The Season 12 premiere of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia comes flying out of the gate with its patented continuity, envelope-pushing, and attention to real-world issues as only the Gang can solve them.
If you haven’t been keeping up with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia for the past decade, the Season 12 premiere might shock your pants off. But that’s exactly what this Gang is all about: shocking satirical humor. And they do it very, very well with “The Gang Turns Black.” Oh yeah, did we mention it’s a musical episode?
This knock-off of The Wiz and Quantum Leap allows us to not only hear Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Frank (Danny DeVito), Charlie (Charlie Day), and Mac’s (Rob McElhenney) beautiful singing voices, it’s also a staunch look at racism in America in a way only the Always Sunny gang can deliver.
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Back to Black?
We start in Dee’s apartment, where the Gang is watching The Wiz on TV. The “Old Black Man” (Wil Garret) from Season 11’s “The Gang Moves to the Suburbs” is hanging out with them, apparently still sleeping in Dee’s bed since the crew made a bet about it. After discussing what it’s like to be a black person in America (while Old Man snoozes), they’re all collectively zapped by an ongoing lightning storm, waking up to discover they’ve actually “turned black.” It’s a case of we-still-look-like-ourselves-but-our-reflections-are-different. And for a show that’s done blackface before and discussed racism in detail, this seemed a nice refreshing take on a Freaky Friday-esque story device.
As they mull over what they’re supposed to do now that they’re visually black to the rest of the world, the Gang gets pretty meta as they sing out what they’re feeling in a very Wiz-like way. Old Black Man (“Just call him Old Man!” -Dee) has gone missing, so it’s up to them to find him.
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The Racial Profiling Arrest
Charlie, Dennis, and Mac head out on their own, with Dennis quickly learning his car keys have gone missing out of his pocket. All the while there’s shades of statements that could be construed as racist coming from all three of them. Charlie has to set things straight by saying, “I think we’re not supposed to make wild assumptions about black people based upon whether or not we have stuff in our pockets.”
Cops pull up and arrest the trio, a tall built guy (Mac), a portlier dude (Dennis) and a little kid (Charlie) trying to break into the car. In the police station, Mac and Dennis try not to make assumptions about the black men they’ve become, all the while singing their feelings. They’re worried that the men in their switched-out bodies have priors (even though Mac and Dennis have actual priors themselves). But as it turns out, the cops let them go, apologizing to the ‘priest’ and the ‘deacon’ for holding them up. (“We’re Church Blacks! Haha! Oh. Church people.” -Mac & Dennis)
Charlie is questioned by cops who see him as a young boy. He says the two men he was with are part of his “gang,” which disturbs the cops. But the audience knows that it’s just something they all call each other. Charlie recaps through song his devastating life story about living with a guy who may or may not be his dad because he once slept with his prostitute mother. He laments not having a father while playing with a toy train the cops gave him to satiate him. “Guess we got that in common, kid,” Charlie says to the reflection of the little boy in the mirror. “Oh, unless he knows his dad. Oh sh*t, that was racist.” Assumptions are bad, everyone!
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The Quest to Do Good
Dee is obsessed with thinking they’re part of a Quantum Leap kind of story, and believes they have to perform a good deed in order to get back into their own bodies. She and Frank stop by a homeless encampment under a bridge, trying to discover the whereabouts of Old Man. They have an interesting discussion about how to address Z (Chad Coleman), one of the guys who Charlie and Frank occasionally hang out with under the bridge. Frank desperately wants to say “the N-Word” but Dee is appalled by his blatant racism. It’s just a reminder that this group we’ve come to know and love aren’t really people we’d root for in real life.
Eventually they find Old Man sleeping with a bunch of other people on a mattress, so they take him to a nursing home where’s he’s actually reunited with his wife. Dee and Frank think they’ve done their one needed good deed, but all of that gets erased moments later. In a very Sunny move, Scott Bacula of Quantum Leap fame shows up as a nursing home janitor, claiming he’s researching a role (he’s not). It’s a wonderful little interaction, complete with Bacula getting his very own singing solo. It just adds to all the continuity layers that make up a Sunny episode. Plus, hearing Frank mistake his last name for “Blackula” (aka Black Dracula) is hilarious in its own right.
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Nobody Beats the Wiz
The Gang all meets back up to sing about the rules and the lessons they need to learn in order to get back into their own bodies. They come up with the idea to bring their VCR back to the electronic store The Wiz (get it?!) so they can perhaps re-zap themselves and things will go back to normal. Naturally, Frank still doesn’t get it, and we don’t expect him to. He just “really wants to say the N-word.” No, Frank. No.
The Wiz employee is appropriately creeped out by a group of five folks just singing to him on the street, begging him to fix their busted VCR. Instead of letting them in, the employee locks the door and calls the police. At first they claim racism, but Dennis points out it’s weird for people to just sing on the street for no reason. So what are the rules, and what is the lesson?
We get one particular answer when the cops show up, and Charlie brandishes the toy train he got from the cops he spoke to earlier. As soon as he pulled it out, I knew all bets were off. “He’s got a gun!” the cops scream, immediately shooting poor Charlie in the chest. The audience is treated to a highly disturbing shot of the young boy falling to the ground in a hail of bullets. The Gang desperately tries to click their heels and end it all. They just want to go home (their “white” home, ask Frank keeps saying). But it’s no use, and the scene fades to black as we’re left wondering where the redemption sets in.
So what have we learned?
Of course, we learn this is all Old (Black) Man’s dream, and he wakes up to the Gang kicking him out. But the final shot of Old Man looking in the mirror and seeing Scott Bakula’s reflection wonderfully tied the entire episode together. He even asks himself, “What are the rules?” But what’s he referring to? The rules of leaping? Or how we handle racism going forward?
Full disclosure, I have not seen The Wiz or Quantum Leap so I can’t comment on the accuracy of each segment, but given this crew’s penchant for successful parodies, it’s safe to say they nailed it. The Gang may not have learned anything, but we sure took away a lot of the lessons they tried to discover.
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As we look forward at some of this season’s episodes names, like “PTSDee” or “Hero or Hate Crime?” we can be sure we’re in for another wild ride, featuring some extra realness along the way. We can’t wait.
Next week, things look like they’ll cool down when they go to a water park. New episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia air every Wednesday at 10/9c on FXX.