I can almost hear the cries of those thinking this season is uneven at best or just plain bad and that this episode demonstrates exactly that. Well, I disagree. What a shock.
I thought I died. When they said they remembered The Contest my heart went faster, because I knew, instinctively, about what they were talking, and the whole scene made me die. I laughed so much, so much, I couldn't feel my face for a while.
As the title of the episode suggests: it's a clip show: something lazy and boring which show-runners do when they are out of ideas and want simply to cash in on their past glory. Not the case with It's Always Sunny. Why? Because, as has been proven time and time again, IASIP doesn't abide to cliches, the show subverts them, usually with high meta-fictional bravado, and so it is with this episode.
While waiting for their phones to update the software which will take about half an hour in which, as Dennis put it: "What are we gonna do without our phones for 30 minutes", they are lost in existence without nothing else to do as in most of our tech-enslaved society - anyway... they decide to remember the good auld times, even though Dennis protests, seeing as something only old people past their prime do. And so a typical clip show begins, they want to remember something and the show cuts to said memory, making a collage of old episodes. Pretty basic and lazy and boring, after all viewers and admires and fans can watch clips on YouTube at any time. But, in this case, is it lazy?
As always, with this wonderful show, even this seemly simple concept is turned on its head when they start to mess with each others memories, from small details all the way to complete fictional accounts, giving us the greatest Seinfeld reproduction scene (I've always wished that they would do a full-blown Seinfeld reference, of course I liked the small ones: Frank's tight jeans, yada yadas thrown here and there, Mac saying Frank with the same inflection Jerry says Newman, etc., but I wanted more, and I got it in spades).
The pastiche alone in this episode deserves the highest of commendations, it is simply divine, add to this the magnificent ending which can give birth to some pretty wild hypothesis of the reality of the show and its characters (for those who like theorise about such things) and one gets an episode that goes fast and hits hard and makes one think and enquire. Deeply satisfying.
I thought I died. When they said they remembered The Contest my heart went faster, because I knew, instinctively, about what they were talking, and the whole scene made me die. I laughed so much, so much, I couldn't feel my face for a while.
As the title of the episode suggests: it's a clip show: something lazy and boring which show-runners do when they are out of ideas and want simply to cash in on their past glory. Not the case with It's Always Sunny. Why? Because, as has been proven time and time again, IASIP doesn't abide to cliches, the show subverts them, usually with high meta-fictional bravado, and so it is with this episode.
While waiting for their phones to update the software which will take about half an hour in which, as Dennis put it: "What are we gonna do without our phones for 30 minutes", they are lost in existence without nothing else to do as in most of our tech-enslaved society - anyway... they decide to remember the good auld times, even though Dennis protests, seeing as something only old people past their prime do. And so a typical clip show begins, they want to remember something and the show cuts to said memory, making a collage of old episodes. Pretty basic and lazy and boring, after all viewers and admires and fans can watch clips on YouTube at any time. But, in this case, is it lazy?
As always, with this wonderful show, even this seemly simple concept is turned on its head when they start to mess with each others memories, from small details all the way to complete fictional accounts, giving us the greatest Seinfeld reproduction scene (I've always wished that they would do a full-blown Seinfeld reference, of course I liked the small ones: Frank's tight jeans, yada yadas thrown here and there, Mac saying Frank with the same inflection Jerry says Newman, etc., but I wanted more, and I got it in spades).
The pastiche alone in this episode deserves the highest of commendations, it is simply divine, add to this the magnificent ending which can give birth to some pretty wild hypothesis of the reality of the show and its characters (for those who like theorise about such things) and one gets an episode that goes fast and hits hard and makes one think and enquire. Deeply satisfying.