Always Sunny Season 13 Episode 3
Some of my favorite episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are when they force odd pairings of characters. In truth, that happens in almost every episode. The Gang gets along with virtually no one. The people they do tolerate are heinous. Seemingly well-adjusted characters like Maureen Ponderosa, or Matthew Mara, or The Lawyer are turned into creatures just for hanging around the Gang for too long; Maureen died as she lived, as a cat-woman; Mara the former priest became Cricket, a drug-addicted vagrant; and there is now a one-eyed Lawyer in Philadelphia. Grouping them together in “The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot” is less about fleshing out these women as characters than it is simultaneously a rebuke of Hollywood’s reboot phase and a critique on the toxic reaction from men (and women like Dee) in response to female-led projects. The episode begins with Dee bringing the ladies on an “all-female” flight to Los Angeles for the Women’s March. Having lost in the original episode, the season 10 premiere “The Gang Beats Boggs,” Dee is set on drinking 70 beers on the cross country flight, a nod to a rumored feat achieved by baseball player Wade Boggs. It immediately goes wrong as Artemis replaces the booze with labia rings and other instruments of fake spirituality to sell to vulnerable women in LA. They eventually continue the game with pink rosé, the only alcohol available on board. Dee, on the other hand, sees gender roles as barriers she can break down. Even if it’s almost physically impossible to drink 70 beers on a flight, she’s going to do it to one up the guys. Vindictiveness often drives her actions, and she’ll create fake rivalries with women, stepping on her sisters, if it means beating the men. As Always Sunny writer Megan Ganz told us last week: Dennis and Dee “are the yin and yang of toxic mascufemininity (TM).” The Waitress, and her alcoholism, represent a double standard. When women binge drink it’s sad and desperate. When men do it, it’s a triumph. It’s the stuff of legend. Boggs and Boss Hog.
