Risk E. Rat's Pizza & Amusement Center
My coverage of Season 16 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia continues with episode 6.
A recurring episodic theme across It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the Gang invading spaces meant for children out of a perceived ownership over them. This can be seen in “The Gang Goes to a Water Park,” “Waiting For Big Mo,” and, though less aimed at present-day children, “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore.” Still, what all three episodes share is portraying the Gang as very obviously stunted, adult children who are desperate to cling to these vestiges of adolescence that they can still manage to partake in.
By doing so, in “The Gang Goes to a Water Park” and “Waiting For Big Mo,” the Gang makes two specifically child-aimed safe space inhospitable, but in “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore,” the Gang makes the memories of their own youth inhospitable, returning to a hallowed place that has since deteriorated considerably. The Gang are constantly operating on this deluded notion that “things used to be better for them” even when they clearly weren’t, because how else would they have become the people that they are today? Still, the Jersey Shore, in particular, was a bright spot in an otherwise unhappy stretch of life, the revelation of its debasement a source of profound disillusionment for Dee and Dennis specifically (Frank, Mac, and Charlie all end up having a lovely time).
Season 16 episode 6, “Risk E. Rat's Pizza & Amusement Center,” combines the themes of all three aforementioned episodes into one episode, which attempts to comment on the way these children’s spaces have managed to get both better and a little bit worse, safeguarding children from the very things that the Gang had inflicted upon these spaces in previous episodes. It’s a “kids these days” approach that has nothing to do with things like social media or “puriteens,” but instead walks this fine line between appreciating the less watered-down version of the childhoods of yesteryear and what has to be sacrificed to make the world an ultimately safer place for children to grow up in. Personally speaking, I think that both things can be true, and the episode does a good job of walking that line.
In their usual attempt to go back and relive one of their favorite places as children, now as adults, the Gang heads to Risk E. Rats Pizza & Amusement Center (what could that be a parody of, I wonder) for a day of no-holds-barred, unsupervised fun. The Gang arrives at the establishment and are each asked to sign a waiver before getting in, which they bemoan and fail to fill out to completion (Dennis, very self-satisfied, informs the young man at the entrance that he wrote a different name down). They then pair off and separate to meet their specific goals: Frank and Dee want to go on the “joke hunt,” which, in the past, had been little pieces of paper cheese hidden around the venue with offensive jokes written on them. “I can’t wait to see who the victims are these days,” Frank growls gleefully, after Dee insists to him that the “diverse, ethnic stuff” of the old jokes was not actually offensive. If you got enough jokes, you would meet the Rat himself and he’d do a little routine for you — in Frank’s case, that meant “beating his kids and his alcoholic brother (both Risk E.’s, I guess??).” A very funny recurring bit is that — and as you probably already know if you are in any sort of close proximity to a Boomer or older— most of the things in Frank’s childhood, whether positive or negative, led to children being beaten.
Charlie and Dennis team up to hunt down an animatronic female mouse that used to perform in the Risk E. Rat stage show, who allegedly had realistic breasts with nipples and curves, and that Charlie was lucky enough to get a peek at when he was a kid — the first pair of women’s breasts he ever saw, in fact. Feeling left out from this formative experience, Dennis decides he wants in on the Fake Rat Titties and goes on a search to find them and the rest of the robot band. They come to the closed up “Ride to Kid City,” which Charlie had once used to lead him to the boobs, and which has since been walled up for construction of a gift shop. Dennis and Charlie then reminisce with fondness about how the Risk E. Rat actor used to smack children on the back of the head because “That’s what the bone is for,” as Dennis and Charlie replicate in Risk E.’s former cadence wonderfully.
Meanwhile, Mac’s quest to redeem his hoarded old prize tickets goes awry when he discovers he can’t redeem them for what he truly wants: a lifelike children’s gun. Unable to get even a comb that operates like a switchblade, gum that simulates chewing tobacco or candy cigarettes, he attempts to win more tickets to receive a more worthwhile prize. He tries to team up with a child but fails miserably when he ends up berating the boy — “We’re in an arcade and there’s no adults around!” he forcefully asserts to the boy, who is unsure if he wants to go into cahoots with this middle-aged man before asking his parents. Their public row gets the two of them sent to the “Feelings Center,” where a licensed psychotherapist in a dog suit tries to help them work things out.
In the end, the Gang meets back up for the stage show, which is the straw that breaks the camels back. No more animatronics, now it’s simply a group of people in animal suits singing a new song that directs listeners to a website. Incensed by this development, the Gang takes it upon themselves to “do something for the sake of the kids” and reanimate the old band (earlier, Dennis and Charlie find that their big-titted Rat babe, “Justine the Teen Dream,” has had her breasts sawed-off and, unable to decide which side of the political spectrum is to blame, Dennis declares it “a sad day for women’s rights”). In their quest to give present-day kids the better childhood that the Gang had had, the Gang, predictably, turns things to utter and total shit before slinking off like nothing ever happened.
The thesis of this attempt at commenting on whether “the good old days” were really all that good, is perhaps best summed up in the exchange Mac has with his child enemy in the Feelings Center. In the end, the kid doesn’t want to be in the Feelings Center, either — he just wants to be allowed to play. Of course, the child is simply the mouthpiece for an adult writer’s room (writing credit this episode is bestowed upon Rob Rosell), but I think they have a point. Kids should be allowed to explore the world with a certain level of danger, to get a little bruised up. Too many safeguards at every turn can keep kids from being kids. I know that my own childhood — under the watchful but not oppressively watchful eye of my parents — was better for its share of unorthodox, unsupervised antics, where I did things I wasn’t supposed to do and got away with it. But maybe I’m just like the Gang, reminiscing on an even safer world than the one they grew up in, that still failed me in whatever certain ways I’m not able to fully conceive of in my rosy memory.
But then there are, of course, the very obvious things that had to improve no matter how favorable they remain in one’s mind, especially in the case of Risk E. Rat’s Pizza & Amusement Center. The racist jokes, the beatings, the bar where parents can get plastered; placing the cheese jokes upskirt on waitresses so you (Frank) can grope them; the stuttering “Dingbat Duck” character (which leads to a great exchange between Dee and Frank, the former of whom is maddened at Dingbat Duck’s name change to “Dapper Duck” but bristles at Frank saying the R-slur); and the purple monster in the animatronic band being given a black voice performed by a white actor — a fantastic conversation between Dennis and Charlie, who posits that the monsters should have “White voices,” which Dennis corrects to “Monster voices.”
Once again, this is a really solid episode; still not matching the heights of “Frank vs. Russia,” but I’m not confident anything else in the season will be able to. But overall it’s a really solid and consistent season. I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but again this is a great episode that balances comedic conceit with satire (there’s even a part, I assume self-aware, where Dee says that she doesn’t actually understand satire, in response to a socially acceptable cheese joke that her and Frank find, and which they do attempt to add some ethnically-offensive flavor to). There are also more consistently funny lines of dialogue in this episode than the last one, including all the lines I’ve already mentioned here along with “Risk E.’s walled off in there,” “I think Risk E. would want us to take a risk right now,” “I can’t say a duck is [R-slur]?”, and, possibly my favorite line of the episode: Mac saying very calmly, “I guess he’s thirsty,” as the Gang watches Frank greedily slobber up water from a broken fountain’s water bottle spigot by using a hot dog tray.
I’m disappointed that this season is going to end in just two more episodes (though I’m sure all my subscribers who are hating that I’m reviewing Sunny right now will be overjoyed if they haven’t already unsubscribed). I’m not sure why the Sunny creative team has started doing only eight-episode seasons starting with Season 15, but I’d be curious to know why. It’s especially disheartening given that this has been such a steadily good season, but I’m happy, rather than apprehensive or exhausted like I was before, that we’re getting at least two more seasons. Season 16 has made me eager for what else Sunny will do in its late-period stretch.
Frank attempting to dance along and pantomime the Gang dancing and singing to the old “Risk E. Rat” song in the car on the way to the venue is great, especially when it seems like he’s getting a headache by the end of it.
It’s funny to me how, throughout the entirety of Sunny’s run, the Gang consistently treats children as either beneath them or equal to them. It’s especially funny because like, it’s good to treat children as people to a certain extent and not pander or condescend them — the Gang just does it in the absolutely worst way I.E., cursing at them, berating them, attempting to embroil them in their plots and schemes, etc.
I like the idea of sneakily sliding in the hot-button topic of “grooming” but it’s that the Risk E. Rat’s establishment is actually “grooming children to be pussies,” as Mac informs the child he’s at odds with in the Feelings Center. Of course, his confused monologue about how the kid needs to grow some balls is only revealing of his own troubled youth.
The Gang being given free earbuds before the start of the stage show and them all hurling the earbuds back at the employee angrily.
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