Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare

"Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare" is the fourth episode of the ninth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Synopsis
The gang does their best to recoup their investments in questionable schemes by dumping their losses on Ben the soldier while trying to avoid being duped again by whatever mastermind is pulling their strings.

Recap
11:45 AM, On a Thursday, Philadelphia, PA

Dee is giving Mac, Charlie, and Dennis a sales pitch for a product called Invigaron. They aren't particularly interested in Invigaron, but they are interested in the set of golf clubs Dee got, which she says she got for attending a 20 minute presentation. Mac tells her that the whole thing appears to be a scam. Charlie seems more interested than Mac and Dennis, who continue to mock the product and call it a scam. Dee has Charlie check his stress level with a stress meter, which shows he is very stressed. Mac and Dennis continue to insist it's a scam, and they say they'll go to the same presentation she did, and get the golf clubs without buying anything, because "We won't get got, we gonna get." (And a classic example of the show title being the punchline to a joke follows.)

Back at Charlie's apartment, Charlie is getting some cases of the berry juice. When he starts drinking it, Dee tells him he's supposed to sell it, not drink it. He asks her what they're supposed to be doing and how they're supposed to sell this stuff, and Dee admits she doesn't know what they're supposed to do either. She says she needs Frank's help, but Charlie informs her he's been missing for 2 days, after he left their apartment in the middle of the night saying he had to get to the playground.

So they go to the playground, and they find that he is inside a coil on the playground, wearing only tighty-whitey briefs and Crocs. He begs Charlie and Dee to get him out, because he doesn't want to be seen there when the kids arrive to play. Before they'll do that, however, Charlie and Dee want business advice from him. Dee shows him an Invigaron flier, and Frank informs her it's a pyramid scheme, and they've been duped. He tells them about all they can do at this point is find a bigger sucker. When Dee suggests Ben The Soldier, Frank agrees he is indeed the "dummy with deep pockets" they're looking for. Dee and Charlie decide to leave Frank in the coil so that he'll keep giving them advice.

Mac and Dennis arrive for an Invigaron presentation being given by a guy named Harris Marder. They make it clear they are not interested, and they're just there to put in the 20 minutes and then get their golf clubs. Marder tells it it's clear that Invigaron isn't for them, because they're "men of leisure." So he offers them a coupon for a free round of golf at a golf club in Florida, and then after that he offers them the chance to buy a week at that golf club. He then tells them if they buy a second week, they can sell that, and in effect, they're vacationing for free. Mac and Dennis then figure out that if they buy a third week, "we're being paid to vacation." They celebrate the fact that Marder "just got got."

Charlie and Dee hold an Invigaron presentation at Paddy's, which is attended only by Ben and Da' Maniac, who apparently just showed up for the free soup. They show a video, which Dee and Charlie have edited independently of each other, cutting out each other's parts and sticking in parts featuring themselves. Ben the Soldier expresses confusion at what Invigaron is, and decides that it's not for him. Da' Maniac just steals several cases of Invigaron.

Mac and Dennis go to visit Frank in the coil. They try to sell him one week of their timeshare, and like Dee and Charlie, he informs them that they got ripped off, and the salesman definitely meant to sell them as many weeks as he could. He offers them a "premium lead" on who might buy their timeshare: Ben the Soldier. Like Dee and Charlie, they leave him in the coil so he will feel like he has to keep helping them.

Mac and Dennis' plan is to try to trigger Ben's PTSD to get him to buy, and they invite him over to their apartment. Da'Maniac shows up uninvited. Their attempts to trigger his PTSD with loud noises and yelling instead set off Da'Maniac, who smashes a lamp. Ben declines their offer -- but Da'Maniac accepts it, and apparently thinks that Mac and Dennis' apartment is the timeshare. Dennis tells Mac that they should get in on Dee's Invigaron business, and get Da'Maniac to be their salesman.

Dee and Charlie, having the same thought of triggering Ben's PTSD, break into his apartment wearing night vision goggles. They find Mac and Dennis have beaten them to it, dressed like "Arab terrorists" and screaming at him. Ben seems unaffected, though, and he tells them that he wasn't actually in combat in the Army -- he was a computer programmer, and he found the experience quite enjoyable.

Mac and Dennis and Dee and Charlie all realize that Frank told them the same thing about Ben, and so they decide he's up to something, and is behind the whole thing. They go to an Invigaron meeting, to confront Harris Marder about how Frank is behind all this. Marder tells Dee that she can get out of Invigaron at any time; just pay a $200 penalty and her "downline" will shift over to him. Mac and Dennis ask to be similarly let out of their timeshare contract, but Marder tells them those contracts are "ironclad" -- and he then "accidentally" points to an opt-out clause in the contract, where they can get out of it for a mere $2,000. Dennis and Mac again tell him that he "got got". They tell Marder they know Frank is behind all of it, but Marder says he has no idea who Frank is. Da'Maniac shows up, and Marder informs him that he's his best Invigaron salesman. Dee realizes that since she brought him in, she gets a cut of his sales, and so she's rich now. Marder reminds her she just opted out, and so the money goes to him now. The Gang is sure Frank is somewhere in Florida, raking in all the cash from his scheme.

Except he's not. We end with the sight of Frank still naked in the coil, as kids play in the playground around him.

Alliances

 * Charlie and Dee
 * Dennis and Mac

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

 * Tommy Dewey as Harris Marder
 * Travis Schuldt as Ben (The Soldier)
 * Roddy Piper as Da' Maniac

Trivia

 * This is the second appearance for 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as Da Maniac. He first appeared in the season 5x07 episode "The Gang Wrestles for the Troops". This is also his final appearance as 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper passed away on July 31st, 2015.
 * The "Invigaron" video that Dee and Charlie make has little snippets of videos other members of the Gang have made on the end: Dee's "Crazy Paddy " commercial from "America's Next Top Paddy's Billboard Model Contest", Mac's Project Badass tape from "Mac's Banging the Waitress", and Dennis' campaign commercial from "The Gang Runs for Office."  (This also recalls how other videos they've made have had bits of video from previous videos on the end of them, like the way that a snippet of Dee running out of a burning building from "Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire" ends up on the end of their promotional video in "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens.")
 * There's no such thing as an "abani berry". The berry shown on the poster is a blackberry.
 * It's possible the abani berry is a parody of the açaí berry, a fruit that grows in the Amazon Rainforest (as opposed to the Andes Mountains) and is said to have many health benefits.
 * The "stress meter" used at several points in this episode may be a reference to the E-meter used by Scientologists. Like Dee's meter, it's meant to measure your level of stress.
 * Mac and Dennis' yelling in fake Arabic resembles the "jihad video" from the episode The Gang Goes Jihad.
 * Frank spends the entire episode stuck in the coil.
 * Frank was actually the victim of a "Ponzi scheme" (another name for a pyramid scheme) in the episode "The Great Recession."

Images
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Quotes
hey bird

Shut up