The Gang Gets Analyzed

"The Gang Gets Analyzed" is the fifth episode of the eighth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Synopsis
The Gang gets Freudian as they step into the therapist's office to work through their mountain of issues. But when thinks he has everyone figured out, the shrink turns the tables on him and exposes the insanity in his unique brand of pop-psychology. Dennis' psychology is exposed as abnormal indeed.

Recap
11:00 AM, On a Thursday, Philadelphia, PA is at her therapist's office, scratching her head vigorously. Her therapist asks if her psoriasis has gotten worse, telling her "skin conditions can be a manifestation of deeper issues." Dee then tells her therapist that she is mad at her, because a "cooperative dinner" her therapist advised her to have for her friends fell apart, because no one was assigned the job of doing the dishes. Dee demands that her therapist resolve the situation -- which she clarifies to mean that she wants her therapist to tell her who should do the dishes. Dee says that she has brought her friends, and the rest of The Gang enters the office -- and reveals he's brought along the dishes.

Everyone in the Gang continues to insist that they should not do the dishes, because they did something else for the dinner: and Dee cooked, 🇲🇴 "provided security", Frank "bankrolled" it, and  says he had to travel in search of this "rare fowl" (Dennis clarifies that he was sent to a gourmet grocery to get pheasant.) The therapist says that, obviously, far more is going on here than a disagreement about the dishes, which The Gang readily admits. When she says that she can help them, Dennis, pointing out his "background in academic psych" (and that he went to an Ivy League college, and not LaSalle like the therapist), says that he can help her, and he proposes that it begin with individual meetings with each member of The Gang.

🇲🇴
And we start with Mac. Mac starts out by going through a wild series of mood swings (beginning with him showing off his sweet karate moves). The therapist asks if he often has these sorts of mood swings. Mac says that he does, and that he's had a "slight fluctuation" in his weight: he gained and lost 60 pounds in 3 months. He talks about how, when he had the weight, people would look at him as a "monster." The therapist assures Mac that he is no longer that monster, but that turns out to be the problem: Mac wants to be thought of as a monster, and now that he is "tiny as a postage stamp", no one is scared of him anymore. He then sees a pen left on the coffee table, and thinks that it's a test of some sort: "You leave this pen here, and people are supposed to think, 'Wait, that looks like a dick.'" As the therapist tells Mac that he may be suffering from "body dysmorphia", Mac fondles and eventually starts to suck on the pen. He tells the therapist that Dennis is giving him "size pills" to try to make him big again. The therapist says that he should talk about his issues, which Mac takes as her saying that talking will make him big again. Dennis comes back in (through a door that's supposed to be locked) and says that it's time for the next one-on-one.

And it's Charlie. It begins with Charlie quite literally banging his head on the wall. He seems frustrated, and says that he knows he'll be stuck with doing the dishes because it's "Charlie Work". Charlie tells the therapist what Charlie Work entails, but when the therapist asks him if he dislikes it, he says that he actually does love Charlie Work; it's just that he hates the fact that it is forced onto him. Charlie says that he thinks he's weird, and asks the therapist if "surviving an abortion", "sharing a bed with a man who may or may not be your father", and "gluing cat hair to the back of your neck" makes him weird. The therapist tells him he should be "comfortable in his own skin", and Charlie takes that as meaning that he should, literally, get more skin; he should glue "a ton of cat hair" to himself, and "stop hiding the pigeon". When the therapist asks for clarification on that, Charlie reveals that he carries a pigeon around with him, who he should let fly away. When Charlie pulls the pigeon out to release him, though, he finds out the pigeon is dead. So much for that.

Frank


Next up is Frank. Frank, who previously called therapy a "scam", is very resistant; he is eating pistachios and spitting the shells out on the coffee table. He tells the therapist that "this skull is Fort Knox". When the therapist asks him why he doesn't trust therapists, Frank reveals that as a kid, he did open up to a therapist, and he ended up "shanghaied to a nitwit school." That opens the floodgates, and a series of repressed memories come back, and soon Frank is crying as he remembers his first love, a girl who was "always smiling... that's because she had no lips." The therapist tries to steer the conversation back to the dishes, but Frank continues talking about how his first girlfriend died two weeks after his first kiss, because "she thought she was a spaceman with a plastic bag for a helmet." Frank completely falls apart after that, saying the therapist has "unzipped" him.

Dennis is next. He brings in a series of dossiers he has been keeping on the Gang, and wants to go over them with her. Dennis wants her to treat him as a colleague, but the therapist tells him she can't discuss the others with him, and wants to talk about him. Dennis persists with trying to keep the discussion on the others, starting with Mac. Dennis sees the pen and asks if Mac was sucking on it, saying that Mac does that all the time in their apartment. Dennis further reveals that his file on Dee was begun in the 2nd grade. The therapist asks about the "size pills" Mac mentioned, and Dennis says they are actually diet pills: "Mexican ephedra." Dennis took it upon himself to give him those pills after he got very fat, because he was "gross." When the therapist sees Dennis is writing something, Dennis tells her that he not taking notes, but "drawing... conclusions" -- and shows her that he has drawn a picture of himself standing behind the therapist, cupping her bare breasts.

And then it's on to Dee. The therapist tells Dee that she can't help her if she is lying in every session. She confronts Dee about some of her lies, like Dee's claim that she was the first choice for the female lead in The Notebook. Dee persists in her lie, and then goes on to recite a speech from Good Will Hunting, which the therapist thinks was in a Brooklyn, not a Boston, accent. Dee asks the therapist if she thinks she would have been good in the movie, and when the therapist says she's never seen her act, Dee tells the therapist that she's been acting the whole time (i.e. lying to her). Dee then insists that the therapist tell her that she's a good actress, which the therapist finally does after repated requests.

The Gang
In the waiting room, Frank is still a sobbing, blubbering mess as more repressed memories come back. Frank tells Dennis there was "another twin in your mother's womb", who they were going to call Donnie, but Dennis and Dee devoured him. Dennis is irritated with how things are going. Mac is doing "quadra-lift thrusters" in the waiting room, as part of his effort to get "big" again. Dennis offers him a size pill, and Mac refuses it, saying the therapist has told him he doesn't need them anymore to get big. Charlie offers Dennis some advice, which Dennis declines, that he should do what he wants to do in his life. Dennis takes his advice and does what he wants, which is smack Charlie. Charlie, in turn, then punches Dennis and attacks him, encouraged by Frank. ("Get him for Donnie!")

In the office, Dee is scratching her dandruff on the therapist. ("You having a white Christmas, you bitch?") The rest of the gang storms into the office, demanding that the situation be resolved immediately. When Dennis complains that Charlie now thinks he's well-adjusted when he's the "craziest of all", Charlie demands that he stop calling him crazy -- and then reveals that the "pheasant" they thought they were eating was actually a pigeon he caught. The therapist starts to tell them that they need further assistance, but they start chanting "Dishes, dishes!" at her, which leads her, in a rage, to blurt out "Dee, do the fucking dishes!". The rest of the Gang is happy, but Dee flies into a rage, and she does indeed do the dishes... by smashing them on the floor of her therapist's office as she berates her.

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

 * Kerri Kenney-Silver as Therapist

Trivia

 * This is the first episode of Sunny directed by Todd Biermann, the Philadelphia, PA native. For the last nine years he was producing and directing reality shows (for History Channel, TLC, SpikeTV, Food Network, The Golf Channel, and HGTV).
 * Danny DeVito tweeted this photo on August 17th: "Trollfoot!!".
 * "Air on the G String" by Bach plays on the background at therapist's waiting room.
 * Charlie, Dennis, and Dee also saw a therapist back in.
 * Sweet Dee also had a major in psychology during her three-years-long studying at Penn.
 * Some of Mac's karate chops make actual swishing noises, heard after he is finished making whooshing noises with his mouth.
 * Kerri Kenney-Silver and Charlie Day have worked together before, on the season 2 episode of Reno 911 titled "Not Without My Mustache". That episode also featured Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who plays The Waitress -- she and Charlie Day played a pair of incestuous twins.
 * This episode explains Mac's "unfortunate" weight loss since - turns out Dennis was the one who put the bar in this "extreme risk" by handing to Mac those "size pills" (Mexican Ephedra).
 * Dennis indeed went to the Ivy League college - aforementioned University of Pennsylvania.
 * Dee's therapist went to La Salle University . For the record, while La Salle is not an Ivy League school, it is a prestigious school in its own right. This is likely a subtle jab by Rob McElhenney at La Salle College High School, a prestigious high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia that is the primary rival of McElhenney's actual high school, St. Joseph's Preparatory School, a fictionalized version of which was presented in the season 7 finale.
 * According to Frank, initially Barbara Reynolds was carrying triplets in her womb and the third one was supposed to be called Donnie, but Dennis and Dee "devoured him before he could be born". Also, from "The Gang Reignites the Rivalry" we know what Barbara had to have a C-section ("because of Dee's giant hands").
 * In the 5th Season finale, Charlie quoted from Good Will Hunting - in this episode Dee does.
 * Dee seems obsessed with Ryan Gosling (just like Mac in 08x01) - that could be why she made up the whole story about her being "the first choice" for the female lead in The Notebook.
 * The fact that Charlie survived an abortion was first mentioned in "The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby".
 * Frank and Charlie's habit to hang out into the sewers was mentioned in 06x12 and 07x11.
 * Sweet Dee has psoriasis now.
 * In "Mac Fights Gay Marriage", Charlie fed The Gang some dead squirrel's almonds he found in the alleyway.
 * Charlie has a pocket on the inside of his jacket (where he stores his dead pigeon), which is not present at any other point in the series.
 * If you want to feast your eyes upon other examples of Dennis' drawings - see 03x05, 04x02, 04x09 and 04x11.
 * This is the third time the f-word has been used in a regular episode, after "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters" and "Mac and Charlie: White Trash". Like on those other two occasions, it was beeped for airing. It was also used multiple times in the special episode "A Very Sunny Christmas", which was uncensored in the version released on DVD (but edited and/or bleeped in the airing on FX).
 * The F-Word Scoreboard for the series as of this episode:
 * Charlie: 14 (13 in "A Very Sunny Christmas", 1 in "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters")
 * Dennis: 2 ("A Very Sunny Christmas")
 * Mac: 3 (2 in "A Very Sunny Christmas", 1 in "Mac and Charlie: White Trash")
 * The Therapist: 1 (this episode)

Quotes

 * Therapist: "Charlie Work"? What's "Charlie Work"? Fill me in.
 * : Oh, right. You don't even know what Cha... Well, Charlie Work is, like, you know... like basement stuff, cleaning urinals, uh, blood stuff, your basic slimes, your sludges, anything dead or decay, you know - I'm on it, I'm dealing with it!..
 * Therapist: And you dislike it... (?)
 * : Well, no. I mean, at its core, I love it. I love the dark, I love slippery things, I love being naked... in the sewer. Bleach smells good, uh, tastes good, you know, but it's just, like, I don't like being told what to do!..

"(to Therapist) I'm, like... probably the weirdest guy in the Universe, you know? Probably even weirder than someone from Saturn!.."

- charlie