"The Gang Goes to Hell: Part 2" is the tenth episode of the eleventh season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It is the season finale and the conclusion from the previous episode "The Gang Goes to Hell."
Synopsis[]
The second part of two, where with disaster looming, the Gang tries unsuccessfully to make amends with one another while locked in a brig that's flooding with ocean water.
Plot Summary[]
Unknown Time, Unknown Place
The Gang is still talking to an unseen man in a blank white space that is supposed to "judge" them. Frank asks for a recap of previous events, which would continue the story from the last episode.
Starting from where the story was last left off, the Gang is still locked in the brig of their Christian cruise ship during a storm for their various offenses to other passengers, as alarms are blaring. When the alarms eventually stop, Charlie continues panicking until Mac dejectedly tells him nothing matters because he no longer believes there is a god. They all begin to debate whether the ship is still moving or not, which devolves into them all doing impressions of what they think the cruise ship's engine should sound like. When they finish, their debate lasted for "four hours and six minutes" according to Dee. Assuming that the ship would have arrived at their destination had the ship been moving, they deduce that the ship had not been moving after all. Charlie begins to panic again until Dennis calms him down with a "soccer hooligan" chant.
Frank suggests they all play games to keep their wits about them in this emergency. Dee breaks down and opts out of doing anything with the Gang, as the whole point of her vacationing on the cruise was to get away from the Gang. When Mac agrees to play games as something he assumes his dad would advise them to do when locked up, Dennis does an impression of Mac's dad that wows them. When they ask Dennis to do more impression, Dee offers herself up uninvited, unable to resist a chance to act. She ends up doing a very racist impression of Barack Obama that sours the group.
With Dee sitting out again, the rest of the Gang holds an imaginary dinner party hosted by Mac as both a game and an attempt to stave off their hunger. Things don't go well due to Mac's bossiness and insistence on denying any requests, and Dennis upstages Mac by pretending to eat a better meal that attracts Charlie and Frank. Dee eventually invites herself into the game when things turn chaotic, and Mac ends the game by pretending to smash and destroy the scene. Dennis suggests they simply try not talking at all, and everyone agrees. During their silence, they make various noises that eventually sync up and turn into a makeshift song. It ends with the Gang cheering but quickly labeling it "lame." Charlie notices that Dee raised the lid of her bench to make sounds for the song, and asks to look inside. He discovers and takes out a flare gun, and keeps it to himself despite the rest of the Gang's insistence that Charlie should not be holding the gun. When Dennis tries to talk Charlie down, the ship is suddenly rocked violently, and the Gang is thrown to the wall as the power goes out.
When the power returns, they realize the ship has been turned on its side, and the door to the brig is now directly above them. Dennis attempts to organize a human pyramid to try to reach for the door, but Charlie insists it is unnecessary to worry about escape by deeming that they must be all dead already. Charlie theorizes that they all died but have not realized it yet, and being trapped in the brig is their hell or purgatory. When Dennis tries to snap Charlie out of his mania, Charlie attempts to prove that they're already dead by shooting himself with the flare gun.
Charlie regains consciousness sometime later, having burned himself in the head where he shot himself. He also learns that they are all ankle-deep in flood water, and the Gang seems to have come to terms that they will not escape. Dee tells the group she does not want to keep secrets to the grave if they die, and begins to confess things she has held in. This turns into a chain of ratting out secrets about each other instead: Dee says Mac owns a Dallas Cowboys jersey of Tony Romo, Mac says Charlie changes Frank's eyeglass prescription to keep Frank dependent on Charlie, and Charlie says Dennis intercepts letters from Mac's dad written to Mac from prison and destroys them. The Gang is distraught at all these confessions, but Dennis tries to rally the Gang to stop despairing and to enjoy the time they have left together, which he observes could be up to a few days.
Ten Minutes Later
The Gang is now treading water with the brig nearly filled to the top with flood waters. Despondent, they ask Mac to pray to God one last time for a miracle. When nothing happens, they all give up treading water one by one to sink to the bottom of the brig. Underwater, the gang is serene and holds hands with each other. However, a sudden bright light shines from above and a large hand seems to reach for them from the opened brig door. The Gang breaks their peaceful moment, and scrambles over each other carelessly to be the first one pulled out.
Back in the white space, the Gang finishes recounting their experience on the ship. Asking to turn a bright light away from them, the Gang is shown to have actually been at an insurance claim adjuster's office the whole time after being rescued from the cruise ship. Mac reaffirms his religious beliefs by claiming their rescue was a miracle, and that the ship being turned over by a giant storm swell was an "act of God." The Gang, however, is unable to get a payout from the incident due to their story implicating them in various crimes.
Cast[]
Starring[]
- Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly
- Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds
- Rob McElhenney as Mac
- Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds
- Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds
Guest Starring[]
- Bryan Cogman as Insurance Adjuster
Trivia[]
- Previous two-part episodes include Season 3's "The Gang Gets Whacked (Part 1)" and "The Gang Gets Whacked (Part 2)", Season 4's "Mac and Charlie Die (Part 1)" and "Mac and Charlie Die (Part 2)", and Season 7's "The High School Reunion" and "The High School Reunion, Part 2: The Gang's Revenge".
- The episode bears similarity to the French play Huis Clos (No Exit). It shows the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity.
- The scenes of the ship sinking were filmed on a specially built set that was submerged in a large tank of water, to allow control of the level of the water. Here's a behind the scenes video showing how it all worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3BPaDUlEsk
- Mac's wording shows that even in a fantasy, he believes that Dennis and himself will be living together, showing a dependency and obsession that he has with Dennis.
- The song Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 by Frédéric Chopin is played toward the end of the episode.
- The majority of this episode takes place in the brig. Only the last scene where it is revealed that the gang is talking to an insurance adjuster doesn't take place in the brig. This episode could be considered a bottle episode.
- When Dennis admits to Mac that he's been keeping letters from his dad from him, he says that he was protecting him, and that Mac's dad would probably "eat our butts". This is a callback to the episode "Mac and Charlie Die (Part 1)", where Mac and Charlie falsely claim that Luther threatened to "eat their butts" to keep him getting out on parole. He also assures Mac that Luther just wanted him to "put drugs in his butthole", which refers to the request Luther made of Mac and Charlie in the episode "Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad."
- This episode features a guest appearance from Game of Thrones writer Bryan Cogman.
- The series creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss both wrote "Flowers for Charlie", and went on to make a guest appearance in "The Gang Goes to a Water Park".
Images[]
Quotes[]
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