The Gang Hits the Road

"The Gang Hits the Road" is the second episode of the fifth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Synopsis
The Gang tries to expand their horizons by going on a road trip to the Grand Canyon.

Recap
11:00 A.M. on a Tuesday

Frank wants to see the Grand canyon before he dies. Originally the journey was supposed to be Dennis, Mac and Frank. Charlie was supposed to keep up the bar with Dee because of Charlie's fear of leaving Philly and Dee of course was left out of the trip. However Dee shows up at the bar earlier than usual, having purchased a new car after Mac and Charlie had destroyed her previous car in an attempt to fake their own deaths. The Gang allows Dee to come on their road trip & Charlie decides to come along in fear of being alone at Paddy's Pub.

The Gang piles into Dennis' Range Rover to begin their journey and they discover that Charlie has never eaten a pear. Mac decides they have to stop by the Italian Market to find him a pear to knock off more things to do off Charlie's bucket list. We also find out Charlie has never eaten blueberries.Charlie has not eaten almost any fruit. The gang encounters a bicyclist in front of them on the road and Mac decides to "fire a beer across his bow and ruffle his feathers". After knocking him off his bike, they run over his bike and ruin the Range Rover.

Then, they need a new vehicle for their journey so they steal Dee's new used car she had purchased that day, almost leaving her.

Dennis and Frank decide to spend some time of the journey in the U-Haul while Mac, Charlie and Dee stay in the car and fight over tapes and music.

After arriving at the Italian Market, Charlie tries his first pear and it tastes like sand, then proceeds to eat the entire pear with the sticker. He claimed to "eat stickers all the time!" Dennis and Frank haggle with the Gypsies over a french press.

After purchasing a French press, wicker chairs, an energy drink, a pear, a Piss Jar, and a Soul Asylum tape, they leave but switch up their arrangements first. Frank, Mac, and Dee play a drinking game of naming all 50 states, drink while you think. Dee decides to pick up a hitch-hiker to drive her car so she can drink and play the game. Charlie and Dennis think it is a good idea to burn the Wicker chairs to cook some hot dogs...in the back of the u-haul, with no ventilation.

Dee gets drunk and questions her mysterious drivers intentions, and finds out he is headed to Hollywood. She insists he will be doing gay porn with his tiny body. She plays him the song: Runaway Train while filling her piss jar and hitting on him. After finishing, she throws it out the open window and it lands in Mac's sleeping mouth. After nearly dying from burning the Wicker chairs and drunken piss breaks, The gang decided to all huddle into the U-haul while Charlie and the driving stranger sit up front. We find out that Mac sees himself as the sheriff of Paddy's Pub.

The next morning, the group wakes up in the trailer, thinking that they are half-way along the road trip. But when they get out, they see that Dee's car has been stolen, and they are back at the bar. When the gang goes into the bar, Charlie explains to them that he panicked about leaving Philadelphia, and told the hitchhiker to take the rest of the group to the Grand Canyon. The gang ends the scene with them drinking a beer at paddy's pub.

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

 * Cha Cha Ciarcia as Fruit Vendor
 * Shannon McKain as Hitchhiker

Trivia

 * It's revealed in this episode that Charlie has never left Philadelphia, eaten a pear, blueberries, or strawberries.
 * Technically, Charlie actually has left Philadelphia before this episode: in "The Gang Gets Invincible", he and Frank follow the rest of the Gang to the Eagles' tryout at a high school in Bucks County, PA, which is outside the city limits of Philadelphia.  But Bucks County is immediately adjacent to Philadelphia County, and is considered part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area, so Charlie probably doesn't consider that really leaving Philadelphia. Charlie will however, physically leave Philadelphia in the Season 10 episode "The Gang Beats Boggs" where the gang travels from Philadelphia to LA via a flight to that destination in which Mac and Charlie specifically set foot in LA.
 * In this episode when Charlie and Mac are trying to hot wire Dee's car, Charlie says: It's black to yellow! The colors Black and Yellow are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme colors.
 * When Frank opens the back door of the U-Haul, after Charlie and Dennis light the chairs on fire, he opens the door with no resistance, even after Dennis held the door open with duct tape.
 * The first time Sweet Dee pulls up with her new car, it has a trailer hitch on it.  After the gang runs over the bicycle and return to the bar, Frank says, "I have an idea" and they pan to Sweet Dee's new car, it doesn't have the trailer hitch on it anymore.  They then show the gang taking off in the car without Dee.
 * If you use the location for Paddy's Pub shown in the episode "The Great Recession", 3rd and Dickinson Streets, then the Italian Market is roughly 1.1 miles from Paddy's.  (Source: http://goo.gl/maps/DOpYg)
 * Some places that Dee and Mac erroneously think are states include "South Virginia" (twice), "East Virginia", and Philadelphia, much to Frank's amusement. Mac and Charlie later guess Detroit and Milwaukee, further exasperating Frank.
 * Dee will get her piss on Mac again in The Gang Goes to a Water Park, and he will later get pissed on by Dennis, Charlie, and Frank in The Gang Texts.

Quotes

 * Charlie: I've never eaten a pear.
 * Mac: What? How is that possible?
 * Charlie: Pears weird me out, dude. Where do you start with a pear? The top? The bottom?




 * Mac: I'm calling a lot of people 'Bozo' now. It's like my new thing.




 * Mac: I want my 35 cents back. Charlie, give him the pear.
 * Charlie: I can't, I just ate it.
 * Mac: The whole thing?
 * Charlie: Yeah, it was pretty gross.
 * Mac: The stem and then the, and the core?!
 * Charlie: You didn't tell me not to eat the stem dude!
 * Mac: Did you eat the stickers that are all over it?!
 * Charlie: Yeah, it was gross.
 * Mac: Of course it's gross, it's a sticker bro!
 * Charlie: I eat stickers all the time dude!
 * Mac: Oh my god, this whole thing is a disaster... I... I'm going back to the car...




 * Charlie: Nice tape job but, I noticed you stopped at the grill.
 * Dennis: Ran out of tape but, I measured the opening of the door and it's shorter than the height of the grill.




 * Mac: I'm bored. Let's play a drinking game: Name all fifty states, drink while you think.
 * Dee: Fine... go. Maine.
 * Mac: New Hampshire.
 * Dee: Vermont.
 * Mac: Philly.
 * Dee: North Virginia.
 * Mac: South Virginia.
 * Dee: East Virginia.
 * Mac: South Virginia. Did I say that already?




 * Dee: (very drunk, to the hitchhiker they've just picked up) So you're headed to Hollywood, huh?
 * Hitchhiker: Yeah.
 * Dee: Oh my god. Oh my god, you're running away from home aren't you?
 * Hitchhiker: Uh, yeah, maybe
 * Dee: Oh no, no, no, sweet baby, they're gonna eat you alive in Hollywood. Oh, you're definitely gonna end up doing gay porn with this tiny little body of yours. Oh man, kid...




 * Mac: I did an ocular patdown on him.
 * Dennis: What?
 * Mac: I'm saying I did an ocular assessment of the situation garnered that he was not a security risk and I cleared him for passage.




 * Dennis: Well, how exactly do you view yourself within the context of our group?
 * Mac: The... sheriff of Paddy's.