It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia recap: The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot

Sorry, Oceans 8, but Always Sunny Season 13 just dropped the best ladies reboot of 2018.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has never been too interested in stories focusing on women. Even Dee’s femininity is rarely remarked upon, unless there’s an opportune time for the rest of the guys to knock her down a peg or three.

So it’s fitting that one of the series’ first forays into female-focused storytelling would be a total rip off of a previous episode. Women can do anything men can do, but should they? Why do women always have to get men’s sloppy seconds? Why does Hollywood insist on shoehorning women into old stories instead of giving them original plot lines of their own? Why can’t ladies just be doin’ it for themselves?

Well, as a lady fan of Always Sunny, I may have an answer to that one. It’s powerful to see someone who looks like me stepping into roles that I’ve cherished for years, even decades. Unpopular opinion coming in three…two… one… When I saw the lady Ghostbusters in action in the female reboot, I teared up a little. After worshipping the original film throughout my entire childhood, I finally got to see myself represented in the form of a group of rag tag, badass women battling ghosts and monsters.

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But, even if reboots can provide inspiration for women, the question remains. Why can’t women have their very own stories? And, when they do, why is it treated like such a freak anomaly?

Throughout ‘The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot’, Artemis (Artemis Pebdani) is the constant voice of reason, asking the tough questions about female reboots like, “if we’re doing the same thing, why do it at all?” It’s a pure delight to have a dose of her fiery sass back on the show. Perhaps now that her time on Scandal is over, she can occasionally pop up and court some trashy scandal back in Philly like the old days.

As the group settles in to the all-female flight to the Women’s March, Dee attempts to explain the premise to them, but none of the women really care. Mrs. Mac is hopped up on her nicotine patches, Mrs. Kelly is freaking out about about the two women pilots on the plane, and the Waitress is just happy to be somewhere with free booze. Artemis gives up on the game early, choosing instead to sell her stash of women’s merch and give away free samples of her disgusting “Uni-tea”.

It quickly becomes clear that Dee doesn’t really care about the female reboot part of the flight. She just wants to win and be the center of attention – an opportunity she never gets when she’s with the rest of the gang. (See: Last week’s episode.) But everything goes wrong for her. First, the group runs out of beer and have to switch to rosé. Gross, but nothing Dee can’t handle with some savant-like booze math. Then, Frank enters the picture, and both of her worthy opponents quickly drop out. Mrs. Kelly bangs Frank and floats away on a happy ‘gasm. Then the Waitress lets him “pop it in”, and she promptly spirals out in a cycle of shame.

Running out of wine and worthy opponents, Dee hallucinates a crazily inaccurate version of Martina Navratilova, and then Boss Hogg pops back into the mix, making a delightful cameo. Eventually, Dee finds her match in her old nemesis, Gail the Snail (Mary Lynn Rajskub), and the two go head to head in a tennis-like grunting match of binge drinkery.

In the end, the Boggs reboot feels most like a mashup of Always Sunny with generous dashes of Bridesmaids mixed in. It’s clear that Artemis is a fan of the movie, referencing it early on in the episode. It also borrows moments from the glorious airplane sequence from that film, including a wasted woman commandeering the PA system, and many attempts to sneak into first class from coach. At the end, it all comes back in a glorious twist, courtesy of Artemis herself.

Turns out that Artemis has been drugging all the women on the plane. Her “Uni-tea” was so much more than just some nasty herbs. She was dosing them all with ayahuasca in an attempt to jazz up the reboot. And it works. The passengers start to topple like dominoes, vomiting waterfalls of nasty all over the small, confined space. The distress causes an emergency landing for the plane in North Dakota because apparently North Dakota is the Bermuda Triangle for all Boggs attempts.

At the end, it’s just Mrs. Mac and Mrs. Kelly on a baseball field in California, mirroring their sons’ actions from years ago. Aren’t men just a reboot of their mothers? Original reboot. Respect.

Random Thoughts Before I Go:

• When Dee has to do the alcohol conversion between rosé and beer, she goes all Beautiful Mind. It’s super impressive, but Dee’s latent talent disturbs Mrs. Kelly who is freaked out to see a woman doing math.
• Even though this episode was certainly filmed before the Serena Williams / Naomi Osaka / U.S. Open controversy, the tennis metaphor hits home here with women held to ridiculously different standards than men.
• For all her racist faults, Mrs. Mac makes a pretty awesome commissioner.

‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FXX.