I’m convinced by now that the gang as a whole has a form of selective amnesia in the fifth episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 10 – ‘The Gang Spies like U.S’. I say this because they act as if “sitcom continuity” is in fact reality, where the status quo resets with each episode, and when a character from outside their group comes to them, such as the waiter from an earlier episode, they will claim to have never met them. I wonder if this is a form of meta-joke, a satire of the genre and its tropes as a whole.
The episode itself is essentially one big double entendre. We know pretty much from the outset what Mac and Dennis (Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton) are actually looking at (the adults will know what I mean when I say it’s related to a dessert) and how mundane it actually is in the end. I recommend a second viewing with this episode, especially when it comes to Dennis’ comments about how he doesn’t want to accidentally look at Mac’s “research” by mistake.
The highlight of the episode comes in the form of Charlie (Charlie Day) when he visits Mac and Dennis in their new (Dee’s) apartment with the gift of a vase. The way that the other two just nonchalantly believe Charlie when he says he has a spider in his ear that sends his thoughts to him. I just can’t help but crack a smile when he says that.
The title of episode is not so much a reference to the U.S. government as much as it is a statement.
They’ve done this before in The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation, where the analogy was so thinly disguised that that in itself became a source of comedy. But there was a point they wanted to convey and it’s true in this one also: when you get down to it, people have more similarities than they have differences. People are dirty the world over. Season 10 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is now available on Netflix.
#Peace.Love.ItsAlwaysSunny
