The Gang is a group of amoral friends who own and work at Paddy's Pub.
At one point, Dennis claims that The Gang is "me, Mac and Charlie" and that Dee is not a member. Shortly after, Frank blackmails his way into the Gang. [2x2]
Early in the series, Frank is the only member of The Gang that considers Dee as a member of The Gang. [2x2]. Whenever there is a decision, or a vote among members of The Gang, Dennis, Mac and Charlie immediately exclude her. [1x1], [3x7]
However, as of Season 11, it is implied that Dennis, Mac, and Charlie have accepted Dee and Frank as members of The Gang. At one point, Dennis says to Mac, "Let's invite The Gang over," referring to having Charlie, Frank, and Dee over for dinner [11x5] Later, Charlie and Mac decide to "go be with the Gang," this time referencing Dennis, Frank, and Dee. [11x10]
Members[]
- Charlie Kelly - Charlie owned a piece of the bar, until he sold pieces of his shares to all the other owners. [3x7]
- Mac - Mac is the pub's most active manager, and a co-owner of the bar.
- Dennis Reynolds - Dennis is Dee's twin brother, and a co-owner of the bar.
- Dee Reynolds - Dee is the bartender and doesn't own a stake in the pub.
- Frank Reynolds - Frank is Dennis and Dee's legal father, Charlie's ex-husband, and a co-owner of the bar.
Former members include:
- Schmitty - Used to be roommates with Charlie. Dennis kicked him out of a moving car. Later the Gang invited him back (over Charlie) but kicked him out again soon after. [6x8]
- Country Mac - Invited to join the gang and accepts before riding to his death. ("Mac Day")
- Cindy - Replacement member of The Gang after Dennis moves to North Dakota, expert schemer. Kicked out after Dennis returns. ("The Gang Makes Paddy's Great Again")
- Psycho Pete - Used to terrorize the public with Charlie & Mac before being institutionalized for Social Anxiety Disorder & changing his behavior. (“Psycho Pete Returns”)
Relationship with Society[]
Due to their narcissistic absorption with themselves and each other, the Gang barely acknowledges the outside world, and often display a complete disregard for social norms. A recurring gag in the series is that the Gang will often become so caught up in their own world and focused on their own interests that they do not even notice anyone else and will often disregard and ignore the outside world completely until necessary, as part of a scheme or someone is forced to loudly interject. For example, the Gang frequently get caught up in a debate or argument at socially inappropriate times. Other examples include Frank, Dennis, Mac and Charlie attempting to break down a door, only to find the homeowners at home, and then proceed to break it down right in front of them anyway because of the lack of destructive gratification. On another occasion, Dennis and Charlie attempt to break through the door of a Korean restaurant by loudly kicking and ramming it, completely oblivious that they have disrupted the entire restaurant and the customers are staring at them.
The Gang has ended up causing much hardship to some of the people they come in contact with: Matthew Mara, a.k.a Rickety Cricket, was an ordained priest before an alleged "miracle" at Paddy's Pub [2x9] reintroduced him to the Gang, and soon he found himself in a downward spiral that reduced him to a homeless "street rat." Similarly, they have cost The Waitress her job [3x7] and subjected her to various other emotional trials and tribulations. They even cause trouble for people they don't actually know: while trying to "expose" Bruce Mathis as a "terrorist", they end up destroying a total stranger's car by ramming it with Frank's "rape van" multiple times. (The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis)
Despite frequently wreaking havoc on the lives of virtually anyone who comes into contact with them, either selective memory, repression or general narcissism results in the Gang never seeming to remember any of it. Consequently, they are often shocked when people they have hurt in the past are hostile towards them or do not want to help them.
No one in the Gang seems to have any friends outside the Gang. The creators of the show have often stated that one of the main reasons the characters stay with each other is because no one else will hang out with them. When Dennis inherits his mother's house and plans on using it as a "party mansion", everyone they think to invite is either dead or would have nothing to do with them because of something terrible the Gang has done to them. [3x3] Dee has to trick The Waitress into going out for a "Sex In The City" night with her by saying she will give her a notebook Charlie keeps on her if she does. [4x7] The Gang is forced to use Artemis as their sound person for a kid's pageant they put on even though she doesn't know what she's doing, because, as Mac says "We don't have a very deep bench".
The Gang constantly shows no regard for the law at all. They break the law in several ways in almost every episode, and all have a police record. For a full list of all known crimes they have committed, see List of crimes committed by the gang.
Known Enemies[]
- Recurring enemies
- The McPoyle Family
- Rickety Cricket
- The Waitress
- Bruce Mathis
- The Lawyer
- Gail the Snail
- Hwang
- Barbara Reynolds
- Non-recurring enemies
- Colin [1x5]
- Ari Frankel [2x2]
- Ingrid Nelson [3x5]
- Mr. Kim [3x6]
- Lyle Corman [4x8]
- Brad Fisher [5x5]
- Art Sloan [5x12]
- Frat kids [5x12]
- Eugene Hamilton [5x13]
- Bobby's crew [7x2]
- Shusher [7x8]
- Adriano Calvanese [7x12]
- Trevor Taft and his "frat crew" [Charlie and Dee Find Love]
Alliances[]
Members of the gang often create alliances against each other, sometimes also allying with others:
- Mac and Dennis vs. Frank and Cricket: Mac and Dennis hunt, despite Frank's warnings. Frank decides to join forces with Cricket to hunt Mac and Dennis back. [4x1]
- Charlie and Dee: Charlie and Dee team up to find the source of Frank's meat, eventually deciding that it must be human meat. They bring a homeless guy back to Charlie's apartment, where they prepare to eat him. [4x1]
- Dee and Dennis vs. Charlie and Mac vs. Frank: Dee and Dennis go undercover to find a serial killer, first using Dee as bait and then later deciding to pretend to kill The Waitress. Meanwhile, Frank tries to prove that the killer is Mac; Charlie fulfills his desire to become a lawyer by defending Mac against the accusations of the Gang. [3x10]
Notes[]
- Every member of the Gang is tied to the Reynolds family, except for Mac. Mac did however bang Frank's ex-wife. In 10x08, Mac claims that he was adopted by Frank, however, this was likely so he would be allowed to participate.
- The Gang all went to high school together (except for Frank).
- Until 02x02, Mac and Charlie were not aware about Dennis' classification of their group as "The Gang". However, in The Gang Gets a New Member, the photos of the Gang and Schmitty had "The Gang" on the wall at the top.
- Schmitty was the original fourth member of the gang and a roommate of Charlie's. Charlie despised Schmitty and eventually turned Mac and Dennis against him. Dennis kicked Schmitty out of a moving car and told him "You're out of the gang!" [6x8]
- Mac keeps calling Charlie "a kid" [3x15], [5x2] - despite the fact that Charlie is one year older than Mac. Dennis also sometimes calls Charlie "a kid" [6x10] - though Charlie is probably older than Dennis, because he brags about being Dennis and Dee's "big brother" in the beginning of 03x04. This may be related to how the Gang often percieves themselves as kids despite all of them being over 40 years old; Mac once refers to them as “just kids having fun”[9x7] and when meeting his father, Charlie says that “Shelley Kelly is a kid like me”[15x6]. It’s possible that this can relate to the Gang’s level of emotional maturity, which is close to the level of a child’s.
- The guys often try to ditch Dee. They tried to ditch Dee when they went on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. [5x2]
- Members of the gang often team up to give public performances.
- The Gang has a ritual in which each member of The Gang gets a special day to themselves, during which everyone else must do exactly what they want them to do, without complaining (or else you get another day added on). The episode "Mac Day" takes us through a Mac Day, but we hear a bit about Charlie Day (which mostly involved hunting ghouls), and we see the beginning of Frank Day. The episode "Dee Day" shows Dee having her day, evidently after everyone else had theirs.
- The Gang sings with each other on multiple occasions.
- Mac is the only member of the Gang who has been a member of it since its introduction: Frank and Dee were not initially considered a part of it, Schmitty was kicked out twice while Charlie quit temporarily, and Dennis abandoned it to pursue fatherhood, only to return later and kick out his replacement Cindy. Mac was scheduled to be swapped out for his cousin, who suffered a fatal injury before this could be carried out.