The season premiere offers the Sunny mirror image of Abbott’s “Volunteers,” using a story about unseen footage from the gang’s court-mandated community service at the Philly elementary school to detail exactly what went wrong that day. The initial impression that this might be more of an AE episode vibe than a Sunny one gets annihilated when Quinta Brunson’s Janine calls Dee a “total f**king c*nt.” Take that, prudes at ABC. One of the great joys of this half-hour is getting to see AE performers like Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, and Lisa Ann Walter play in a darker vein of humor, all of them seemingly invigorated by taking off a few off the guard rails that are understandably in place on broadcast TV.
Of course, episode writers Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, and Keyonna Taylor know we’re here for the Paddy’s Pub gang, all of whom try to get as much as possible out of their time at Abbott. Is Charlie just there to learn how to read? Of course not. As Dee leans into her jealous side and tries to take down Janine, Charlie & Mac work on recruiting kids in a “reverse Blind Side” to their local school. It’s all ridiculously in tune with Charlie, Mac, Dee, Dennis, and Frank, people who are constantly looking for a way to maximize the profit on their time and failing miserably, even while volunteering at an inner-city school. Much has been written about the bone-deep selfishness of this quintet, but it’s almost refreshing to see how transparent they are about it in an era of two-faced grifters. They were almost ahead of their time in their desire to outwardly use every interaction as a road to improve their situations, and the humor of the show often comes from how they fall on their face every time that they attempt anything outside of their comfortable ruts.
In the case of the premiere, it culminates with Dennis spearheading a new version of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” using Abbott teachers to sing about extremely un-timely topics like Guantanamo and Kaepernick—it’s amazing how the gang’s idea of current events is always a few years behind reality, even if they do get in a nice Ozempic dig. When Dennis learns that Fall Out Boy did their update to the Storm Front banger, the latest plan collapses, sending them back to a grift that Frank suggested from the very beginning: Ripping out the copper wiring. “The Gang F**ks Up Abbott Elementary” is a reminder that anyone who thinks that the writing on It’s Always Sunny is about misanthropes behaving badly isn’t paying enough attention. Yes, this is a show about grifters, but it’s also about people too dumb to do too much damage with their cons to anyone but themselves. Even the conclusion of the episode works in everyone’s favor, as the school was going to have to replace the copper anyway.
The follow-up is even better. After Frank goes into a coma while watching Netflix’s Is It Cake?, Dee is forced to stay by his bedside in case his heartbeat falls below 50 BPM. As she goes through the cycles of grief, the guys find their way to a Liberty Ball to raise capital to turn Paddy’s Pub into “Starbucks for dive bars,” but end up mistaken for the help before finding their way to a crack house. In the end, Frank wasn’t actually in a coma. He turned into a sweet treat himself to prove “the magic of cake technology.” Amazing. This installment works from a classic Sunny template in which the gang cuts Dee out of a possible endeavor only to f*ck it up themselves. It also works from the comic vein in which the gang blames someone else for their failures, usually Frank, who gets trashed this episode for not elevating them like they intended when they allowed him into their idiot club so many years ago.
As their failed benefactor lies in a supposed coma, Charlie, Mac, and Dennis take the Liberty Ball invitation that Dee found in the trash and try to find an investor. At first, they just end up working for the business fat cats around them as waiters, and then as bathroom attendants. The guys regularly talk about breaking out of their patterns but then dive right back into them, more comfortable getting a VIP a fresh bottle of wine than actually being one of them. A window to a brighter future opens in the form of a high-strung power player named Simon (a brilliant Alex Wolff, channeling the kind of spoiled bro-idiot he’s certainly met at some Hollywood parties). He wins them over by saying, “I really hope your father dies,” and giving them some of his cocaine. Before you know it, they’re snorting meth at another party before landing in a final location that Cricket probably knows well—the kind of place with mattresses on the floor and where “Narcan” is the password. After all, “Frank knew that galas were gateways to crack houses.”
Stray Observations
- •Tyler James Williams, who plays Gregory on Abbott, was 12 when Sunny premiered in 2005.
- •There’s a wonderful example in the premiere of the thought processes of the Paddy’s crew and how it devolves in a matter of minutes in the scene in which they start at least somewhat logically upset that the kids don’t know about 9/11 and race down their mental holes of idiotic hoaxes to “There was never even towers.” As someone says, “Those people were passionate but dumb as shit.” Put that on a Sunny t-shirt.
- •There are so many wonderful little throwaway jokes in the premiere, but two of my favorites are Frank wasting no time urinating in an elementary school locker and the gang asking, “Where’s the volunteer’s lounge?” when they get kicked out of the teachers’ one.
- •Another great throwaway line in the second episode comes from Howerton, who responds to Frank’s nurse talking about the denial stage of grief with a mumbled, “I deny what you’re saying, by the way.”
- •The bit about Ava always having cash on her to “make things go away” in front of the Abbott cameras is even better when you think about what she hasn’t paid to scrub over the first four seasons of that very funny show.
- •Call me an old man, but Fall Out Boy’s “Fire” update is legitimately horrible. I think I like the Sunny version better. Don’t believe me, check it out. You’ve been warned.
