Gotta say, I really enjoyed this episode. More than the others so far this season, actually - except for Time's Up for the Gang, which is a stone cold Sunny classic. I've not always agreed with the criticism aimed at some episodes so far this season but I could at least see the reasons behind the majority of the complaints. The opener was a little too meta, the Boggs re-boot wasn't heavy on the laughs. With this episode, though, I just can't see where the criticisms are coming from.
This isn't a top ten episode, or even a top twenty episode, but I think it's been deliberately placed as episode six of this season because it works as something of a companion piece to 'Hero or Hate Crime?', which was the sixth episode of last season and functioned in a similar way: put the gang on their own and watch them map out the most complicated route to the simplest solution. 'Hero or Hate Crime?' is a funnier episode, and because Sunny's first job is to be a sitcom that makes it a better episode than this one. But what this show has regularly excelled at since the back end of season 5/beginning of season 6, is getting right into the nuances of both sides of a sensitive issue and coming out with some astute and hilarious observations on hysteria, hypocrisy and language.
And this episode does just that. I remember back in late 2016 when they announced the first few episode titles for season 12, and the first one up was 'The Gang Turns Black'. I remember reading it and being a little disheartened that they were thinking of pushing the blackface button again. In 2018, they can refer to "the bathroom problem", I can know exactly what they mean, and I can trust the writers, actors, and everybody else involved to analyse the hysteria and hypocrisy in this debate, and still come out the other side having not preached a thing to me.
The point they settle on in this episode is somehow both a typically lazy conclusion of characters who've exhausted themselves by arguing the most ridiculous points until they're red in face, and also the simple, sweet, humanitarian mantra we probably all need to live by: "We all need to go into the bathroom to piss and shit, so why is there such a nasty argument brewing over it?" And that's what Sunny does best nowadays - it manages to utilise the increasing depravity and selfishness of its central characters to make astute observations on sensitive topics. It's tackling these subjects with an increased elegance while still challenging the audience and without leaning too heavily on just preaching what the audience already knows.
Plus, I think there are some classic Sunny moments in this. "I'm a bear! I'm a bear!", "God, I hate it when you're on my side...", Charlie using chopsticks with two hands, Charlie and Mac both flying madly off the handle at innocuous comments, Dee remaining a close second to Dennis in terms of sheer awfulness, Danny DeVito holds a gun in this episode so I'll automatically love it anyway, "He identifies as a woman when he poops". And it does all of this with five characters in one location for more than twenty minutes. It's classic Sunny set-up, solid Sunny delivery, and a good Sunny episode.
