Always Sunny S12E8 Recap: A Valentine’s Day Trick

We’re full of feels as we get to see a late Valentine’s Day celebration from Paddy’s Pub in this week’s Always Sunny adventure.

Oh, Valentine’s Day. It’s that one weird day out of the year that’ll make you feel bad for being single, and overwhelmed as a couple. But over the course of 12 seasons, we haven’t really seen the Always Sunny gang’s take on the world’s most corporate holiday.

As it turns out, in this week’s adventure “The Gang Tends Bar,” we see their version of caring for one another. Unfortunately, that includes psychological warfare, tricking each other, and abrasive yelling, but it’s what we’ve come to expect, and they do it well.

Bar None

This week, the entire episode takes place on location inside Paddy’s Pub. It’s easy to forget this crew actually owns a bar together, since it only serves to be their home base to come up with another zany scheme.

Dennis is the driving point behind the whole thing, as he’s determined to make his bar a bar again. For once we see the business actually flourish. Mac is the bouncer, Charlie is the janitor, Dee is a waitress, Dennis bartends, and Frank sits in the back ‘cooking the books.’ There’s plenty of people inside (even a regular named Dottie who they decide works better as a “Dee”). All seems to be well, but there’s a nagging mystery crate in the alley that everyone but Dennis wants to go see.

He desperately tries to keep everyone on track, but everyone’s minds seem to be elsewhere. They seem very obsessed with ‘tricking’ one another into doing work (“You all think work means tricking people.” -Dennis), instead of focusing on making their business a successful one.

In typical gang fashion, they screw up spectacularly, chasing all the patrons out of the bar when Charlie and Frank argue over a tapeworm Frank ingested (he named it Jerry), and Dee threatens to release anthrax from the Valentine’s Day box (which is stuffed with mean, nasty letters to one another). All we see unfold inside this bar is the gang’s aptitude for mental gymnastics, which solidifies their ever-increasing weird behavior. They’re desperate to prove themselves to one another all while trying to one-up each other concurrently.

Getting Feelings Out

Throughout the episode, there’s the distinct air of hurt feelings in the air from everyone. Dee is upset that Charlie scorned her Valentine’s Day card, Charlie is jealous of Jerry the Tapeworm, Mac is frustrated by his bottled-up feelings and Dennis can’t get anyone on board with anything.

It all culminates in this odd sort of magnetism towards Dennis. Mac and Charlie discuss his abrasiveness in the bathroom while trying to clean up the mysterious and amorphous “yuck puddle.” (“I’ve found bones in it, man.” – Charlie) They come to the conclusion that Dennis is taking his own frustrations about Valentine’s Day out of the rest of the gang, a similar sentiment shared by Dee and Frank, who are trying to unclog the soda hoses connected to the bar.

Their predictions are surprisingly spot on. As soon as the gang’s own hurt feelings causes every patron to flee, they actually get a chance to discuss them. Charlie sings Dee a Valentine’s Day song to make up for not acknowledging her card and giving Frank the chocolates she got for him, which he filled with anti-tapeworm medication. (“He poisoned me. At worst, you’re properly medicated.” -Dee)

Happy Valentine’s Day

Finally, Dee, Charlie, and Frank hound Dennis about his “ragey” (and “rapey” -Frank) persona, to where Dennis breaks down and admits he’s upset that no one gets him anything for Valentine’s Day. Enter Mac, who finally brings back the mystery crate, and tells Dennis to open it. Inside, his Valentine’s Day gift. It’s an RPG that Mac found off the ‘dark web,’ the same place Frank found his tapeworm.

Dennis is so overcome with emotion as to how Mac knew what to get him (“You casually mention RPGs like a weird amount.” -Mac), that he doesn’t even care the dark web didn’t send him rockets. He’s just thankful.

All thoughts of a saccharine ending are shattered the moment Frank asks Charlie to “get the worm out of [his] ass.” So not only did we see these guys actually tend to their bar, we see them tend to each other’s feelings, showing us a group that, deep down, really does care about one another. They just are comfortable being jerks along the way.

Next: Always Sunny S12E7 Recap: Projecting Their Rock Bottoms

Next week, it’s all about Rickety Cricket, who stopped by in this episode to simply smoke PCP alone in the Paddy’s Pub bathroom. Is his shot at redemption coming soon? Join the Always Sunny gang next Wednesday, March 1st at 10:00 p.m. on FXX for Episode 9, “A Cricket’s Tale.”