It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "PTSDee" Review

Share.

Dee-Day.

By Matt Fowler

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Having made huge strides with Mac last week in "Hero or Hate Crime?," Always Sunny had a harder time carrying the ball here in "PTSDee" - a satisfyingly dark, yet also clunky, chapter about The Gang's inability to deal with their varying buried traumas.

A funny thing here is that this premise would have also made for a great Mac "coming out" episode, but he seemed fine and more or less adjusted to his new life as a gay, or bi, man. In fact, Mac's new life wasn't even brought up at all by The Gang and the only glimpses of it we caught were the smile on Mac's face when he had a male stripper's ass right in front of his face and the dream he had of dancing Dennis.

And that was great. You know, the fact that no one made a big deal out of him being gay or that his story didn't somehow immediately become about his big moment last week. It was just Mac as usual, with some lingering elements of daddy drama stemming from playing a VR game for days with no sleep. It would have been weird if everyone started talking about Mac differently given how nonchalant they were in the past when they just assumed he liked men.

I will hand it to "PTSDee" though for giving us one hell of a disturbing ending. That was really vile. Dee went for straight revenge instead of redemption, her solution to being someone's rock bottom being giving that person an even worse rock bottom. That was harsh and really helped punch up the episode, which had already lost its overall focus several times as it wandered through virtual reality war games, veteran support groups, and icky daddy/son stripper acts.

Most of this episode just sort of landed okay. Again though, it was really helped, and elevated, by the horrific closing moment. Which itself worked because "PTSDee" tried very hard to convince us that Dee was truly working to help her stripper "boyfriend" and that putting his daughter in the Paddy's audience may have  just been a mistake. Nope. She meant for things to get super awful for everyone. And that's textbook Sunny.

The Verdict

"PTSDee" had some funny elements but it lacked an overall focus, as if it were trying to cram too much into one episode - essentially short-sheeting everything. The Gang were never really going to make any meaningful movement regarding their past issues so it was great to see Dee deliver a desperate drive-it-home moment there at the end.

Let's block ads! (Why?)