Charlie's Home Alone

Charlie's Home Alone
Information
Season	Thirteen
Episode	Eight
Writer(s)	Adam Weinstock & Andy Jones
Air Date	October 24, 2018
Chronology
Preceded by	"The Gang Does a Clip Show"
Followed by	"The Gang Wins the Big Game"

"Charlie's Home Alone" is the eighth episode of the thirteenth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It aired on October 24, 2018.

Synopsis

It's the weekend of Super Bowl LII, this time from Charlie's perspective. While Charlie searches the back office for Green Man, Cricket steals the suit leaving Charlie home alone to defend himself.

Plot

2:40 PM On a Saturday, One Year Ago, Philadelphia, PA

The gang is preparing to leave for Super Bowl LII while Charlie is flustered at being unable to locate his Green Man costume. Charlie argues with Mac and The Waitress for disparaging Charlie's superstitious rituals for helping the Philadelphia Eagles win games: wearing "green", eating "brown", and drinking "yellow". Charlie wishes Mac "disappears" during their argument as he returns inside the bar to look for his costume. Meanwhile, Frank reveals he hired a party bus to take them to the Super Bowl. "Green Man" boards the party bus with everyone else and the gang takes off, unbeknownst to them that the person under the costume is not Charlie. Charlie reemerges with everyone gone, and believes he successfully wished his friends out of existence (reminiscent of the plot of the movie Home Alone).

After confirming the rest of the gang are not at their homes and tampering with their belongings for fun, Charlie returns to the bar to set up watching the Super Bowl. Charlie checks on noises in the basement and is scared of the furnace through his own imagination. When he returns upstairs, he is further scared by two bar patrons knocking on the front door, who cannot enter due to Charlie locking the door and putting up a sign earlier announcing the bar is closed. Believing the men are burglars, Charlie states he must defend the bar, and begins setting up a variety of dangerous, homemade traps throughout the bar. As he finishes, he steps in his own bear trap, and proceeds to bleed profusely. He manages to reach the electric charcoal starter he rigged heating the front door knob, and cauterizes his own wound. He passes out from the pain.

Charlie wakes up a day later when his alarm for the start of the Super Bowl goes off. Realizing he is incapacitated due to the bear trap, Charlie is despondent about not being able to perform his superstitious rituals to help the Eagles win. Just then, a rat appears through a nearby hole and Charlie is able to coax it to himself. Deeming the rat "brown" enough, Charlie eats the rat whole and hears cheering in the streets, surmising his ritual worked. He gains hope and crawls to turn on the TV to watch the Super Bowl, but begins to vomit violently due to eating the rat. He passes out again.

Charlies wakes up sometime later from the sounds of booing in the streets, and is encouraged to continue performing his rituals to help the Eagles. He notices one of the paint cans he hung on ropes contains green paint, and plans to paint himself green to "wear green". After making a few efforts to bring the paint can down to him, he finally frees the can, but it hits him on his forehead, knocking him out and simultaneously painting some of his face green.

Waking up yet again from the sound of fans cheering outside, Charlie once again surmises his rituals are helping the Eagles score. He decides he must now perform his last ritual of "drinking yellow" and notices a glass of beer on the bar counter. He painfully crawls as close as he can and attempts to use his rat stick to bring the beer to him, but knocks it to the ground, shattering the glass. He is only able to drink a few drops, and believing it is not enough, proceeds to fill a new glass with his own urine to fulfill "drinking yellow". Charlie then hallucinates the ethereal spirits of Jason Kelce and Beau Allen of the Philadelphia Eagles encouraging him to fulfill his rituals. Charlie finishes his glass, and his hallucinations then tell him to turn on the TV, although Charlie is daunted by the gauntlet of traps he laid himself between the bar counter and the TV. Nevertheless, Charlie reaches the TV despite hurting himself on every trap along the way and releasing himself from the bear trap. Charlie and his hallucinations are dismayed seeing that Tom Brady is in possession of the ball during the last moments of the Super Bowl, and his hallucinations tell him he must put the bear trap back on himself in order for the Eagles to win the game because "Every single thing that every fan does, at home or at the stadium, makes a direct impact on the game." The episode ends with Charlie muttering "Ah, shit" with To Be Continued on the screen.

Cast

Starring

• Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly
• Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds (credit only)
• Rob McElhenney as Mac
• Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds
• Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds

Guest Starring

• Mary Elizabeth Ellis as The Waitress
• David Hornsby as Cricket
• Travis Schuldt as Ben Smith
• Lance Barber as Bill Ponderosa
• Andrew Friedman as Uncle Jack
• TJ Hoban as Rex
• Beau Allen as Himself
• Jason Kelce as Himself

Co-Starring

• Andrew Hawtrey as Marv
• Bryan Coffee as Harry
• Merrill Reese as Announcer

Trivia

• This episode is part of a two-part episode, continued in "The Gang Wins the Big Game".
• This episode takes place on Saturday, February 3, 2018 and Sunday, February 4,2018. He starts the countdown clock on Saturday at 4:00pm with 26 1/2 hours until the Super Bowl that starts 6:30pm Sunday. He passes out from blood loss and other things, losing large chunks of time.
• The title is a reference to the 1990 holiday comedy Home Alone, as are several subsequent scenes and details:
  • Charlie wishes Mac disappeared and believes he does, much like protagonist Kevin McCallister wished his whole family disappeared.
  • The montage of Charlie having fun at the homes of the missing gang mirrors Kevin having fun home alone: jumping on beds, rummaging through belongings, using personal cleaning products, etc.
  • Charlie reacts in disgust to Dee's underwear the same way Kevin reacts to his brother Buzz's portrait of his girlfriend (saying "woof").
  • Charlie does the iconic yell after slapping his face with aftershave, but remarks he doesn't understand why people scream when it doesn't hurt at all.
  • Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee is played throughout Charlie's montage, and is used throughout Home Alone as well.
  • The presence of life-sized cardboard cutouts of Jason Kelce and Beau Allen is similar to Kevin having one of Michael Jordan.
  • Both Charlie and Kevin imagine their furnace as a living, scary being.
  • The two bar patrons that knock at the door look similar in stature to the antagonists of Home Alone: Marv and Harry. They are credited with those names for the episode.
  • Charlie lays many homemade traps in the bar similar to Kevin (replete with map of plans drawn in crayon):
    • Hanging a live electric charcoal starter on a doorknob.
    • Laying broken beer bottle pieces like Kevin with broken Christmas tree ornaments.
    • Use of a nail gun, although a nail gun is only used in the sequel movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York instead of the original.
    • Paint cans hanging on ropes.
    • Various wires stretched out as obstacles and trip hazards.
    • "Fetherz" is seen spelled and drawn in Charlie's plans for the back office, but is never revealed.
    • "Greez" is seen spelled and drawn in Charlie's plans to be laid throughout the bar floor, but Charlie is never shown applying grease anywhere.
• Charlie's rat bat, that he was previously given to him as a present in "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats", reappears.
• Charlie's "Dram Bok", which we saw in the episode "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats", can be seen in the box of stuff that Charlie looks through to try to find the Green Man costume.
• The countdown clock Charlie uses appears to be the same one Dennis bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond to count down the "24 hour news cycle" in "Wolf Cola: A Public Relations Nightmare".
• Dennis does not appear in this episode, despite the fact that Glenn Howerton is credited during the opening credits.
• In the form of a continuity error/wardrobe detailing: Charlie's decrepit Vans high tops are swapped out with noticeably cleaner and newer duplicate pair during scenes that would stain them with fake blood or green paint.
• The Waitress now owns a smartphone and uses social media. She previously showed Dennis a clunky flip phone from the 90's and claimed she didn't "do online" in "The Gang Group Dates".

Images