It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Review: Blast From The Past

It’s 11:30 on a Monday morning, and our favorite Gang of underachieving Philadelphia misanthropes are watching de facto mascot Charlie Kelly do the butt dance. Specifically, the “time capsule butt dance,” an impromptu jig inspired by the Gang’s ceremonial opening of a time capsule they buried ten years earlier. It’s a rousing way to start the second spot-on episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in a row. The sixth season had been a relatively acceptable collection of insufferably sociopathic anecdotes, but last week’s shaggy dog zinger announcing Dee’s pregnancy set into motion a new zest for comedic life I’m hoping the Sunny crew holds onto. Luckily, this week’s installment proves the Gang is officially on a roll as I was already howling during the cold open. Inside the Gang’s time capsule from the year 2000? Why, such Y2K staples as a Korn CD and The Cider House Rules on laserdisc.

At first, Dee is touched with nostalgia as she discovers a letter to herself she had written a decade earlier, but is quickly dismayed to learn she had expected her future self to be a successful Hollywood actress by 2010. She’d been so naively confident in her surefire stardom she even wrote a postdated check for a million dollars to be given to her high school drama teacher in thanks of his inspiring guidance. Clearly distraught at the stark reality of what her life has instead become, Dee tearfully scoffs at the “ridiculous” notion of keeping a time capsule and flees the bar. The guys at first blame her mood swing on volatile hormones, but Dennis understands Dee’s real trigger and concludes, “It’s the failure.” Isn’t it, though?

Also discovered on their trip down memory lane is a photograph depicting Dennis, Mac and Charlie as younger hoodlums with a mysterious fourth musketeer saddled alongside them. Who is this unknown lout? It’s none other than Schmitty (guest star Jason Sudeikis of SNL fame), a blast from the past who Mac and Dennis remember fondly, but instigates an instant wave of defensive jealousy from Charlie. The guys recall the rivalry between Charlie and Schmitty ten years earlier that resulted in Schmitty’s exile from the gang. Dennis remembers literally kicking Schmitty out – of a moving car, that is – per Charlie’s request, and decides to track down their old friend and make amends. In spite of Charlie’s visible discomfort, the title sequence is cued and makes this week’s escapade officially clear: “The Gang Gets A New Member.”

Charlie, Dennis, Mac and Frank head over to Schmitty’s house where their old pal turns out to be just as zany and fun-loving as they (except the visibly annoyed Charlie) remember. After convincing his mother to pretend he’s dead and break the bad news to the Gang, Schmitty leaps down a flight of stairs to greet his buddies with an old-fashioned gotcha. Charlie’s feigned sympathy for Schmitty’s mother evolves to a palpable distaste as Schmitty turns out to be not only alive and well, but still full of spunk as he teases Charlie for “puttin’ on a couple of ‘lbs.’” Dennis and Mac cackle with wide-eyed wonder as Schmitty introduces himself to Frank by kissing him on the forehead and calling him “Chuckles,” and then demanding the guys “get on [their] knees” to ask for forgiveness. When they actually do, he reveals he was just kidding and half-jokingly asks if they have any shred of self-respect left after all these years. Dennis and Mac are thunderstruck with awe.

Back at Paddy’s, the guys are enjoying a round of brewskies while catching up and Charlie continues trying to show the chinks in Schmitty’s armor. He begins by making fun of him for living with his mom, to which Schmitty replies with the news his mother suffers from MS and needs his help around the house. “That’s kind of a downer story, dude,” Charlie quietly trails off. Schmitty reveals, to Frank’s amazement, Charlie’s fixation on the game Nightcawlers was just as present when they had lived together years ago, and suggests it be taken up a notch with the implementation of blankets. “They could be the dirt!” Frank enthuses. “Or a force field,” Schmitty suggests. I love when Sunny makes references to things that only exist in its universe, and the audience is simply forced to go with it – Nightcrawlers is merely one example of such fictional entities. Charlie bitterly shoots down the idea, reminding Schmitty that Nightcrawlers is an “imagination-based game.” “It’s still imagination,” Schmitty points out. Charlie is seething with insecurity by now and pulls out his saving grace, the time capsule butt dance, in order to regain the spotlight. Dennis and Mac have already been swayed to the dark side by Schmitty’s beguiling nonchalance and respond with apologetic humiliation for their socially inept friend. Schmitty’s take on the butt dance, meanwhile, brings the house down. Charlie’s had enough and demands Mac and Dennis choose between him and Schmitty. Guess whom they pick?

Dee, meanwhile, has inadvertently nabbed herself a teaching job at her former high school. She stops in to visit her old drama teacher and discuss the starry-eyed idealism that has since faded with her career prospects. Expecting him to cheer her on, the now-sober Dr. Meyers instead tells Dee to “give it up,” because “it’s far too late” for her hopes of Hollywood stardom. She dutifully agrees to help out in class and is met with predictably unimpressed scorn from her students.

Newly ousted Gang member Charlie decides to cling to the one quasi-friend he has left and turns Dee’s observations that he’s “good at cleaning shit out of toilets and taking trash and throwing it in dumpsters” into a gig as the new school janitor. Charlie’s interview with the principal (hi, Dave Foley!) is a highlight of the episode, as he turns in a resume that consists of nothing but a photo of Bruce Jenner in his Olympic glory days (or, pre-Kardashian disaster) and expresses intense desire to snack on a desk eraser (“it certainly smells of grapes”).

The newly formed Fab Four are dining at a posh luncheon locale to commemorate Schmitty’s reemergence. Mac and Dennis present Schmitty with a cloverleaf ring, designed to depict a whole shamrock when held next to the other three pieces. Aww. Schmitty’s growing unease and genuine disgust at how his former friends have ceased to mature over the last ten years becomes most obvious when lunch arrives. Apparently, Dennis has taken the liberty to order for Mac and Frank in situations such as these due to his “refined palate,” and essentially forces them to eat prawn salads no one likes. Schmitty finds this unacceptable and flags down the server to order linguini. Mac, practically jumping out of his seat, announces, “I want fries! I can have fries?!” as though he’d been held a culinary prisoner by Dennis’ stuffy tastes. The bloom is clearly fading off of Schmitty’s rose for one more person as a miffed Dennis mutters, “linguini is too heavy for lunch,” under his breath.

When the guys take Schmitty back to Paddy’s for an official initiation ceremony, Mac’s infatuation now begins to deteriorate as Schmitty makes fun of the adorned throne, red carpet, and hilariously overdramatic Enigma album playing in the background. “What’s weird about this?” Mac asks. Dennis points out that this is standard protocol for various “men’s clubs” and organizations. Like what? “The Mafia, the Freemasons, the White House,” the guys reply with nary a hint of sarcasm. When Mac begins his numerous failed attempts to ring a ceremonial bell with a roundhouse kick, Schmitty can’t take it anymore and kicks the bell himself. With that, Mac, Dennis and Frank have had enough of Schmitty’s blatant disrespect and find themselves throwing him out of a moving vehicle yet again, only proving how deeply twisted the level of their arrested development really is.

When Dee’s attempt to reawaken the thespian in Dr. Meyers results in him slipping on the freshly waxed stage floor and shattering his hip, we find out the overzealous housekeeping is courtesy of Charlie the eager janitor. Mac, Dennis and Frank explain their poor judgment in giving Schmitty another chance and plead with Charlie to abandon his new career path and rejoin the Gang. Charlie, however, is nonplussed and informs the guys he wishes they would have stopped by sooner, because he’s “a janitor now.” He then tosses his cloverleaf ring aside and waxes off into oblivion.

This episode of Sunny packed in so many classic elements that make the show great, as well as basic storytelling techniques that help keep the character arc flowing nicely. It’s rare for Sunny to bust out a cliffhanger of this magnitude right after an episode containing a major reveal. I’m anxious to find out how the guys convince Charlie to rejoin the Gang, and if we’ll ever find out who the father of Dee’s baby is. Jason Sudeikis nailed his role as Schmitty, particularly because it’s always a welcome change to see how a “normal” person outside the Gang’s vortex of dysfunction views their destitute lifestyle. The time capsule also served as a nice touch. It’s endearing to know that, at one time, Dee, Mac, Dennis and Charlie were once creatively ambitious kids with their whole lives ahead of them. Now, like Schmitty, viewers are more pressed than ever to wonder when and how things went so terribly wrong.

Season 6, Episode 8: The Gang Gets A New Member (originally aired November 4, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro