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me and oomf @boyfailurecharliekelly have been madmtts rotting again (as we always do), and they brought up how mac actually did initially fix the pool filter - which in itself will forever be one of the coolest details - and what that potentially means in terms of the ways they manipulate each other, and now i am very much desperate to discuss this further, because i don’t really see this talked about much and its such a genius detail. like, how every single night is the same - the close up of the pool filter, the close up of the smoke detector, dennis can’t sleep, mac can’t sleep, etc - except the night pool guy came over, where we see dennis has managed to get to sleep - paired with no pool filter noise heard - and is woken up by mac’s bashing instead. it’s just such a clever sneak because it completely subverts the surface-level plot and adds so many layers to the strain in their dynamic.

for one, it makes me feel bad for mac - and anyone who knows me knows i fucking hate when that happens - as dennis does just immediately start shouting at him when he sees the pool guy and berating him for “inviting some guy over without asking” without even once bothering to hear mac out or explain himself, but also like…it does also raise questions about mac’s intentions too, because like. why didn’t mac just tell him he’d fixed it? why did mac sit back in silence and take dennis’ abuse without trying to defend himself when he knew he’d done what he’d asked? its just interesting to me. given that mac’s whole rhetoric throughout the episode is this woe-is-me, “everything i do i do for you and everything you do you do for yourself” thing, its almost as if he’s not actually doing these things out of any real desire to be helpful, but more as a private test maybe? kinda like the mac n cheese?

its a shame too, because it also throws out the narrative dennis tries to spin regarding mac’s incompetence, like. the holes in the wall from his attempts to get the tv set up is so on-the-nose - especially when followed up with dennis’ bitchy little “but y’know, do em” remark implying that he’s useless - but like. he literally fixes the one thing dennis wanted fixed the most. and it’s fucking sad because dennis doesn’t even acknowledge it. he just. goes back to sleeping soundly again. like there was never a problem in the first place. no thanks, no gratitude, nothing. what dennis wants dennis gets.

and then there are the events that follow that night, like. mac waking dennis up. was that on purpose? almost like “of course all prince dennis’ problems are fine and sorted but i’m still losing sleep, i’m still going mad over the smoke detector, i’m still suffering”, and i mean. you have to be next-level stupid to mistake a smoke detector for a cricket. like. they categorically don’t sound the same. and the way mac is shoving the broomstick directly against dennis’ wall like. that wouldn’t even achieve anything in the event that it was a cricket like ??? i dunnooooo. something something “maybe it was just a cry for attention”.

there’s also the obvious final reveal that dennis has been hearing the smoke detector the entire time - which sucks because what even is his reason for lying about not hearing it? does he just want mac to suffer? thats not really dennis’ style - so we know that every time mac hears it, dennis is hearing it too, but remember - dennis is asleep in this scene, totally undisturbed until mac starts bashing. also, during the scene, not only is the pool filter fixed, but there is no smoke detector sound either. now, of course, a sporadic on-off beep is very different to a continuous buzz, so it very well could be the case that the smoke detector had been sounding and dennis - having been kept up by the filter for so long and therefore just extremely tired - was just in too deep a sleep to hear it, but considering everything we know about dennis and his own aversion to irritating noises, i just feel like it would have woken him up if that was the case. like, sure, it could have been going off, but what if mac just couldn’t sleep? and therefore is deliberately waking dennis up because why should he suffer alone? especially as he’s going fucking insane thinking he’s the only one that can hear it - even if it wasn’t sounding, he probably can’t sleep anyway because he’s just anticipating the inevitability of hearing it again. he knows the pool filter is fixed because he’s the one that called the pool guy, but he thinks that dennis can’t hear the smoke detector, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s just like “well if i can’t sleep then neither can dennis” because he is sick of dennis’ problems always coming first.

@boyfailurecharliekelly also made the point of potential phantom noises - like maybe the smoke detector isn’t acting up but mac is just hearing shit - and then this made me imagine an alternative for dennis (that i personally like a lot more than the usual selfishness most people assume of him anyway, and can very easily see as possible, but i don’t know if many others would agree) in which like, sure, maybe he doesn’t outwardly thank mac for fixing the pool filter but - perhaps slightly embarrassed about immediately jumping to conclusions and wanting to make up for it - after storming off, he does notice its been fixed and decides to fix the smoke detector while mac is alone to make it up to him instead - not actually saying anything about it and just doing it in secret in the hopes mac will just see that they’re even - but then mac (as usual) misses the memo and, because he’s still hearing phantom beeps, doesn’t realise that dennis has returned the favor at all, and thats why he wakes dennis up, punishing him further because he thinks dennis is being ungrateful “as usual”, does that make any sense? i don’t even think that’s wishful thinking btw like, maybe i am a little bit biased - and also if i speak in defense of mac for too long i break out into a rash so i always gotta even it out - but i genuinely do think this is exactly the kind of thing dennis would do. i get that thats just my interpretation - most of this is just unpacking what we see in the show, and i will get back to that now - but i dunno. it just makes sense to me.

anyway it’s all so fucking sinister because the whole episode really is just them relentlessly lying to each other, and while i know that that’s a given, it’s just fucking insane how deep it goes. and its weird, because we were talking in general about mac’s pov specifically and like, all the weird shit that must have been going on with him when alone off screen because it shows such a whole new side to the character and is just so fun to break down, but we aren’t sure where mac fixing the filter actually fits because if anything - as deceptive as it all is - its actually one of the sadder mac moments because he really is just putting dennis first in every way. it may be in all the wrong ways, and with all the wrong intentions - always rendering the both of them even more miserable - but it is true that everything he’s doing is for dennis.

there is also the fact that the pool filter does start to make noise again as time goes on - like, during the “best weeks of our lives” montage - which naturally implies that mac broke it again, intentionally this time, as he grows more and more fed up with dennis’ selfishness, and its just. so fucking interesting. like, the idea of him smashing it up on one of his personal days or googling how to rig it and make it louder to privately terrorise his friend - who didn’t even really notice a difference in the first place besides accepting that he wasn’t uncomfortable anymore - and somehow teach him a lesson like fuckkkkk. its just so twisted. and there’s so much of it too like all this insane shit mac is doing off camera - somehow spying on dennis like how did he even do that, at some point buying all those boxes of mac and cheese and stocking up that cupboard without dennis seeing, cooking a dog, like its all just. so. fucking. weird.

it’s interesting too, because i was reviewing the scripts and whenever the scene cuts to another night, there is a descriptor at the top indicating that both men are unable to sleep on account of the noises - with particular emphasis on the pool filter - but that night, the script neither references the lack of noise, nor is dennis described to be asleep; it simply states that dennis tries to sleep until he hears a loud crash, and when dennis meets mac in the hallway, it clarifies that nothing is broken (not to mention the parts cut from the montage sequence where dennis is seen smashing the pool filter and mac is seen smashing every smoke detector in the house like. what the fuck.), so like. why was mac awake?

its not even the only example either like even the mac n cheese changes and, while there could be a million different reasons for this simply in terms of off-screen set maintenance, i do think there is something to be said about that. like in the first scene its bright fucking yellow, but by the final scene its this dull murky cream color (which idk, could either be representative of how that mac n cheese is dying like they are - like the flowers in the background - or it could be that mac really has “switched up the mac n cheese” and had upgraded to an even unhealthier type which isn’t even reaching given the boxes specify more cheese but this is definitely a topic for a different post) and the portions sizes seem to get a little bigger and idk its just like. its all so fucking weird lol i know i keep saying it but i cannot get enough.

and i think a lot about the morning scene outside - where they bring up both noises to each other properly for the first time - and the “everything i do i do for you” theme is there in every. single. fucking. line. like, mac opening the conversation to ask dennis about the chirping only to be immediately interrupted by dennis complaining about the pool filter before mac can even finish his sentence, and then mac getting excited to play his homemade creed mix only to get completely dismissed moments later because dennis wants to listen to bryan adams. even just their individual demeanours when approached by wally and how dennis visibly holds himself as if he is only thinking about himself, whereas mac looks ready to defend dennis - mac saying “some guy just comes up and starts talking to us??” vs dennis saying “some guy comes up to me” - like its so. its so fucking sickly. ykwim? and i know this is all such a basic understanding of the episode but it still just hits every fucking time i can’t even explain it.

the script for this episode always makes me so mad in the best way too because there really is so little give away, which is infuriating because - as we all know - there was so much from the episode that had to be cut and isn’t there in the script either, so 95% of these questions will forever remain unanswered, but i will die on the hill that it should have been a 3 and a half hour long movie special instead of a 20 minute episode hahahaha

honestly, i could talk about this episode for the rest of my life (the mac n cheese, the stalking, dennis jr and what he represents, baby trapping, weaponising food & feederism, marital affair metaphors, the idea of the noises representing their sexualities too which is insane given how close mac is to confronting his own at that point, like theres just so fucking much to talk about - all of which i will come back to at another stage), and i’m sure i’ve even got more to say on this too, as i desperately want to unpack mac’s thought processes behind all these weird passive manipulation styles because possibilities are literally limitless, but i’m gonna leave it here for now, as i want to be articulate and can feel myself getting carried away. however, they truly did put something different in this episode because the fact that i still have this much to say about it ten years later is so fucking impressive. huge shoutout to @boyfailurecharliekelly and their massive brain for always matching my energy and being as rotten about this episode as i am, and i five gold stars to whoever read the whole thing

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