You don’t care about my dreams

Mark Beachill returns to 2005 and the opening episode of the long-running hit comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (IMDB rating 8.8).

Welcome to a comedy that is still going strong after 15 years. It’s about a group of assholes who love themselves.

Be honest. When your partner, relative or friend tells you about the dream they had last night have you ever thought any of the following: “Shut up this is boring” / “I don’t care.” / “What has this got to do with me?”/ “How could you think this is interesting?”/ “I don’t want to listen.” / “I must keep nodding and smiling so they don’t think I am bored and that I’m not a good person.”

If so, you might be a narcissist. Narcissist, noun. someone who pursues gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one’s idealised self-image and attributes – or, in English, someone who mainly cares about themselves and thinks they are great.

Dennis, one of the four ego-led leads, illustrates this in the first episode. When his twin sister, the female lead Deandra a.k.a. Dee a.k.a. Sweet Dee, starts telling him about her dream, Dennis simply says: “I don’t want to hear your dreams… I don’t care.” Aren’t you just a little jealous of his honesty?

It’s funny because you are a bit narcissistic. Yes. You. You look in the mirror and like what you see. You know you are a good person. And you want to make sure everyone knows – but without being too obvious about it. After all, you are a good person. They just haven’t quite seen it yet.

Into this self-regarding world steps race. A black man walks into Paddy’s, the dilapidated Irish dive bar at the centre of the main characters’ lives in the urban ghetto of South Philadelphia. This is Terrell, Dee’s new boyfriend. Seeing the black man, the three male leads are worried. “We don’t want any trouble”, they say. But then they are told this is Dee’s new beau. The unenlightened might think they were making racial presumptions. Much muttered defensiveness follows. No, one of the gang Mac summarises, we’re not racist: “It’s just that we didn’t expect you to be black.”
So how do they straighten us out and let everyone know they are good guys? I know they say. We’ll show everyone we’re not a racist We’ll go out and get some black friends.

It all gets a bit complicated. But in the spirit of egoism let’s take them one by one.

Charlie’s story.

Charlie and Mac go to a university to meet black people. Bizarrely, Charlie impresses over a game of dominoes. His boyish charm is working great. A beautiful young black woman digs him and asks him on a date. But he does not care. He is just using her to show “the waitress”, the woman he is obsessed with that he is not racist. Earlier, she overheard him quote Terrell using the n-word. The waitress explains this to Charlie’s female admirer. The young lady punches Charlie in the face.

Mac’s story.

How do you do it? Mac asks Charlie. He also went in search of a black friend but generally embarrassed himself. He has no social skills and is generally obnoxious. Mac is played by Rob McElhenney. McElhenney created and writes the show and IRL in 2008 married Kaitlin Olson, the actress who plays Dee. Charlie explains, to his friend Mac, his lack of success. It’s not that we are great says Charlie, “It’s just that you are an asshole”. Dee nods in agreement.

Dennis’ story

Terell, it turns out, is a club promoter and is taken on by the gang to promote Paddy’s. He is hugely successful and packs Paddy’s out – but, it turns out, he is gay and does this by making Paddy’s Philadelphia’s hottest new gay bar. Dennis who is serving at the bar finally gets why he is getting such large tips and is concerned – it was never the plan to run a gay bar. Then a patron compliments Dennis on his eyes. An eyeblink later Dennis, ego successfully stroked, is reassured. Soon after he is in his element, flipping bottles, twisting topless in front of thirsty admiring young gay men.

Dee’s revenge

The gay bar is a success but Dee, waitress at the bar, is now barely getting any tips. Worse she realises her new man, Terrel, who she has been dating for eight weeks, is gay. Terrell is surprised that Dee, who was wrapped up in the idea that she was dating a black man, didn’t know. I just thought you liked gay dudes, he tells her.

Dee must put a stop to the gay bar and enlists the help of Mac, a confused anti-gay Christian who is deeply in denial about being gay himself. Dee enlists Mac to get Dennis blind drunk and asks her gay actor friends to pretend they had sex with Dennis when he awakes. What a sister!

Dennis wakes with no memory of the night before. But a naked long-haired male lover is sharing his bed and he gets a playful towel flick to his behind from another large semi-naked man.

This is too much for Dennis. He is not homophobic, but he draws the line at having gay sex himself. It even turns out these new gay lovers are not Dee’s actor friends.

The bar is thus reset for the next episode of crazy antics. In season two, Frank Reynolds played by the legendary Danny Devito adds a disgusting dimension to the gang.

I suggest you give it a try. There are 153 episodes to catch-up on. And, it’s a “Watch Again”-er. You can dip in and out for years.

You can also look in the mirror and realise you are definitely a better person than these assholes.