Mac: Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been one week since my last confession.
Priest: Okay, my son. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, what is your confession?
Mac: ...I'm fat.
Mac visits a church confessional to tell a bemused priest why his recent weight gain is actually the gang's fault and not his own.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Dennis, Dee and Charlie all seem to think that they're responsible for the bar's newfound success, and their egos swell accordingly.
- Ambiguously Gay: Mac refers to his avatar as a "gorgeous muscle monster" and quite blatantly checks him out.
- Artistic License – Geography: The real-life 3300 North Second Street intersection in Philly would not be susceptible to Frank's stop sign scheme —it has stoplights, and both roads are one-way.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The gang are initially delighted when the bar actually becomes successful for a change, but quickly find that they're unable to cope with the newfound pressure.
- Big Eater: At one point Mac starts eating donuts while he's still in the confessional booth, only to be reprimanded by the priest. He also has candy wrappers falling out of his pockets, much to the gang's amusement.
- Brutal Honesty: Both the bar's patrons and Charlie tell Dee her jokes just aren't funny.
- Call-Back:
- Mac states that Dennis always tells him never to let someone's resistance stop him from getting what he wants.
- Dee does her inflatable tube man dance again.
- Comically Missing the Point: Despite being a supposedly devout Catholic, Mac has some very bizarre ideas on how the whole "confession" thing is supposed to work and asks the priest to smite his friends rather than repenting for his own sins.
- Continuity Nod: Mac repeatedly mentions the fact that Dee is pro-abortion.
- Confessional: The present-day portions of the episode take place with Mac in a church confessional booth, explaining to the priest how he got fat.
- Cosmetic Horror: Dennis becomes even more obsessed with his appearance than usual after deciding that his good looks are the reason for the bar's success, and attempts to maintain his "physical perfection" by dyeing his hair jet black and then getting a chemical peel. The results are... not pretty.Dennis: Do I look foolish?Dee: Well, what in God's name have you done to your face?!Dennis: I got a chemical peel.Mac: You look like a monster, dude.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Mac and Dee both do this while they're interviewing Mac's replacement for the bar, a hunky bodybuilder type.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Mac visits a church confessional to confess something to the priest...he's fat.
- Foregone Conclusion: Given that the episode's flashbacks take place several months previous to the current timeline, it's inevitable from the beginning that the bar's success will eventually wear off.
- Hangover Sensitivity: Mac drags himself into the bar looking somewhat worse for the wear after "drinking three bottles of champagne and hanging out with a stray dog under a bridge all night".
- The Hedonist: Unlike the rest of the gang, Frank couldn't care less about the bar's newfound success and just wants the other to participate in wacky schemes with him again.
- Hot-Blooded: Lampshaded.Priest: Let's try and remain composed.Mac: Okay, Father. I'll try, but I can't promise anything 'cause I'm pretty excitable.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Dennis is shown to be deeply insecure about his appearance, going to ridiculous lengths to maintain his looks and begging the rest of the gang not laugh at him when they inevitably go wrong.
- Intentional Weight Gain: Mac got self-conscious at how muscular his avatar was, and vowed to bulk up to match him. Being a complete idiot, he ends up overeating and gains fat instead of muscle.
- Laborious Laziness: Mac and Dee are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to avoid actually doing work, and cook up a plan to hire "avatars" that will go to work at the bar in their place. This ultimately leads to Mac gaining fifty pounds in order to weigh as much as his replacement.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The entire episode is about what happens when the originally unpopular pub suddenly receives a burst of popularity, leading to gang to claim they've reached the "tipping point" and debate what they'll have to do now that they're successful. The entire thing feels like a meta-commentary on It's Always Sunny in general. Dennis, for example, decides to go to ever-greater extremes to maintain a specific aspect of his character, which is often the case for long-running shows.
- There's also a bit of Reality Subtext for this. Rob McElhenney chose to gain fifty pounds of fat to deliberately avert the Progressively Prettier trope that often happens in sitcoms as they last longer and win more viewers (McElhenney specifically mentioned The Big Bang Theory as an example in an interview, pointing out that the actors were getting closer and closer to Hollywood Homely looks).
- Locked Out of the Loop: As it happens, this is a major reason why... well, guess. Mac still thought they were doing the avatar plan, hence him letting himself go. It takes him six weeks to find out this isn't the case.Charlie: Dude, that was, like, a million plans ago! All of us, including you, we've been engaged in many other plans and schemes since then.
- Missing Episode: An interesting variant: mostnote of the flashback portions of the episode are actually footage from a planned season 6 episode, "The Gang Gets Successful
". For whatever reason, it never aired. In fact, the wraparound segments act as the sequel to this unaired episode.- In fact, the production code for this episode (XIP06004) is actually "The Gang Gets Successful"'s code.
- Never My Fault: Mac insists that the gang are actually to blame for his weight gain.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Frank adds more stop signs on an intersection to back up traffic For the Evulz. The result is a four-way intersection, which Charlie points out actually makes the traffic safer.
- Noodle Incident: We never learn much about what happened with the "giving Frank more blood" bit that Mac interrupted near the end; all we know is that apparently Charlie found bags of blood behind the hospital and was planning on boiling it so he could put it in Frank.
- Only Sane Man: Charlie is the only one to suggest that if the Gang actually do their jobs, they can maintain their newfound success. He eventually goes to huff turpentine with Dennis, but only to get away from the immense stress of trying to bartend by himself.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Dennis and Charlie eventually decide to blow off work and get high on turpentine in the back office, leaving a horde of frustrated customers at the bar.
- The priest in the confessional does this, too—by the end of Mac's meandering and ridiculous story, he's practically begging him to leave and agrees to "smite" his friends just to get him out of his hair.
- Skyward Scream: Mac does this when he's in the confessional booth.Mac: OH GREAT AND ANGRY GOD, I COMMAND THEE TO SMITE MY FRIENDS!!
- The Sociopath: According to Mac, Dennis frequently says "never let someone's resistance stop you from getting what you want."
- Status Quo Is God: By the end, the gang cannot handle their success and returns to their equilibrium of three customers a night, maximum.
- Unreliable Narrator: Most blatant when Mac recounts a scene that he wasn't actually present for; the rest of the gang start talking about how awesome he is and Dee randomly brings up the fact that she's pro-abortion for no apparent reason.Dee: Oh, Mac's the best, isn't he? Also, I'm pro-abortion, so I'm probably going straight to hell!Frank: Also, I got fat. I'm much fatter than Mac!Dee: You got big fat titties, and I like to kill babies. Unborn babies.
- Villainous Breakdown: Mac has one at the end of the episode, yelling at the gang not to laugh at him before running out of the bar on the verge of tears as the others mock his fatness.
- Weight Woe: The episode revolves around Mac's weight gain and gives the first indication that he's actually bothered by it.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Most of the episode takes place at some point in the recent past before Mac got fat.
- You Keep Using That Word: Dee does not seem to know what "zingers" and "one-liners" even are (hint: they have one line), so she tries to do entire comedy routines to increasingly impatient customers.
