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Recap / Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia S 03 E 05 The Aluminum Monster Vs Fatty Magoo

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"I've got a fatty to take down."
Dee

Dee becomes jealous when she runs into Ingrid Nelson, a Formerly Fat high school classmate turned successful fashion designer, and decides to get into the fashion business to put her in her place. Meanwhile Dennis decides to design his own dress but quickly becomes obsessed with finding the perfect woman to model it, and Frank and Mac oversee manufacturing by running a sweatshop from the basement of Paddy's.


This episode provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Backhanded Compliment: Ingrid's first conversation with Dee is one long series of these, in which almost every compliment comes with a reminder of how much of a loser the other used to be: "You look so different — what happened to all the fat parts?" "You look so beautiful! You don't have that hideously ugly, disgusting back brace anymore! Do you remember how you used to say that you were gonna be famous, and all the kids did was laugh at you?"
  • Badass Boast: Dennis's response when Dee claims he "peaked" in high school.
    Dennis: Let me tell you something: I haven't even begun to peak. And when I do peak, you'll know. Because I'm gonna peak so hard that everybody in Philadelphia's gonna feel it.
  • Blatant Lies: Dee tells Ingrid that she is a working model who went to law school and loved it.
  • Caught with Your Pants Down: Dee claims that she caught Charlie "enjoying" Dennis's lewd sketches a great deal.
  • Continuity Nod: Dee wearing a back brace in high school is mentioned yet again.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: Dennis eventually decides that he is the only one worthy of wearing his dress, and the ending of the episode has him bursting into Ingrid's office in it, complete with full makeup and basketballs as "breasts".
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Frank and Mac's "sweatshop" gets more and more like a forced labor camp the longer the episode goes on, with eastern European women appearing out of nowhere to work the sewing machines. This lampshaded when Frank comments that the German war propaganda playing over the speakers is a nice touch. You can even hear Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" playing in the background at one point.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The dialogue in this episode strongly indicates that Dennis' high school popularity was real. This contrasts with the later seasons, which make it clear that Dennis was never popular, just deluded. Though this could be explained away as a result of Dennis gaslighting the rest of the gang which would be perfectly in character for him. Regardless, the police officer at the end acknowledges that he remembers Dennis being one of the cool kids.
  • Embarrassing Nickname: Dee and Ingrid were respectively known as the Aluminum Monster and Fatty Magoo in high school. Ingrid seems a lot less bitter about it than Dee is.
  • Everyone Went to School Together: The cop who Dee tries to get to arrest Ingrid reveals that he went to high school with them.
  • Evil Mentor: Frank becomes one to Mac, teaching him how to manipulate people and run a sweatshop.
  • Fence Painting: Frank manipulates Mac into spray painting his chair gold at the beginning of the episode.
  • Formerly Fat: Ingrid.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Dee is envious of Ingrid's success, which causes Dee to want to take her down.
  • Hidden Depths: Charlie is revealed to be quite skilled at sewing, as he claims that he's been fixing his own clothes his entire life.
  • Hollywood Beauty Standards: Dennis starts looking for a model that matches his sketches only to find they don't exist. So he's telling a gorgeous, slim and busty model to suck in her gut.
  • Impossible Hourglass Figure: Dennis starts sketching his own dress designs but are really just crude caricatures of busty women, some of which have no clothing at all. Dee comments that they don't have rib cages.
  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Dee's less than graceful attempts to get away from Ingrid after running into her while out shopping.
    Ingrid: You must be so busy!
    Dee: So busy! So busy that I have to go!
  • Inadvertent Entrance Cue:
    Mark: (to Dee) I used to know your brother. Now he was a pretty cool guy, whatever happened to him?
    (Dennis bursts into the room wearing his prototype dress, makeup and fake breasts)
  • Informed Deformity: When showing off his dress model, Dennis keeps calling her ugly, claiming she has tiny breasts and her gut is huge, when neither of these things are true. As far as the viewer can tell, she's a very pretty woman who, at worst, simply doesn't match Dennis's hypersexualized illustrations. Ingrid repeatedly tries to point out that the model looks fine, and the problem is that she's done no favors by the dress (calling it "an ill-fitting garbage bag"), but Dennis just interprets the "ill-fitting" part as meaning the exact opposite and that he needs to find a better model.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Dee takes Charlie shopping as he only owns "like four articles of clothing".
  • Literal-Minded: When Frank tells Mac to treat Charlie like a dog, Mac starts treating him like an actual dog. It works.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Frank outright admits to being this.
    Mac: Why am I helping you?
    Frank: Because I'm manipulating you. That's the way I get people to do things for me.
  • Mirror Monologue: Dennis has one when he's psyching himself up to model his dress.
  • Music to Invade Poland to: Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" can be heard playing during the German war propaganda.
  • Never My Fault: Dennis's singleminded refusal to acknowledge that Ingrid doesn't want his dresses quickly turns into this. Even when Ingrid point-blank calls the dress an ill-fitting garbage bag and threatens to call the police, his takeaway from this is that the model is ugly (she isn't) and she's making the dress look bad.
  • "No" Means "Yes": According to Dennis it does, anyway.
    Dennis: I'm not gonna take no for an answer, because I just refuse to do that, because I'm a winner. And winners, we don't listen to words like "no" or "don't" or "stop". Those words are just not in our vocabulary.
  • Only Sane Man: Dee is the only one who seems to be aware of how utterly insane everyone is going when Frank and Mac implement a full-on sweatshop in the basement of the bar and succeed in completely breaking Charlie's spirit.
  • The Perfectionist: Dennis shows signs of this while trying to find a model he deems attractive enough to wear his dress.
  • Serial Rapist: Implied with Dennis, who admits that, as a "winner," he doesn't hear words like "no, don't, or stop."
  • She Is All Grown Up: Ingrid, an overweight loser in high school, is now thin, beautiful and the owner of a successful clothing line. Subverted with Dee, however; although it's noted that she's become much more outwardly attractive since her high school days, her personality has only grown more twisted with age.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Dennis constantly refers to himself as a "winner" and genuinely seems to believe that his dress is a masterpiece, when the reality is pretty much the exact opposite.
  • Snowball Lie: Dennis lies that Ingrid purchased 25, then 100 copies of his prototype dress. This escalates into Frank and Mac ratcheting up their sewing operation into a sweatshop with German war propaganda, Dee attempting to arrest Ingrid for slave labor, and Dennis bursting into Ingrid's office in full drag because he couldn't find a model willing to work with him and meeting his ludicrous standards.
  • Sticky Fingers: Charlie steals several items of clothing from Ingrid's store at the beginning of the episode.
  • Terrible Artist: A running gag throughout the episode is that all of Dee's sketches are childish stick figures wearing oddly-shaped garments. While Dennis appears to have slightly more artistic skill, his sketches are equally useless to a fashion designer in that they're all borderline pornographic images of large-breasted women, some of whom aren't even wearing clothes.
  • You Need a Breath Mint: Dee has an especially colorful way of saying this when Mac gets a little too close:
    "Okay, I'm gonna stop you there. First of all, your breath smells like an old lady fart passing through an onion..."

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