The first two episodes of season eleven often felt like there was a little too much of mining old material. Luckily in this episode the gang branch out into rarely visited territory: outside of Philadelphia.
In ‘The Gang Hits the Slopes’, we see the gang visit a ski resort and almost immediately they become divided. Frank and Dennis unite with the hope of taking over the resort and making it an expensive private retreat. Mac and Dee on the other hand yearn for the party atmosphere from decades ago and try and reclaim it by befriending a relic from the resort's past called Dave Drisco. In the middle of this is an indifferent Charlie, moving between the sides and experiencing all the trip has to offer.
From the retro title card to the eighties soundtrack, it’s evident from the start that this is essentially a parody episode. Always Sunny has always felt at heart influenced by the kind of crude eighties movies where the underdog heroes take on the corporate machine and things play out in an episodic, sketch-like fashion, packed full of pranks. That’s all here with a homage that feels as loose as the sex comedies like Meatballs that inspired it. Some specific story beats may be telegraphed a mile away yet are immensely enjoyable because of it. Charlie’s sex scene, accompanied by ‘Jessie’s Girl’, is ridiculously over the top and adds to the idea that this is an escapist break from Always Sunny traditions.
Much like the first episode of this season, by the end of the story the entire thing is revealed to be another set-up by Frank; this time to frack the area on the sly and the climactic ski-race is all for nothing (at the expense of Dennis’ broken ankles). At this point in the series this sort of reveal isn’t exactly shocking to any long-time Always Sunny viewers but it reinforces the idea that it’s a self-conscious parody from the writers who aren’t going to be bound too much by sticking to the formula of the original genre and will instead maintain the shows tone. The fact that even most of the people at the resort were hookers hired by Frank and that Dave Drsico, the one man the gang wanted to befriend, gets arrested for sexual assault brings the gang back down to reality and confirms that there are rarely any happy endings for these characters.
7/10 – A change of location livens up an otherwise familiar series so far, while making this episode more of an outright parody was a nice change of pace.
