IASIP Episodes Ranked: #107 of 144 - The Gang Makes Paddy’s Great Again
dir. Todd Biermann, written by David Hornsby, aired September 5th, 2018, Season 13 Episode 1
summary: the gang has a new member named cindy who is replacing dennis and leading the gang with smarter and well-thought-out schemes. it’s going well until a sex doll resembling dennis shows up and things go awry, the rest of the gang succumbing to dennis’ energy and not following cindy anymore. they end up genuinely having an orgy with the doll (dee just watches in horror but acceptance) and ‘play’ the doll’s asshole to get back at and humiliate dennis. dennis arrives out of nowhere and cindy goes off on him, but even after a close taste of success, the gang still choose dennis.
abby’s favourite line: ‘your look is played out, and so are you. you’re basic.’ -cindy
luce’s favourite line: ‘i requested that the doll feel as though it’s in mid-conversation’ -mac
the very start of the episode is a clever trick to the audience, being like “can you believe paddy’s has changed!”, but then it’s revealed that of course it’s all a scheme, returning to classic sunny.
the concepts of liberal tears and conservative whine are funny, but it’s even funnier that mac feels the need to constantly explain it to himself and others even though everyone understands it already
mac trying to shoehorn his shirtlessness and new ripped body into literally anything is funny commentary on how men in various media are Always Shirtless and Always Jacked for no reason and no one seems to question it! rob becoming ripped for this one joke is insane and is really one of the defining points of the season
dennis leaving a phone number for a mental health line for mac, while i still am clinging on to that theory that dennis put himself in a mental institution instead of heading to nd, it kind of does make sense seeing as dennis obviously cares about mac and he wants him to reach out to someone if he’s upset, but won’t let himself get too close to him in fear of..everything and anything bc his repression is stronger now than ever.
mac resorting to the wild choice of getting a sex doll of dennis to cope is sooo tragic and like he probably has tried a lot of other things and nothing else worked to make him feel better...GOD he needs to get dicked down
mindy kaling is such a cool and unique addition to this episode, and her character is pretty much the exact opposite to dennis, not just physically but her personality too. frank describes her well: “she’s an asshole but in all the right ways.” i wrote a post about this but basically, she tries to bring out the best in the gang, while dennis likes to pick on their failures. cindy would actually help them succeed, but dennis doesn’t care, even if their scheme doesn’t work, he can still pretend he led them in an effective way and maintained his superiority. this actually ties in really well with dennis’ whole plot line in s13, which is wanting everything to stay the same.
it’s kinda sad to realize that even with the tiniest bit of guidance and validation from a different perspective, the gang can actually muster up some confidence and work to their strengths and attempt to become better at their craft or simply how they handle themselves. this is also backed up by mac finds his pride, in which mac’s dancing partner helped him tremendously with coming out and brought out his heart and voice when he needed it most.
the gang being incredibly affected by the dennis sex doll and feeling as though it’s actually talking to them and making them feel small, even though it’s literally not dennis (it represents him though and that’s enough), is such a good way to show how dennis has ultimately conditioned them to think bad about themselves, and do things in the way that he exactly would want them. they are constantly manipulated and they are semi-aware of this, but they’re not gonna do anything about it bc it’s familiar, it’s comfortable.
also the trump/america/dennis parallels are super interesting: dennis wants everything to stay the same and when he’s back “paddy’s is great again”, but is it really? yes in a way, because the gang is back together, but from our perspective no bc they’re now just gonna go backwards again and be stuck in their own hell they’ve made for themselves.
this is another one in which we are gonna have to talk about the implications of dennis’ double life. the way that dennis comes back, while hilarious, makes no sense if he has been away for one and a half years! the gang’s reactions to him coming back are extremely odd and unemotional and the whole episode actually doesn’t make sense in terms of them still being focused on him. you would think that they’d reach the acceptance stage of dennis leaving after 1.5 YEARS...it’s the gang i guess and this episode showed they really can’t handle not having each other, but it could have been shown a bit differently?
seriously why isn’t anybody angry at him for leaving in the first place? mac should’ve punched him! also as the audience we’re mad at dennis for leaving so it sucks that we didn’t really get that satisfaction, doubled by never finding out what frickin happened to dennis all this time!!!
also this episode feels particularly wooden and this is mostly definitely on purpose - i.e. to indicate that the show’s flow is disrupted by glennis not being there, thus the gang is off without him - and while i do think this is a smart choice, it can possibly sacrifice the humour of the episode and make it weaker due to the unfamiliarity
i love mindy khaling as much as the next person but her role in this episode although interesting in terms of gang dynamics really isn’t very funny - i don’t understand why they would have mindy khaling on the show but give her a really boring role
tldr: the gang makes paddy’s great again is a brilliant look into the gang’s growing codependency and drives the message that however toxic they may become, they are each other’s fate.
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