Season 4 has been a strange one. While the ratings are consistently high, I have personally considered to have included both the least likeable & the most brilliant episodes. The penultimate episode for me, the extreme makeover episode for instance just didn't work even though most people seemed to like it & the same was true of the rehab/flew the cuckoo's nest episode. Over the last three seasons this show has become an increasingly big risk-taker, and while it's always fun to watch, some of the risks pay off and some of them perhaps don't. This is an episode that really does pay off. It's brilliantly absurd but also compared to some of the previous episodes has a depth that you don't always get with the ultra-cynical It's Always Sunny. Unsurprisingly perhaps that depth comes to us by way of Charlie & it's delivered to us with the brutality & utter refusal to sentimentalize that characterizes this show.
We've met the theme of tonight's episode before way back, when we first learned of the 'nightman', Charlie's nemesis, personal El Guapo, Red Knight, or more prosaically suspected childhood rapist. Well, when bad things happen to you, you've got to work through the issues right? Well, some people might go to therapy or self-harm. Charlie, well, he just sniffs glue & acts crazy & hyper for the most part, but on this occasion he decides to write an entire musical
As Dee says 'nobody just writes a musical', and as we learn of the subject matter we realize just how true that observation must be?
Except there turns out to be a rather surprising explanation for Charlie's sudden decision to turn into a musical auteur, one that is actually full of brutal pathos. How this plays out in my opinion, as Charlie bares his soul, with absolutely zero reward, is a thing of brilliance & for a show that can sometimes seem to stray a little too far in the direction of the absurd feels strangely for a moment like the best kind of truth soaked drama.
Another great thing here is, while it's mostly Charlie's show - & his impression of a tortured bully of an artistic director while somehow staying within character is a thing to behold - it also has the whole cast having fun & singing their socks off to 'the nightman'.
Altogether a great episode: both completely crazy & grounded at the same time
We've met the theme of tonight's episode before way back, when we first learned of the 'nightman', Charlie's nemesis, personal El Guapo, Red Knight, or more prosaically suspected childhood rapist. Well, when bad things happen to you, you've got to work through the issues right? Well, some people might go to therapy or self-harm. Charlie, well, he just sniffs glue & acts crazy & hyper for the most part, but on this occasion he decides to write an entire musical
As Dee says 'nobody just writes a musical', and as we learn of the subject matter we realize just how true that observation must be?
Except there turns out to be a rather surprising explanation for Charlie's sudden decision to turn into a musical auteur, one that is actually full of brutal pathos. How this plays out in my opinion, as Charlie bares his soul, with absolutely zero reward, is a thing of brilliance & for a show that can sometimes seem to stray a little too far in the direction of the absurd feels strangely for a moment like the best kind of truth soaked drama.
Another great thing here is, while it's mostly Charlie's show - & his impression of a tortured bully of an artistic director while somehow staying within character is a thing to behold - it also has the whole cast having fun & singing their socks off to 'the nightman'.
Altogether a great episode: both completely crazy & grounded at the same time