“Donny! You would’ve been the good one!“
With It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s record-tying fourteenth season set to begin on September 25th, I thought I’d build up to it by reviewing my five favourite episodes, talking about the premises, moments and quotes that make these stand out above others.
Taking place entirely within a therapist’s office, Season 8’s “The Gang Gets Analysed” allows us to get a better insight into the minds of The Gang and lets us see what makes them tick as the strange individuals they are. Kicking off with Dee talking to her therapist, the events are set into motion when Dee blames her for her skin condition worsening because of her advice: have a cooperative dinner. Obviously this dinner didn’t go well because The Gang were involved – Dee summarises their lives together by claiming it had, “Screaming, tears, physical threats. Frank pulled out his gun, somebody said the ‘N’ word.” The biggest issue, however, is who cleans the dishes and this brings the other four members into the room – Dennis shouting “ya sort it out?!” is great – with plates aplenty in tow.
So this episode is structured rather basically, with each of the five getting a scene with Dee’s therapist that either tells us something new about them or bring something to forefront that we already know relatively well. First, though, we get a scene featuring all five that breaks down their roles in the dinner and why they believe they should be “the winner” as Mac says – or as Dennis puts it, “the loser, because most of us will be winners“. During this we learn that Mac set the table and hosted, Dennis and Dee cooked, Frank bankrolled and Charlie bought the delicious pheasant that they ate and we later see Dennis still eating in the waiting room. This episode focuses quite a bit on Dennis being the leader and he immediately assigns himself control of the sessions over the therapist’s own thought, deciding that Mac will go first and showing his dominance over him by not letting the latter have the final say with “I’m going first.”
It’ll come as no surprise to you to read that this is an incredibly strong episode, as while Mac’s scene isn’t the strongest of the episode, it’s still fantastic and one of his quips has been very popularly used since this originally aired. Doing his karate chop motions because he’s on edge, a visibly distressed and perhaps even mentally ill Mac emphasises hill role in the dinner, shouting how he made a playlist, provided security and kept everybody safe before breaking down into almost tears on the settee. The strongest point of his possible mental illness comes when he questions whether these four people are actually his friends before getting frustrated at himself for the sheer thought of it, and then instantly starting to chuckle away at something random Charlie said. This is fine, but is simply a slow build to the magic we get after the therapist asks is he feels strong emotion in quick succession as this leads to him mentioning a “slight” fluctuation with his weight. His calmness in saying “I gained and lost sixty pounds in three months” is met with an incredible look of shock on her face at this almost impossible feat.
“Well, first of all, through God all things are possible, so jot that down.“
Believe me, after you’ve watched this you’ll be seeing that quote everywhere, because that’s how good it is. That being said, it’s not my favourite sequence of this scene, as I actually much prefer Mac’s downbeat attitude at how he’ll never be that size again and how he enjoyed people looking at him in disgust. The way he says, “Woah, look at that monster coming towards us, you know, barrelling towards us” is nearly as good as his delivery in saying “LADY I WAS AS BIG AS A SKYSCRAPER! AND NOW I’M AS TINY AS A POSTAGE STAMP!“. It says a lot for me about Frank’s scenes in this episode that this isn’t the episode’s peak. After we learn that Dennis has been giving Mac size pills to keep his weight down we get another example of Mac’s ambiguous sexuality when he randomly changes the subject through looking at a pen and mentions how “that looks like a dick” – yes, he does indeed then suck on it.
Dennis reaffirms his superiority by barging in, ending the session prematurely and rolling things on for the therapist to talk to Charlie in what is the ‘weakest’ scene of the episode. I’m using ‘weakest’ very loosely here as there’s nothing wrong with it – it has a lot of good quotes – but it simply pales in comparison to the other scenes, one of which features a much stronger Charlie moment. As you can expect, though, this particular Charlie scene drifts much more towards the strange in comparison to the dimness of Mac’s. Here we get things such as Charlie bashing his head off a wall repeatedly, describing what Charlie Work is and saying what he loves doing – “being naked in the sewer, bleach smells good.” I love his comment, “I’m probably the weirdest guy in the universe, probably even weirder than someone from Saturn“, because it shows an awareness from Charlie about his intelligence levels, but it’s done in a way where he randomly brings up Saturn. We also get another semi-tragic look into Charlie’s life when he asks “Would it be weird if you survived an abortion?“, although any sense of sympathy for him is turned to laughter with him following it up with “would it be weird if you shared a bed with a man who may or may not be your father” and also mentioning glueing cat hair to the back of his neck. Somehow despite all of this the therapist tells him he’s well adjusted to society despite his mannerisms, and we get a nice call back to “The Gang Buys a Boat” with him repeating her words and completely misinterpreting what she’s talking about, to the extent where he reveals the pigeon hidden in his jacket pocket, setting it free, but it’s dead. It’s a shorter scene that Mac’s, but there seems like there’s so much more to take in.
Frank’s session is, in a word, spectacular. Eating cashew nuts and spitting them into the direction of the therapist, he rants that he isn’t opening up and that his skull is Fort Knox. Of course, what’s amazing about this is that he opens up so easily when she asks, “why don’t you trust therapists?”. It’s here we first learn about the nitwit school Frank was in as a child and the frog kid that he was friends with. There’s a brilliant balance between the horror of the therapist reacting to him saying how “all the rooms had drains in the floors so they could hose us down” and his sadness as he wistfully remembers his first kiss to a girl who had no lips – the violin piece of music that plays over is perfect and even adds towards making this a Danny DeVito masterclass. It doesn’t really come as a surprise when it’s made clear that Frank’s been repressing all of these memories so unhealthily and I love his “ya unzipped me” and “she thought she was a spaceman with a plastic bag for a helmet” during a minor montage of his breakdown.
The meltdown of Frank, Charlie and Mac is received with applause from Dennis towards the therapist, praising her for breaking them all down. It’s an utterly heartless remark that becomes a lot more sinister when he looks out the window and with the blinds shadowing his face to make him look like a psychopath makes this genuinely unsettling statement:
“It’s interesting, our thing, isn’t it? To be in someone’s mind, to have complete control. It’s like the thrill of being near the executioner’s switch, knowing that at any moment, you could throw it, but knowing you never will. But you could. Never isn’t the right word, because I could, and I might. I probably will.“
After mocking her in response to her suggesting they discuss him rather than the other three, he hands her his personal folders on them so they can disregard doctor/patient confidentiality and discuss what happened in their sessions. Starting with Mac, we can just about seeing the promotional photo of Fat Mac in the folder as Dennis mentions the well placed pen that “can have quite an effect on a man like him” and asks if he tried to suck on it. His tone as he says, “He’s always sucking on the pens in our apartment. I’m always having to hide them” is the best thing about this particular scene, no doubt about it, however I do greatly enjoy his reveal of the picture you can see above and his eerie, “You like it? It’s very generous“.
We’re then back to square one with Dee’s second session of the afternoon, where it’s immediately revealed that she’s lying in every session as the therapist works out how she wasn’t actually the first choice for the female lead in The Notebook, despite Dee being “secure enough to admit that Rachel McAdams did a fine job.” This particular session is the third best of the four after Frank’s and Mac’s, with her recital of a line from Good Will Hunting and the confusion as to whether she’s speaking in a Boston or Brooklyn accent being another example of her quite simply not being a good actress. After brushing off Frank not being her father – “that’s a whole can of words I don’t want to get into it” and her rethinking of how good she thought McAdams’ performance was, we get another tragic Dee moment that focuses on her desire for approval by repeatedly saying “Tell me I’m good” to the therapist until she gets what she wants. At this point, even after watching the episode so many times, I’m not sure where I’d rank who in regards to being mentally unstable.
While this session is still going on we get the waiting room scene where a distraught Frank, lying and crying on Charlie’s lap shouts “Dennis, there was another twin in your mother’s womb!”, with his emphasis on the last word being top notch. We learn that Donny, as he was to be named, was devoured in the womb by Dennis and Dee and this is responded to excellently by Dennis, who calmly and angrily says, “that can’t possibly be true“. He reminds a despondent Frank that it wouldn’t have been his kid anyway, before being irked even more by Mac, who firstly pushes him in the shoulder when requesting to get on his shoulders to do some quadra-lift thrusters. It’s his refusal to take a size pill that grates the most on him, however, and Rob McElhenney’s facial expression and body language when saying no is tremendous. This all leads to Charlie’s best moment, as he’s impressed by Mac’s strength to say no and asks to give Dennis some advice – I really love the way Dennis says, “absolutely not” – before being slapped in the face for his nerve to speak up. “And now you know that, of course, I’ll come back at you with everything that I have“. Charlie’s leap onto to Dennis to start choking him is both unexpected and hilarious, and it’s made 100x better by Frank shouting, “GET HIM, CHARLIE! DO IT FOR DONNY!“
Having reached the breaking point, the four barge into Dee’s session again – as she’s scratching her dandruff onto the therapist – demanding apologies for messing everyone up and demanding an answer as to who does the dishes – if you’re thinking it’s Dee, you’re right. Of course, that isn’t the only reveal as Charlie confirms the pheasant they thought they’d eaten was actually pigeon, but as you’d expect this isn’t really a problem for these four lunatics who are ecstatic about not having to wash up. Dee on the other hand has a full on meltdown and simply smashes every plate and bottle on the spot in the office to close the episode out.
A very strong character driven episode, “Analysed” has every member of The Gang in fine form upping their usual mannerisms an extra notch. Dennis is the main culprit here, and Howerton thrives being a “bastard man” – to use a common Sunny quip. McElhenney delivers some of the season’s best quotes and DeVito delivers a brief emotional flavour to balance the hilarity of Frank Reynolds. All the while, Olson adds an even more unbearable quality to Dee and at times feels like the true main character of this episode, despite Dennis’ prominence. Ultimately there’s just enough lunacy in this one that Charlie doesn’t appear as idiotic as usual, but Day still throws out some great lines and that choke on Dennis always gets me laughing.
Rating: 9.25/10
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