Sunny dug deep for the return of the waitress this week and produced levels of gross chaos that trumped anything else they’ve done this year. When I say gross, I mean gross, like a kid in grade school would say. Gross!
The whole recurring ensemble was out in force: Mac’s mom, oozing smoke out of every orifice; Charlie’s mom, who had some narcoleptic-like affliction I didn’t understand; Artemis, plumbing new depths by eating iceberg lettuce out of Frank’s mouth; and of course the poor, sad waitress. She may never understand that even through Charlie is a borderline disturbed, illiterate stalker who thinks the best way to get honey from hornets is to put them in a smoky cardboard box, he’s the only person who can make her happy.
Plot was essentially discarded this week in favor of two equally horrifying social situations. In one, Dee throws a bachelorette party for the waitress, who’s marrying a high school ex that she dumped because of his acne-face, which meant he would grow up looking like Edward James Olmos (of course, he’s model-handsome now). Funnily enough, it turns out the waitress went to high school with the gang too. “You are very forgettable!” Dee notes. The party is engineered only to break up the engagement; Dee can’t stand that the waitress is marrying before her.
So the waitress and her fiancée are subjected to Mac and Charlie’s mothers and Frank and Artemis, who apparently are in an open, sexual relationship based around a food fetish. “Put some vegetable oil on it,” Frank purrs to her over the phone. Dee’s antics are par for the course so it’s all about the details, like Artemis requesting bacon bits for her and Frank’s next tryst. Because it makes her feel like a cobb salad. Dee also looked particularly demented tonight: it comes naturally to Kaitlin Olsen, who’s got weird, piercing eyes and an angular face, but she really looked like a vampire bat tonight.
The thing’s so damn depressing, even Frank has to leave early, and this is a man who goes to some creepy events – remember his Eyes Wide Shut party? “We’ll go get sweaty in a Wendy’s bathroom,” he suggests to Artemis. Anyway, the whole wedding thing works itself out when it’s revealed the fiancée is just revenge-proposing to all the girls who were mean to him in high school, and Dee’s next on the list. Maybe it’ll be a continuing plotline, but probably not. The twist was funny, but mostly it just made sense, because the waitress is such a tragic figure at this point, how could she land such a handsome man?
The second set-up had Mac and Dennis trying to set Charlie up on a date to distract him from finding out about the impending nuptials. This focused a lot of attention on Charlie and his foibles, always my favorite aspect of Sunny. Their futile efforts to create a Match.com profile for him were solid gold. His favorite food? “Milksteak.” His hobby is “magnets,” his likes include “ghouls” and what’s his pet peeve? People’s knees. “Cover your knees up, if you’re going to be walking around everywhere!”
I love Charlie because he’s not garden-variety creepy: he’s like a hobo alien, sitting in his hole of an apartment blowing smoke into his hornet box. He thinks dressing up like Sherlock Holmes will attract intelligent women. I think it’s sweet. Mac and Dennis decide they’ll skirt his actual personality, even if he thinks being himself is all he needs to do. “Let’s pretend like you’re not who you are and attract a woman,” Dennis advises.
Dining at what appeared to be a garish faux-palace, his date is the second Asian woman in two weeks on this show who I recognized from past TV, Joy Osmanski of The Loop. I miss The Loop. Unsurprisingly, it goes spectacularly. Charlie says he’s a “full-on rapist” for dyslexics, and children. “I help people,” he insists, sweating bullets. Taking him aside, Dennis thinks he should ask her about her job and interests. Mac favors just making a move, because yes/no, it’s a 50-50 scenario, right? It says a lot about each of their characters. In the end, Charlie looks like he’s about to cry and violently stabs at his date’s breasts. A great showcase for Charlie Day this week, who wrote the episode with Glenn Howerton. I’m anticipating an Emmy. I’m not really, but how great would that be?
Stray Observations:
- Dee’s fake husband from the cold open sounded great. “He’s in salt. He’s a salt sea-man.”
- Charlie isn’t just illiterate, he can’t even pronounce big words. “It gets blocked up in my mouth, I don’t say it no good.”
- Charlie’s order at the restaurant: “Milksteak, boiled over hard, and your finest jellybeans, raw.”
- Frank’s sex anecdotes are disturbing. He’s “all bummed out because of something I did with the onions to myself.”
- Their high-school past interests me. Should there be a Friends-style flashback, with the cricket guy and everyone else?