“A woman’s mouth…”
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Gotta say, wasn’t fully feeling “Dee Made a Smut Film.” Things picked up toward the end, when Cricket was brought in to grossly inspire Charlie’s doodles, but even then the actual finish felt lacking. I was expecting more of a punch out of Dennis’ story. Perhaps even a real catharsis/breakdown over actually being sexually violated when he was a young teen.
But no, Dennis held firmly to his belief that banging his Rick Moranis-looking school librarian was a “good time.” Because it had to be, for his entire adult psyche to remain unshattered. Which I guess is fine, but also not funny. And it made for a flat ending.
A lot of this episode felt like it was working off premises that would have worked ten to fifteen years ago. Almost as if Always Sunny was late to the game. Sure, I appreciated Richard Grieco’s love of seaweed and his request for a “chalk break,” but using Grieco for his kitsch factor has been done before (A Night at the Roxbury, Veronica Mars, etc). And then Charlie deciding to adopt the “bro” swagger of Grieco didn’t really work and seemed to come out of nowhere.
Also, while I’m on the topic of Dee’s “smut” movie, you can’t really bash Cinemax for skin flicks anymore. The “Skinemax” label was a thing back in the day and while, admittedly, there is still soft porn on the channel, it’s on all the premium channels. And Cinemax now has it own lineup of original shows. Sure, they tend to skew toward the pulp-y, but one of them was directed by Steven Soderbergh. So the start of this whole chapter didn’t really play well.
Not that there weren’t some high points. Frank instantly connecting with that one painting, zoning out and hearing war machine noises. Dee’s super-short acting reel. Cricket’s “dog orgy” idea. Charlie snacking on chalk. Director Dee calling for sadness to be coming from the porn star’s t**s. This episode wasn’t a total bust, of course.
But then, Frank’s “art dealer” persona – Ango Goblogian (sp) – didn’t really hit the mark either. The best part of his swishy, enthusiastic hack in a Warhol wig was, I suppose, the fact that it worked. And tricked the gallery owner. Though, to be fair, we’d come to find out that she wasn’t even the real owner.
Like Dee’s soft core Richard Grieco flick, this episode was soft Sunny. It never went all the way with its ideas, and some of the jokes came in pre-worn.
