The Gang Goes to a Water Park

"The Gang Goes to a Water Park" is the second episode of the twelfth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It aired on January 11, 2017 and was viewed by 574,000 people

Synopsis
The group heads to the water park, each with an ulterior motive; Dennis takes on a protege; Frank and Charlie are determined to ride every ride; Mac and Dee get stuck in a tube slide.

Recap
9:58 AM on a Saturday, Philadelphia, PA

The Gang is at the entrance of a water park, waiting for it to open. They all discuss their plans for the day: Charlie and Frank are determined to ride every ride in the park, Mac and Dee are going to ride their favorite ride once, before the water in the park is filled with urine, then go relax, and Dennis isn't going to ride anything at all, preferring to spend his time with "bikinied woman seeking relief from the insufferable prison of motherhood." Mac points out that he won't need to pay to get in because he got his entrance bracelet laminated when he was 14. He also gives them all some helpful advice: don't sit on the drains, no matter how good it feels on your butthole, because it could suck your intestines out your butthole. He tells a story of a girl who had to chew through her prolapsed anus to escape. The park opens, and they go in.

Dee and Mac head for their favorite ride, the Kiddy Twister. Dee runs a quick test of the water and finds it piss-free, so they start to go, but a lifeguard tells them that slide is for kids only. They go ahead and get in, and the apathetic lifeguard doesn't particularly go out of his way to stop them. They enjoy their ride -- until Mac's bracelet gets caught on a seam in the slide, and he is stuck. And Dee becomes stuck right after that when she crashes into him. And other kids start sliding down the slide, crashing into them.

Charlie and Frank find their quest to ride all the rides held up by the long line for each ride. They think that they're stuck -- until they see someone taking a kid directly to the front of the line. They ask why he gets to go to the front of the line, and they're told it's because he's there with a program for kids with leukemia. This gives them an idea, so Frank and Charlie jump straight to the front of the line, both proclaiming quite loudly that Frank has "the AIDS". But, you know, the "vagina kind" of AIDS, not the "gay AIDS".

Dennis is poolside, looking for his first conquest of the day. He sees a quite attractive blond woman (and dismisses a less attractive woman), and makes his way over to her. She tells him she's there with her son, and he tells her he's there with his daughter, who needs a day of fun after the death of her mother. The story seems to be working, and the woman is quite sympathetic. But at that moment, a girl named Abby runs up to him, calling out "Daddy, daddy, can I borrow $20?" Dennis feels compelled to give her the money. Recognizing a kindred spirit, he walks away from the woman to seek Abby out.

Back in the slide, Mac and Dee are still stuck, and more kids are stacking up behind them. Worse, Dee's pee testing kit is now showing that at least one person has pissed in the water. Dee and Mac start trying to get the kids past them, including one who seems to be passed out. They push him out of the slide, and he lands face-down in the water, floating motionless, and though another bored lifeguard sees him, he makes no effort to help.

Dennis finds Abby at a gift shop, having been caught shoplifting. She tells the security guard who caught her that her dad's a cop, and Dennis plays along, getting her away from the security guard. He tells Abby that she should pay for the sunglasses she was stealing with the $20 he gave her, and then he says he's changed his mind, and he'll take the $20 back and she doesn't get any sunglasses. They leave, and Dennis tells Abby that he sees the road she's going down, "and you've got real talent." He teaches Abby some of the other scams he runs, asking her "Do you want to be a thief, or do you want to be an artist?" He then reveals that he didn't actually give the glasses back to the store, and he gives them to her. The two of go through the park, running various scams.

Charlie and Frank continue their quest to ride all the rides. Mac and Dee are still stuck in the slide, more kids coming in after them. Dennis and Abby continue to scheme and scam their way through the park, cleaning out the lost & found, stashing their loot in a locker.

Frank and Charlie think they have completed their quest to ride every ride, and then they notice one that isn't on their map. It's a ride based on the movie Thunder Gun Express, and it's not actually open yet; it's still in testing, with no water in it. But living up to the motto of the movie, "No hesitation, no surrender, no man left behind," they go ahead and try riding it.

Dee's pee-testing kit is now blood-red, showing that the water is now mostly pee. Dee, as well, can't hold it in, and starts to pee. Mac figures out how to get them out -- have one of the kids chew through his bracelet, like the girl Mac keeps talking about who had to chew through her intestines to free herself from a pool drain. The kid gets to work.

Dennis and Abby have crashed a birthday party, and Abby squirts Dennis with a Super Soaker she scammed off a boy. She tells Dennis she has to go, pointing out the unattractive woman from earlier as her mom. Abby tells Dennis that her mom never listens to her, and Dennis is furious that a "genius" like Abby is being held back by an idiot like her mom. Abby gives Dennis the Super Soaker as a gift so he won't forget her.

Dennis goes down to angrily confront the woman he thinks is Abby's mother, but she tells him she doesn't have a daughter, and she points out her son. Dennis then realizes that the key to the locker they stored their stuff in is gone -- Abby snatched it while she gave him the Super Soaker. Dennis realizes that he has finally met someone who might be more devious than he is.

Charlie and Frank are at the top of the Thunder Gun Express ride, about to go down. Charlie pours a single bottle of water down it to prepare, and lets Frank go first. Frank soon learns why you don't go down a waterslide with no water in it -- the friction from the dry slide rips his back open, and he lands in the pool below spewing blood everywhere. Everyone there thinks he has AIDS, so there is a panicked rush to get out of the pool. Right at that moment, the kid chews through Mac's wristband and they are freed -- landing in the pool full of "AIDS blood". Chaos ensues. Mac takes the opportunity to sit on a drain, which obviously makes him very happy.

Starring

 * Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly
 * Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds
 * Rob McElhenney as Mac
 * Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds
 * Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds

Guest starring

 * Jayden Bartels as Abby
 * David Benioff as Bored Lifeguard #1
 * D. B. Weiss as Bored Lifeguard #2

Co-starring

 * Chris Aquilino as Security Guard
 * Lucas Barker as Skinny Kid
 * BJ Tanner as Customer #1
 * Ethan Drake Davis as Customer #2
 * Sarah Gaboury as Woman in Yellow Hat
 * Steve Guiol as Staff Member
 * Kellan Michael as Sherman
 * Renee Pezzota as Average Looking Woman
 * Tava Smiley as Hot Mom
 * Troy Wells as Small Boy
 * Yimmy Yim as Chaperone

Trivia

 * This episode was accidentally released 10 hours early on Google Play.
 * Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who previously wrote the episode "Flowers for Charlie", both made an appearance in this episode. Their characters seem very apathetic to what happens to the kids they watch over, which could be a spoof of the fact that their show seems to have no trouble killing off characters at will.
 * Benioff and Weiss returned the favor in the Game of Thrones episode "Winterfell", in which Rob McElhenney played a Ironborn soldier who was quickly killed by Theon Grayjoy (with an arrow through his eye, which might be a sly reference to Mac's often ineffective "ocular patdowns") during Theon's rescue of his sister Yara. More on that here.
 * Mac's story about the girl having to chew through one of her intestines due to getting sucked to the bottom of a drainage hole is a reference to Chuck Palahniuk's short story 'Guts'.
 * Abby shares her name with Abigail Taylor, a six-year-old girl who survived several feet of her intestines being sucked into a filter at the Minneapolis Golf Club kiddie pool.
 * Dennis and Abby's storyline was a parody of 2003 film "Matchstick Men", starring Nicolas Cage.
 * The movie Thunder Gun Express was first mentioned in the Season 7 episode "Thunder Gun Express", and then again in the Season 9 finale "The Gang Squashes Their Beefs."
 * Dennis is clearly using "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System" on the "hot mom" when he claims his wife has died.
 * Frank's line "They should've sent a poet." is a reference to Contact.
 * The music playing in the background when Dennis realizes that Abby has stolen the key is the same movie played in the scene in which Agent Kujan realizes that Verbal Kint has completely made up his story in The Usual Suspects.
 * The woman with the yellow hat yelling "Has anyone seen my son?" is a reference to Jaws in which Mrs. Kitner, who also wore a yellow hat, is searching for her son in the midst of commotion following the shark attack.
 * Charlie and Frank mention that they've rode every ride in the water park, however Mac and Dee are stuck inside a slide for one of the water parks rides for most of the episode, thus meaning that it is impossible for Charlie and Frank to have rode every ride in the water park.
 * the music played at the final scene and throughout the credits is the 4th movement of New World Symphony by Dvorak.

Quotes

 * Mac: Kid, kid, kid, listen. Come here. Before you go, no matter how alluring it is, do not put your genitals or your butthole near the pool drain, you got it? In fact, cover your butthole! OK, kid, go kid go! (He and Dee push the kid free) Cover that butthole, kid!
 * Dee: Mac, stop talking to children about their buttholes, OK? It's not appropriate.




 * [Frank and Charlie are pretending Frank has AIDS so they can skip to the front of the line.]
 * Frank: AIDS, AIDS, I got AIDS! We're coming through!
 * Charlie: I'm a doctor, my patient's got to get to the front of the line because he has AIDS.
 * Frank: Yeah, I got the AIDS.
 * Charlie: He got it from a gay guy in the '80s.
 * Frank: I'm not gay, I didn't...but there's two kinds of AIDS. There's the vagina AIDS, then the needle-based AIDS. I'm...I'm a vagina guy.
 * Charlie: Well, no, actually my test results show that it was the gay AIDS.
 * Frank: All AIDS are bad, there's no good AIDS, but I'm telling you, like I said, this is not the gay AIDS.




 * Dennis: See, now, that bothers me. A genius, whose fate is controlled by an idiot?
 * Abby: You think I'm a genius?
 * Dennis: Yes! Yes, I think you're a genius. Are you kidding me? When I was your age, I couldn't have accomplished half the things you did today. See, this is why the Chinese are destroying us. If you were born in China, you'd be the head of some factory by now. Or they would have thrown you in a river 'cause you weren't a boy. Alright, it's not a great analogy, but you get my point.




 * Frank: My back!
 * Boy in pool: That guy has AIDS!
 * [Bored Lifeguard #2 blows the whistle while reading a magazine.]
 * Bored Lifeguard #2: AIDS. [raises hand] Everybody out.