Always Sunny S12E5 Recap: A “Cat”astrophic Murder Mystery

The tension is thick in this week’s episode of Always Sunny, as the crew goes full blown real crime drama in “Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer.”

One of TV history’s most cat-like characters…is dead. This week, the Always Sunny gang sniffs out who killed Dennis Reynold’s ex-wife Maureen Ponderosa. And all signs are pointed squarely on Dennis, as this sleek-looking real crime docudrama unfolds in this week’s episode “Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer.”

Taking elements from Netflix’s Making a Murderer and HBO’s The Jinx, this true-to-form replica of crime documentaries sends us on a disturbing path into Dennis’ and admittedly the gang’s inner psyche.

R.I.P. Maureen

We start by hearing a frantic 9-1-1 call. A cat is dead in an alley with its neck snapped. Though the operator says that’s not an emergency for the police, the caller says, “It’s a woman, but also a cat. It’s a cat-woman,” a nice callback to Frank’s “man-cheetah” idea. We find out this is in fact Maureen Ponderosa, Dennis’ short-lived ex-wife who he still pays alimony to. She’s been living as a literal cat since 2013 and went by the name Bastet, or an ancient Egyptian cat-goddess. Next on her surgery list was a ‘reverse nipplectomy,’ so she could add more rows of nipples. Clearly these two nutcases had a bond at one point.

Dennis has been giving off creepy serial killer vibes for some time now, and only in recent years has his deviance been ramped up to 11. That comes in the form of saying he’ll chop Dee up and display the pieces on his mantle, or wanting to bring women on his boat who “couldn’t possibly say no…because of the implication.” So it’s not entirely far off that the audience believes he totally killed Maureen. It’s fun watching Dennis try and stay two steps ahead of everyone, even invoking killers like Paul Bernardo and Jodi Arias by offering his DNA to the cops.

Dee offers even more troubling news about Dennis’ childhood, saying he snapped the neck of a crow right in front of her. Dennis says it was to put the thing out of his misery, but that doesn’t account for the three other crows’ necks he snapped. (“Who likes crows?!” -Dennis). Killing animals in childhood can signal a serial killer in adulthood, so things aren’t looking great for Dennis.

Selling Their Drama

“If you can kill a crow, you can kill a cat,” says Frank, who didn’t seem to mind all the neck snapping when Dennis was a kid. He tries to show off his undercover skills to the ‘show’s’ producers by attempting to get a confession out of Dennis on tape. This doesn’t work in the slightest. Instead, Dennis flips the tables on Frank and not-so-secretly tapes one of their depraved conversations (with a GoPro around his neck no less).

Frank admits on camera that he had a sweatshop in Vietnam (we knew), but was apparently “tossing cats” into soup and feeding it to his workers (we didn’t know). Not only cats, but kids sometimes if they got a limb chopped off in the factory. Frank pulls a Robert Durst-esque burping fit, and is even put through the infamous final shot of The Jinx, where Durst reveals he “killed them all.” Frank is also caught on his microphone admitting guilt, and decides to take off in a cab, where he further implicates himself to the driver. But he realizes the statute of limitations is probably up, so he goes back to the studio where they have a “nice spread of food” for him to enjoy.

Meanwhile, Mac and Dennis give a shout out to Mystery Science Theater 3000 when explaining Dennis’ alibi. He says the night Maureen was killed, they were watching Operation Dumbo Drop and making funny quotes over the movie. Mac acts like a wide-eyed 10-year-old trying to cover for his buddy, but he could be making it worse the more Dennis’ rage goes unchecked. Plus, Mac offers that Dennis could have actually committed the murder since he met up with Maureen that night to give her an alimony payment. The plot thickens.

The Final Implications

Dee is finally, finally given a shot to act in the reenactment portions of the documentary (even though she wouldn’t give interviews if she couldn’t be a part of it). She’s in the same outfit Mac wore as Nightman in Season 4’s “The Nightman Cometh,” just another example of that delicious Always Sunny continuity.

In what turns out to be a stunningly accurate portrayal of Brendan Dassey, one of the men convicted in the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. Charlie finally enters the fray to act as Dennis’ legitimate alibi. The show plays a phone call between Charlie and Dennis. “Yeah?” “Yeah,” they answer to one another, in the same manner Dassey spoke with his mother. Dennis tries to set the record straight, but Charlie is too entranced by wrestling (another hobby of Dassey’s). Dennis tells Charlie as long he doesn’t let slip what’s in his safe, he’s fine.

Cut to Charlie being interrogated by police, also in the style of Dassey. Charlie implicates himself in the crime, but we find out that he was just high on ‘cat tranquilizers,’ something Dennis keeps hidden away in his safe. What else is in there? Cat toys, a laser pointer, and catnip. We find out Maureen kept some things at Dennis’ house in exchange for lower alimony payments. We also find out he let her groom him for an extra $15 bucks off. Yes, that’s exactly what you think it means. It also shows how much lower Dennis’ standards are becoming, even though he fancies himself a “five-star man.”

Literally Making a Murderer

Turns out, the crime documentary is just something Mac and Charlie slapped together. It was their visual brainchild, and they were just showing Dennis the final cut. The last, lingering shot of the documentary is a collar left behind where Dennis was sitting. We find out that Mac and Charlie purposefully added a storyline about Maureen wearing a collar (she didn’t) just to add a final twist to the series. They set out to make Dennis Reynolds a murderer and damned if they didn’t succeed.

How Maureen died isn’t a mystery at all, it seems. Dennis says there’s surveillance video of her standing on the roof of the bar, “strutting up there like an assh*le before she just fell off.” So it really was an accident, but this wouldn’t be the gang if they didn’t try to find some way to cash in on the attention. Line of the night goes to Dennis. “Was I a person of interest? Yeah. I’m an interesting person.”

Next: Always Sunny S12E4: Milking the 24-Hour Rebranding Cycle

So is Maureen really dead? It looks that way. But even her own family is glad to be rid of her. (“You ever see a grown woman take a dump in a sandbox? -Bill Ponderosa) We’ll definitely miss her antics. But the show must go on.

Make sure to tune in February 8th at 10:00 p.m. for FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 12 Episode 6 “Hero or Hate Crime?”