Season 17 Places the Gang under a Spotlight (for better or worse)

A thematic recap and review of Sunny’s latest installment of unhinged beauty. 

Last Wednesday Season 17 ended its run with The Golden Bachelor Live, leaving us on the first cliffhanger since Season 12’s finale had us (and the show) truly believing Dennis was gone for good, shaking the future dynamics of the Gang, now down one member. Eight years later, and we’re left in a similar, yet opposing position: with Frank giving his golden rose to Samantha, we’re left believing that the Gang has now gained one member.

And based on a post-finale interview, both Rob and Charlie Day have indicated that they do intend to have Carol Kane return in Season 18, given how they decided to cut the episode (an earlier version ended more darkly-Sunny, limiting both Chewy and Sam to one-off roles. It is likely this may have changed due to the unfortunate passing of Lynne Marie Stewart). So how long can we expect Samantha to stick around? Will she stay only to shake the Gang's dynamics up for an episode (similar to the length Dennis was gone), ultimately being cast out of the group like every other outsider who has tried to make it amongst them? Or will she be welcomed enough to hack it for an entire season?

Dennis and Dee were at least intrigued to have her part of their lives after finding out she’s wealthy, but Charlie has been (and remains to be) vehemently against the idea of Frank coupling with anyone at all… So it seems based on character motivation's they could take it either way with Carol Kane’s future as a Sunny cast member. Regardless, the ending of Season 17 is bound to shake things up right off the bat for Season 18… no “reset to normal” seems to be on the horizon. 

And thankfully we won’t have to wait too long to find out how this will affect the Gang, as Season 18’s writers room is coming back together in October, and reportedly scheduled to begin filming in January of 2026. With that production timeline in mind, we seem to be eyeing a Season 18 premiere in Summer, 2026 (a much faster turn around for a season than we’ve seen in years, but a return to normal to the earliest season’s production schedules). 

But that’s still a ways down the road. For now, I wanna dip into how we got to this romantic-comedy ending after all over the course of Sunny’s latest eight episodes, and dive a little deeper into what was running under the surface of it all…

The two episodes prior to the finale, Overage Drinking: a National Concern and The Gang Gets Ready For Prime Time, are inarguably tied to Frank’s appearance on The Golden Bachelor, with the former more of a lead-in and the latter a complete tie-in, but I’d argue that the entire season, while producing consistent, A-tier episodic comedy television, is tied together to reach the Golden Bachelor finale, in a way we really haven’t seen from any other season of Sunny. (Undoubtably a testament to the tightness of the writer’s room this year, best exemplified by Charlie Day’s writing credits on all but one script.) While many Seasons in the past have followed a theme (mostly in the cohesiveness of their spoofs/commentary and certain, choice characterizations to pull at), Season 17 digs deeper, factoring in the before, present, and even future of the Gang’s actions (in the Series as a whole and the Season in itself) to unearth the reality of the murky, familial relationships they’ve become dependent on (and are desperate to shake…or keep ahold of) and reflect the near-alien nature of their aberrant behaviors back on them under a spotlight.

The Gang Fucks Up Abbott Elementary

We begin Season 17 by thrusting the Gang, unknowingly, in front of documentary cameras. While the Abbott half that aired in January kept Dennis’ plot a mystery, the Sunny side revealed that the truth was less sinister than most people believed: he wanted to stay out of the way to avoid looking bad on camera. While the rest of the Gang are less self conscious about how they’re coming across, it’s Dennis who is constantly pulling the Gang’s attention to the cameras and worried about how they could come across on the Abbott documentary. It’s technically a completely separate idea, but it’s interesting how this event gives the Gang (and the audience) an idea as to what’s to come when the they get advanced notice of a television appearance and have time to prepare for it… But, if the subtle way this episode primes us for The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time isn’t enough, the very end of the episode has a peculiar exchange between Gregory Eddie and Charlie Kelly that perfectly slots this episode into the rest of the season, and that’s the reveal that Paddy’s doesn’t have ice because they’re “off water altogether” at the bar now. It’s surprisingly not a nonsensical choice the Gang have made, but an actual conclusion they came to due to the events that take place in Thought Leadership: a Corporate Conversation resulting in court-mandated community service, of which they served at Abbott Elementary. 

In my opinion this episode was a lot of fun and it served a great purpose for those of us who have been begging to see the Gang through the eyes of “normal people” (yes, they’re as strange and pathetic as we all assumed, seen by others less like dangerous criminals and more like bumbling fools), however it not only relies on the first part of the crossover to fully appreciate some of the jokes, but also heavily features the cast of Abbott Elementary, which admittedly can feel like a taking of the limited time the Sunny characters get with just 8 episodes a season, so I understand why this episode seems to fall into the bottom rung of most people’s rankings of the Season. Though it’s clear there was some review bombing of the episode due to this, it’s certainly not a 1-star performance from anyone involved, and far from a waste of an episode. It’s more subtle, but the bookend of this event (and the characterization therein) with The Golden Bachelor Live is the perfect primer for the rest of the Season to come.

Frank Is In A Coma

Now, if I were ordering the episodes, I definitely would have placed Thought Leadership right after Abbott (especially considering they had a double premiere), but I don’t order the episodes, FX does (with some specified requirements on RCG’s side), so instead we got Frank Is In A Coma as Episode 2. What was right off the bat hailed as a “return to form” for Sunny, the Chernin Brothers’ first episode in almost a decade is masterfully crafted. The boys’ plot expanding off of Dee being left on her own to grapple with Frank’s (perhaps imminent) demise gives us a great balance between the A and B plots, and makes perfect use of the 5 Stages of Grief title cards to pace the episode. And while the twist in this one was (perhaps unfortunately) spoiled for many of us who like to follow production, it really didn’t diminish my enjoyment of watching the episode in any way. Charlie, Mac, and Dennis fumbling in the corporate world and latching themselves on to the newest sleazy, capitalist pig who just wants to get high and have freaky sex was perfectly on (or in, haha) the nose, and was among one of my favorite sequences of the season. The fact that the boys end up tucking their tails between their legs and cowering back to Frank, the experienced sleazy, capitalist pig who’s constantly on something and having freaky sex, but keeps them cast out from his world against their decades of objection, is the perfect way to showcase the cycle of helpless dependency the Gang have become stuck in under Frank’s hand. In a parallel, the genuine devastation we feel from Dee toward the end of the episode being met by the slap in the face of lines Frank delivers after revealing himself is a masterfully evil highlight of the emotional abuse Frank is quick to casually act on, just to get a laugh, and is a perfectly Sunny punch to hit us with right at the end of the episode. At least the blow is softened by what might be my favorite end credits sequence of the show, giving us a casual in-character conversation while the Gang chow down on cake!Frank’s head.

And just like Abbott, if the parallel themes weren’t enough, this episode had its own primer, setting up the idea that Charlie and Mac are both uncomfortable “playing themselves” in a given situation and would instead prefer to come up with characters, while Dennis is insistent on the fact that they are young and successful and should just play themselves, a sentiment echoed in The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time. Now don’t get me wrong, the weight of what’s buried in this episode is certainly heavy, but that didn’t stifle any of the laughs for me on the first, third, or fifth rewatch, which is what makes this such a rich episode…there's certainly a lot to chew on. And speaking of things that are rich and chewy, and in keeping with this Season’s tie-ins, Frank’s interest in something actually being cake (specifically a man in a coma) does not end here… 

Mac and Dennis Become EMTs

It brings us to Episode 3, Mac and Dennis Become EMTs, where the episode has an small but brilliant callback (or call forward, if you're like me and think Thought Leadership should have swapped places with Coma), showing Frank skeptically forking the man he put into a coma, just in case he was secretly cake. With a “Mac and Dennis” title you can expect a top tier A-plot, and when the episode description and trailers guarantee chaos, it’s pretty much already sold, but what we got out of this episode still managed to gag me. The cold open is probably my favorite of this Season, grounding us in the Gang's casual space, caught up in themselves and perplexed by the idea of someone using their hang out space for its actual intended purpose, and then setting up the real motivation of this episode: raw eroticism. Perhaps pulling from a modern definition of the word spicy or the similarity to the word poppers (or a combination of the two), Mac and Dennis are quick to introduce another hot element into their pursuit of becoming EMTs (a profession which is allegedly all about the sex): peppers, and the rest is about the chase (and boy is it a fun one). 

After bouncing on it to prove he knows more about CPR than the EMT Mac had set his sights on does, Mac and Dennis ditch their efforts to go about this scheme the legal way and decide to fake it until they make it (but really, just have fun with it). Meanwhile, Charlie kicks up the heat in the kitchen in an attempt to prove he can provide for Frank. However Frank is only mildly impressed by Charlie’s skills, he’s much more interested in pursing the Lawyer (though, in his defense, defending himself from a potential lawsuit is a little more pressing than running a Ghost Kitchen, just ‘cause), and walks away despite Charlie’s pleas not to leave him. In my opinion, this is really where they start to sow the seeds on the running Charlie/Frank arc of the season: it’s clear from the moment Dee delivers Postmates to Frank that Charlie is desperate and insecure about where the two of them stand, while Frank is essentially indifferent. Why is that? Well, they’ve really been on rocky terms since Season 15’s Ireland arc. Charlie being fully ready to ditch Frank for his “real dad” and start a life in Ireland is a hard thing to come back from, and Frank’s insistence for change in Season 16’s The Gang Inflates, breaking down walls and wanting to move into the bedroom, only being halted by Charlie’s manipulation of the market definitely furthered the idea that they were tersely at odds. Knowing where we end up by The Golden Bachelor Live with Charlie having a full-blown crash out on live TV over Frank having three prospective wives (one being Charlie’s mom), it’s hard to believe the one plot they’re paired together this Season emphasizing how Charlie wants Frank to be in this with him (while Frank would really rather be anywhere but) isn’t a thread meant for pulling at…but I digress. The episode in itself amps up the spice level to the max, merging both the EMTs plot and Dee and Charlie’s Postmates scheme with the plot Frank was shaving off the top of theirs until we come to a head with one of the most hilariously, chaotically tense scenes Sunny may have ever aired, ending, of course, in disaster. But not disaster for the Gang (at least, not something they didn't manage to walk away from), disaster for The Lawyer, “cricketing” him probably beyond any last hope. Seriously, that’s gruesomely diabolical what they did to him, we’ve either seen the last of him or he’s coming back as a genuine supervillain. But as for the episode? 10/10, no notes. 

Perhaps a bit of a “dance break” from the major tie-ins of the Season, but this episode clearly served one thing (other than spice): relationship dynamics. As Charlie is scrambling to keep his relationship with Frank the codependency it once was, Mac and Dennis’ relationship is proven to be almost stronger than it’s ever been (certainly back to a more even playing field than we’ve seen in a decade), and with a twinge of…possessive Dennis? (No…couldn’t be… he said a woman being involved was interesting to him and then he…tried? Right? Yeah, she totally wanted him to bang her.)

Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation

We crank the volume down a few notches while also keeping the pacing just as fast in the next episode, Thought Leadership: a Corporate Conversation. Serving as both its own internal flashback episode and Abbott’s backstory, my initial thoughts as to what this episode might be were all completely wrong, save the “girl fight” aspect of it, but I was pleasantly surprised with what it turned out to be. As a lover of the TV show Succession and as someone whose full-time job is reviewing, negotiating, and revising legal documents, the corporate spoof being (mostly) contained to dialogue appealed to me in a way I’m sure some viewers might have felt alienated by (to each their own, that’s the great thing about Sunny), but moving past the hilarity of the breadth of the words every member of the Gang manages to accurately yet inappropriately or completely incorrectly use (and Charlie’s perfectly Charlie contributions to the dialogue), this episode really speaks well to the absolute nonsensical nature of the Gang, perhaps best exemplifying Ava’s observation about the Gang earlier in the season (but later in the timeline): “They got off that idea and bounced to the next one like one of those ADHD kids.” A simple, empty water jug being introduced into the Gang’s environment causes a chain of events that leads to a slap fighting ring in the bar with a Cybertruck on the line—which ends up pulling everyone’s attention in the end (unironically, some reviewers seemed to be upset that the Gang would like Elon Musk’s Cybertruck… seriously? Did we forget what kinds of people these guys are?) and resulting in their downfall. By the Gang’s logic, the water jug is to blame and now there is no more ice at Paddy’s Pub.

It’s honestly hard to recap this one, because it’s so dialogue rich, but of the many things we’re left to chew on, the further canonization of Frank’s parental abuse with a line about how he used to physically slap Dee, and the continuation of Charlie’s attempt to cling to Frank by tracking his response (hardness) to the women in the bar (and his actions as a result thereof) are some of the more strong contributors to the parallel themes of this Season, providing the Gang even more reasons as to why they should exit Frank, while Charlie grasps at threads to keep himself relevant… but an arguably heavier-weighted point in this episode (the Abbott tie-in, notwithstanding) comes from a line by Dennis, the very first statement made when they’re deciding how they should approach the “reporter”: “Yes, we are, of course, a family, but human emotion notwithstanding, I would be remiss not to mention that we are a business first, and as a business, we must behave as such.” In an episode where the Gang are doing their best to put on airs, to present a certain way to an outsider they believe is looking to speak on them, Dennis emphasizes the fact that they should come across as a business, poised and collected, not muddied by the emotions familial ties bring into the mix. Unfortunately for Dennis, almost everything the Gang (himself included) does is driven by emotion, fueled by their irreparably fucked up codependencies…

The Gang Goes To A Dog Track

Which brings us to The Gang Goes to a Dog Track, an episode that’s darkly raw when it comes to exhibiting the lowest of the lows the Gang’s relationships with each other (see: Frank) can drive them to. As Frank sets out to one-up the lengths he was willing to go to in Frank is in a Coma to make entertainment for himself out of his kids’ (a choice label for Dennis and Dee in this episode) misery, he leaves Mac and Charlie behind to raw dog the track on the same assumption that brings Dennis and Dee up to the Owner’s Box: they’re here to experience the Track right before it closes down. This episode is, in my opinion, the perfect weave of a separate A and B plot serving a paralleled narrative: the four of them observe the same race and launch their inevitable journeys on the outcome of said race, hurtling toward trauma due to Frank’s lie. Frank is more overtly-involved in Dennis and Dee’s demise, what he really wants from them is set up right at the beginning, accompanied by an attempt to feed directly into their addictive personalities, surrounding them with booze and cigarettes and cash, upping the ante (and continuing to plant certain seeds) until he can get them in a position that feels lower than the level he wants to take them down to, and makes Dennis and Dee believe they’re making their own decision when they decide to satisfy the…Saudis, but that doesn’t make Frank any less of a factor in the trauma he walks Mac and Charlie into. (Of course, they probably didn’t need to burn the entire trailer down, but I’m willing to call that cope.) But the final shot of this episode is really what drives the final nail into the coffin: the Gang completely shell shocked in their seats following the realization that Frank’s lie(s), built for his own entertainment (and to pad his already stuffed wallet), drove them to engage in heinous (and, truly criminal) events, while Frank indifferently munches on his Corn Nuts (revealing that not only was he responsible for the Gang’s trauma, but was very likely responsible for the injured dog Sparky had taken home as well), turning the spotlight of the Gang’s aberrant behavior inward, allowing them to see the problem without a reflection due to the depravity of their actions.

Though it’s an extremely hard decision to make, I am inclined to call Dog Track my favorite episode of the Season, because on top of the devastating underbelly of the episode really hammering in the cycle of abuse Frank inflicts upon the Gang (and giving us the pairings of Dennis & Dee and Charlie & Mac clinging tighter to each other through another shared traumatic event, which I revel in), it is a genuinely hilarious episode on its surface, and puts everyone in a fresh environment, playing into their surroundings exactly as the characters would (especially Glennis and Charlie^2) and really committing to it. The episode really speaks for itself, which is perhaps why I don't have much more to say about it. Rest easy, Sparky. 

Overage Drinking: A National Concern

Episode 6 plays into the wishes many of us were sending on the bus back home from West Virginia and leads us to believe Frank may have exited the Gang for good, over the course of a genre-seeking B-plot. Meanwhile, the twins are once again the center of the Season 1 sequel (or reprise?) A-plot, in Overage Drinking: a National Concern. What one (admittedly, I) may have assumed is that running into their “prom dates” and seeing them as grown adults with a teen child may cause Dennis and Dee to immediately spiral over the fact that they’re still in the same place they were when Tammy and Trey were teenagers themselves, but of course I should have known better, the Gang rarely have the ability to self-reflect in such a way, and instead set out to repeat their past actions, this time becoming the instigators themselves. Tammy, a relatively successful woman in 2025, rejects Dennis’ advances right to his face (despite his best…efforts?…we’ll go with best serum, I suppose) while Dee rejects Trey (despite being the one to walk him into a potential affair) due to his soy boy personality. Meanwhile, the only person Dennis’ serum is working on is Mac. This was obviously a clever way to say Joe Rogan (and his followers) smell like shit and Charlie’s old piss cans, but Mac’s “Has Dennis been here? I feel both intimidated and aroused,” line also served a very welcomed purpose: to confirm that the man is still very much into Dennis, he’s just dialed back his offensive pursuit, arguably achieving this by redirecting that drive into the sexual conquests he reveals he’s been rawdogging (ok, he's probably the one getting rawdogged), but receiving no joy from, in Dog Track. Mac’s current sexual dissatisfaction being revealed in the episode prior to this one, the one that reveals he’s still lusting over Dennis, while Dennis directly faces the fact that neither “boring adult drama” sex nor “forbidden teen lust” sex is bringing him satisfaction anymore seems like a thread we’re meant to follow…and considering the dialogue of The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time, are we beyond “shipper delusion” when it comes to believing Mac and Dennis may truly be one heated moment away from finally addressing whatever the fuck is going on between the two of them? 

But more on that to come, because while the gradual restoration of Mac and Dennis’ relationship since Season 15 has clearly led to exponential development this Season, the slow fray of Frank and Charlie’s relationship since Season 15 is met with further division. Mac tags along with Charlie in his quest to find Frank, but he’s clearly only in it for the story (more interested in dreaming up a riveting demise for Frank than actually finding the man), and when it comes to bringing the conclusion of their hunt back to the twins, it’s clear everyone but Charlie is indifferent to Frank’s potential suicide via dick pills (which should faze no viewer, considering Frank’s onslaught of abuse as entertainment in not only the majority of this Season, but the entirety of the twins’ lives). Unfortunately, Charlie remains the sole member of the Gang unwilling to let go of his codependent relationship with Frank (understandably, it’s one forged by a genuine bond, as opposed to a cycle of abuse), which makes it hurt all the more when it’s revealed where Frank really is—Los Angeles. He’s moving on, but not to the afterlife, to The Golden Bachelor to find a new wife.

The reveal is not much of a plot twist to those of us who were following the Season’s release schedule (or, you know, watching the promos), but the lead-in existing in this episode was a welcome surprise. Of course, it’s not a brand new concept for Sunny to connect seemingly unrelated episodes (The Gang Replaces Dee with a Monkey was also a sleeper lead-in to Season 15’s Ireland arc), but the reveal really seems to drive home the point of how interconnected this Season is, every episode a piece of the puzzle, slotting into place to bridge us to the finale. 

(And I know I’m following a real through-line here, so the insert of a personal highlight feels a bit out of place, but I’d be remiss to move on without mentioning that this episode contends with EMTs as having my favorite cold open of the Season: the kids’ cameo is just too cute.)

The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time

The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time begins not where Overage Drinking left off in Sunny’s timeline, but where the viewers were left, thematically. As the Gang gather to watch Frank on TV, now a few weeks into his run as the Golden Bachelor, they learn that they (Frank’s kids and his kids’ friends, one being his roommate) will be featured on the show. Dennis snaps into action, attempting to direct the Gang for the remainder of the episode, resulting in a disaster of a rehearsal process that’s a prime cut of material for both the meta of the show and analysis of the characters. The meta of this episode is overly-indulgent, and I’m sure there will be posts on posts if not essays on all that is covered in the 24 minutes this episode managed to snag (in fact, I already wrote a bit about what I glean as the character-writing meta here), but for the sake of brevity and staying on-theme, I’m really just going to touch on the elements of this episode that heavily focus on the Season’s theme of the characters’ codependencies leading to their alienation from others.

As is addressed immediately, Dennis is able to recognize that the way the Gang behave is in no way palatable for a “Golden Bachelor” audience, and attempts to script the entire dinner down to a T. (Not to be missed in the first scenes, yet maybe of the more subtle elements in this episode, the self-aware callbacks to prior events the Gang has experienced makes it clear that we aren’t operating in the present as a standalone (or two or three), but as a present we have ended up in due to prior experiences, that is informed by the past and may truly develop following events that lie ahead.) The Gang aren’t too keen to follow Dennis’ script, eager to instead use the audience to serve their own agendas (as is nature). They’re making fools of themselves, especially as they up the insanity in Rehearsal 2, but the laughs are enough for Mac and Dee; whether they’re laughing with them or at them, they’ll take the ego boost either way.  It’s a stark contrast to the purpose Dennis wanted the audience to serve: to assure him that he (and the rest of the Gang) are able to come across as normal to outsiders. The unprecedented positive response to the behaviors he’s identified as typical of the Gang, the behaviors he knows are atypical, most-times pathetic, a freak show to be laughed at, only panics him further. Dennis does not want to be a spectacle, he wants to be seen as normal (palatable and good), a task that is near-impossible to achieve when it comes to any member of the Gang individually, but even harder to reach when they’re together; when not only are they observable, but their relationships with each other are observable, because the Gang just aren’t normal. Their codependencies are so wrapped up in each other, damaged by their own egos and their multifaceted cycles of abuse, it’s warped them (and their perceptions of themselves) and their relationships—a fact that gets more and more true as time goes on, hammered in hard over the course of this Season, and reflected by the audience’s observations. 

The most blatant one, and an easy way to exemplify the point here, being Mac and Dennis’ relationship. The audience finds it easy to clock them as something more than friends, despite everything that’s being said to the contrary (admittedly, Dee’s quips hurt them in that department just a tad), and the label that gets applied to both of them in relation to the other (“boyfriend”) is exactly where one would land on the assumption that they’re observing normal people. Mac and Dennis have a history of murky sexual interactions and homoromantic moments, in openly queer ways and through extremely repressed avenues, however “boyfriends” is not what they are to each other, because they aren’t normal. They’re so much less and so much more, built on four decades of knowing each other, more than half that time living together (in three different places), a toxic co-dependent mess of mutual abuse and dependency, waist deep in devoted selfishness, hating that they love the other, their relationship is unaddressable and undefinable, the only label they can stick with is the one that’s universally accurate: roommates. Of course, at their age, with the weight of their relationship so heavy it’s impossible to mask even at the surface, “roommates” is all but telling. And if roommate doesn’t mean boyfriend, then something must be abnormal about the two of them. It’s a Catch-22 for Dennis, who cannot accept either label. Who cannot accept the label of old when he’s still young, but needs a little help to smooth out his wrinkles; who cannot accept the label of bossy when he’s never wanted to be in charge, he’s just the only one who can be; who cannot accept the label of abnormal when he’s actively trying not to be, but the Gang are dragging him down. The tailspin launches Dennis into a beautiful, perhaps anti-soul-bearing speech, a desperate plea to be seen, not as how he is observed, but as how he is asking to be seen. Unfortunately, there is no quicker way for people to think you’re abnormal than by giving a speech about it. So in what is a relatively damning conclusion by Charlie, we reach our thesis: the Gang are abnormal and come across as such; that's an immutable fact and they should stop giving a shit about it. 

Surely obvious, this episode was immediately reported as, and remains standing as, the favorite of the Season (though only just beating out EMTs amongst fan reviews). Its showcase of the Gang at their most unhinged (some trying to be, and others trying not to be), gave us the characters at their best and worst (which is also their best), shining a [literal] spotlight on the unique abnormality of their personalities and relationships, and forcing them to witness themselves for what they are. I'm overly inclined to agree that this episode earned immediate entry into the hall of fame of Sunny episodes. 

The Golden Bachelor Live

But Prime Time wasn’t the end of it, because another plot twist allows us to see it all play out—“live” on TV. Only a small portion of the episode (cut even shorter than was scripted due to the runtime constraints of a half-hour, cable comedy) featured the Gang, but the final form of their rehearsal making it into the show was pretty much all that was needed to give us a satisfying payoff. Following Dennis’ initial script, but paralleling the opening of Prime Time, the Gang first meet Frank’s suitors in the bar, where they’re clearly not taking Charlie’s words to heart and instead are trying their best to look normal and neutral—a facade that sharply breaks away in the following scene, when Dennis and Dee reveal their loophole, something learned from their experience at Abbott Elementary—certain footage will be flagged as unairable. Given The Bachelor airs on ABC, a Disney Network, hurling insults and discussing the murder of babies is a safe way to deem your conversation scrapped material (the meta joke here being that FX is technically a Disney network, too, so Disney is, in fact, airing this). Meanwhile Charlie’s gone from not-so subtly hinting that he’s upset over Frank’s endeavors to straight-up stating it. There isn’t room for anyone else on their couch, in their lives, and the fact that Frank’s gone on this journey without consulting him is offensively upsetting. (Chewy’s catchphrase coming into play after Charlie shares all this is quite interesting, seemingly informing Charlie that Frank isn’t going to chew on him (this coming right after she pointedly let Mac and Charlie know she loves the gays).) Charlie’s upset only grows from here, as Dennis orchestrates a version of their rehearsal dinner to introduce a surprise candidate into the mix, Ms. Kelly, leading to an all-time crash out from Charlie: screams, food thrown, dishes smashed, and fucks censored (meaning they did, in fact, air this). 

Charlie serves the viewers with a prime level example of how a wrench being thrown in one of the Gang’s codependent relationships can lead to emotionally-driven, no-fucks-given behavior, and Dennis’ goal to appear normal to the audience certainly fails. Though the poor showing is not solely due to Charlie’s crash out, the dinner stumbles into some of the same pitfalls as the rehearsal did: Mac and Dennis once again attempt to sell the “just roommates” label, accompanied by a terrible attempt at “dude bro” behavior by Dennis, made clear to have failed by Chewy’s advice to Dennis to “chew on that thang,” and Dee’s riff off of that to create her own “barf on that thang” catchphrase is anything but classy. And if you thought they might get by coming off slightly abnormal, but relatively unscathed, you greatly underestimated Charlie’s feelings up until now, because of course he was going to take it as far as he possibly could. But his revenge only ends up hurting himself (and the rest of the Gang) and inevitably makes them really look like freaks to the outside world. (While this ending is fitting for making the Gang face what they had so desperately worked to try and avoid (and gives us one further whack on the Gang in the midst of Frank’s entertainment, the cycle of abuse is damaging at every turn), I will admit I was a bit disappointed with the brevity of it. This moment was clearly payoff of the set up Dennis provides when he tells Mac he hopes he never faces a humiliation like he did on Family Fight, however the deeper cut was obviously deleted, probably due to a mix of runtime sacrificing and the fact that the cast couldn’t get through many of their lines without breaking.)

But like I said before, the Gang were only a portion of this episode, and having successfully exited them, the encompassing plot, Frank’s Golden Bachelor run, could play out. This plot was stellar, even for someone like myself who has never seen a single episode of any “Bachelor” franchise, it got a ton of laughs out of me just on the absurdity of it all. Chewy was a real stand-out character, IMO, and the little “Rob Mac” name meta from Sam was welcomely out of pocket, but I can’t lie, up until he began yelling her name at the bus stop, I was on the edge of my seat hoping Frank would be going after Charlie. The actual ending was fun, and quite the plot twist to speculate on for the next year, but with the “live” admission of Charlie’s jealousy of the women, and Frank’s complete avoidance of him the entire episode (really since he disappeared without a trace prior to Overage Drinking), things felt strangely unresolved on that front…but perhaps they just have yet to be addressed? I would be shocked to find out if the Sunny writer’s room for Season 18 opened with a chunk of cards still on the board. 

Other than a few minor episode-specific points mentioned in their respective sections, my criticisms of Season 17 are essentially limited to two superficial things: 1. Rob, take out the goddamn lifts; Mac is not that tall; and 2. The bar lighting annoyed me this Season in a way it didn't last season, for whatever reason. The stand-outs of this Season were the number of stellar guest stars/bit-parts, and the observable care every single cast member seemed to hold for their character's motivations and wants when it came to the drive of each plot and the underlying through-line of the Season. And let me mention again, lest I not say it enough, the writing, was clearly on another level this season. All-in-all, I’m extremely happy to say that Glenn was right: every episode in Season 17 is a banger; they truly did capture a weird kind of magic in this one. It’s indulgent in meta (in the best way possible) and heavy on the character-driven motivations (even among some of the more grandiose plots), with just the right amount of fucked-up trauma baked in to really harp on the Gang’s relationship dynamics, perfectly serving the theme of putting their aberrant behaviors under a spotlight.

Recency bias being taken into effect, I’m inclined to let myself settle with this Season for a month or two before making my final decision on where it sits amongst my personal overall rankings, but right now it seems to be slotting in with Season’s 5, 8, and 10 as one of the all-time greats. 

But where does Season 17 settle upon the general audience, in reviews, rankings, and ratings (a post on this will make its way to the blog over the weekend, or early next week) and where does it settle with other fans? Let me know your thoughts, I'm eager to hear them.  

On to my sixth-or-so rewatch...

-Seth