The Game of Games makes the return of returns!
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
The return of Chardee MacDennis? With the Gang all agreeing to temporarily keep their emotions in check for the sake of a potentially lucrative demonstration? Well that’s clearly a recipe for a beautiful disaster. And a strong way to open the show’s eleventh season.
I mean, it’s not hard to immediately assume that everything will go wrong and that everyone will crumble under anger and resentment, but – to make this set up even funnier – Frank got instantly furious! Like, right after the deal was made. Which let us know that none of this would succeed even a little bit.
And so they were off! It was “Suck my d***, gentlemen” again! With outdated Bill Cosby answers in the trivia round, Franks “Four F”s nazi flag that’s safe to assume was very intentional, Dennis drawing a woman’s head in a freezer to symbolize love (while Mac made a giant, obvious phallus), a little wine mainlining (beer has bubbles, right?), and Dee doing a horrendous Philly accent. It was all glorious.
And the whole time, you’re wondering when and how the bottom will fall out. The obvious answer would be that the “Mattel executive” (Andy Buckley) abandons the game early on, disgusted by the violent tasks and the players’ behavior. But this guy was in it to win it. He came in apparently looking for “outside the box” game night activities, thus making it easier for us to buy him getting sucked in. Plus, ALL the booze. Even though we’d learn he was a fraud by the end, in a nice Frank-related twist, it still became believable that – basically – this exec got drunk enough to enjoy watching everyone get abused.
Underneath everything here too was Dennis and Dee’s desire continue their win streak, despite having agreed to not care about it. And they did win, technically, after a severely inebriated Charlie failed to survive the Waitress’ surprise return, and subsequent “poop-smelling trash person” verbal attack. At least Dennis and Dee were kind enough to wait until Charlie regained consciousness in the hospital before they crushed his dreams and gloated.
The opening pre-title bit was perhaps a little too meta about this being a “sequel.” It wasn’t bad, per se, it’s just that there are a ton of shows nowadays that take this approach. Basically, it was Community’s bread and butter for six seasons, and – well – just last night FOX’s The Grinder (which actually stars “Waitress” Mary Elizabeth Ellis) did a similarly-styled opening routine. Like I said, not bad, no one’s fault, just overdone.
From the polite(ish) opening rounds involving art, trivia, and beer bottle building to the final Saw-inspired round of pants-pooping and arm slicing, “Chardee MacDennis 2” was great. And suspenseful in the sense that you didn’t know how it was going to implode. The episode did a admirable job of making the viewer believe that the game exec was genuine, which then made the twist land safely and hilariously.
