. I’m too lazy to look back on this, but I feel like it has been way too long since we’ve seen a good Dennis and Charlie pairing. They gave us Day Man – why not keep them around each other more? Anyway, they hitch a ride with a man-loving Tom Sizemore (add cock to his many addictions) who thinks they are “lot lizards.” Their goal is to get to Atlantic City for an animal rights fundraiser Frank donated money to so he could tell off the people running it.

As an aside, sometimes the use of money on this show drives me insane. Are they poor? Do they live off Frank’s riches when needed? Does the bar have customers? Every time I see someone bad with money, I blame TV. I’m not asking for a shot of their bills the way Roseanne did, but at least give me a framework.

Anyway, Dennis and Charlie escape Tom Sizemore and make it to the casino. Dennis convinces Charlie that he needs to start saying yes to life more, and he quickly wins $15,000 in roulette, tries asparagus and delivers a speech to the audience. Then, they get to hang out with their favorite Philadelphia Phillies ballplayers – Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. I was kind of hoping they’d pair up and hit the town for a bit, but the image of them wrestling homoerotically on the floor drunk while the two professionals watch dumb-founded worked for me, too. Before the night ended, they made sure to text photos with the ballplayers back to the gang in the woods to taunt them for missing their heroes.

The episode gave Sizemore one more appearances to pick up the rest of the group in the woods before the credits rolled and then I happily moved on to watch The League and drool over another Archer promo. Maybe I’ll get a chance to review THAT show two weeks too late in the middle of winter. After this handcrafted nearly 1,200 word masterpiece, how could I be asked to stick around and help drive traffic?

It’s Always Sunny, “Mac’s Big Break”: We’re gonna need a montage!

Oddly enough, at the end of this episode, my biggest takeaway was… how the f do you spell gibrone? Jabrone? Jabronie? Gabronie? Our good friends over at urbandictionary.com provide the four iterations above, but I was leaning toward the more subtle “gabrone.”

Either way, I have to side with Charlie and the DJ, gibrone is a great word, and your homework for this week is to incorporate it into your daily vocabulary. In this episode, Charlie and Mac win a radio contest and the chance to take a shot at the goal during a professional hockey game, and if they make it, they get to spend the weekend at the radio station beach house. Obviously, this will ingrain Mac into the upper echelons of Philly sports and celebrity society. So based on his extensive pee wee hockey experience, Charlie helps Mac prepare for his big moment so he doesn’t end up looking like a gibrone on the ice. We get some good exchanges out of this set-up, including Mac, as usual, wholly preoccupied with looking like a bad-ass, including yielding the hockey stick as a weapon, bringing the duster out of the Season 3 wardrobe closet (maybe it’s been used since then, but I don’t remember and don’t care enough to look it up), and contemplating the merits of a long, flowing, dramatic hockey wig.

The episode as a whole was okay, very big-picture, situational-type humor, but it still lacked that holy-shit-did-they-really-just-do/say-that edge that this entire season has been missing. The b-story with Frank taping Dee and Dennis’ “podcast” just illustrated the point (intentionally or not) that these guys are only funny and entertaining inside a very narrow band, although it was great to see some of the old favorite minor characters back again. Rickety Cricket, Ben and The Waitress are great foils to this gang’s abuse, and I enjoy watching the discomfort that comes from sticking them all in a small room together. Still, the podcast dialogue really needed to be better to justify such a boring setting – they’re just sitting in front of a computer, talking. In the words of my good friend Captain MessyPants, SNOOZE! The other problem I had with this set-up was that the hilarity of this group’s dysfunction comes largely from no one in the group acknowledging it, and here, Frank acknowledges that the exchanges between Dee and Dennis are ridiculous, which takes the audience out of the moment. Or at least it did for me.

That said, I’d definitely listen to that podcast.

The best part for me was the Mac-Charlie training montage – brilliant, and I also liked the play on reality at the end. They made you think for a moment that maybe Mac really was going to stroll out to center ice and make the puck his bitch. But about the time the cardboard goalie exploded, I was on to the gag. From that point, the episode ended kind of abruptly, but I do hope that there will be a callback to Charlie’s prediction that Mac will indeed become a sports sensation when his embarrassing collapse (complete with awesome sound effects – a callback to the podcast storyline) is shown repeatedly on ESPN.

I’m not a guy, so maybe the sports theme was just lost on me, but like a guy, this episode mostly left me unsatisfied and wondering, “Was that it?” (Yup. Sex joke. Hi mom!)

Funny lines:

• This asphalt – that’s not regulation.
• Where’s the H key? There’s no H key!
• Does my scar look like’s a dog’s vagina? You know, maybe. I’m not going to sit here and try to get inside the mind of a dog.

P.S. You know who will sit there and try to get inside the mind of a dog? My friend TheQuoner, who gets a nod for being a great sounding board on all things Sunny and for letting me pass some of his great insights off as my own.