Frank Continues to Drive His Not-Kids to New Lows in ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Season 17
Many years ago on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Bruce Mathis lambasted Frank Reynolds for taking his biological children and turning them into monsters. This year, Frank apparently decided, “I can go lower.”
Out of all the child-rearing catastrophes of the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia lore, there’s a real argument to be made that Frank Reynolds is the single worst parent in the entire series, at least based on the results. Considering that Dennis and Dee are genetically half humanitarian, the fact that Frank turned the two “bastards,” as he now calls them, into broken, selfish, unfeeling sociopaths is a more formidable record than any other f-ed up family on Always Sunny can boast.
Don't Miss
Thus far in Season 17, Frank has been dead-set on topping all the fake-outs and slap-arounds of Dennis and Dee’s childhood as he unleashes new forms of physical and emotional abuse on Mathis’ spawn, sometimes utilizing advanced cake-making technology to achieve new heights in the field of familial traumatization. Tonight’s new Always Sunny episode, “The Gang Goes to A Dog Track,” continued Frank’s Season 17 trend as he subjected Dennis and Dee to a gauntlet of humiliation that taught them that, to him, they are literally lower than dogs.
In “The Gang Goes to A Dog Track,” Frank tricks Dennis and Dee into thinking that he’s taking them on a cross-country trip to a high-society horse race, only for them to learn that they’re actually headed to a dog track when they’re already in their fanciest, most colorful clothes and riding the Greyhound bus that would take them to their biggest shame. At the track, Frank takes Dennis and Dee into the owners’ box, where he gets into an argument with the co-owner of his prized racing hound over its stud rights.
Frank offers Dennis and Dee a deal to sneak into the kennel and film themselves “milking” his dog, Pennies From Heaven, so that he can close a deal with a Saudi Arabian business connection. Dennis and Dee angrily refuse the offer, but they begin to warm up to the dog track as a whole when Frank offers them a hot tip on a winning hound.
Dennis and Dee quickly fall into the trap of their fake father’s bizarre, mostly challenge-themed gambling ring. After literally taking the shirts off Dennis and Dee’s backs, Frank makes the twins dress up in garbage bags and eat dog food to win back their money, their clothes and their dignity. But Dennis decides that the humiliation is too much and literally takes matters into his own hands. With Dee filming, Dennis masturbates Pennies From Heaven into a plastic cup, and he shows off the video to the entire owners’ box in expectation of a handsome reward.
As it turns out, there is no Saudi Arabian dog jizz deal, and the only reward for Dennis’ recorded humiliation goes to Frank, who made a bet with his fake co-owner that he could get his fake kids to jack off a dog on camera.
So far in Season 17, Frank has tricked Dee into grieving for a fake father cake, he's admitted to physically abusing her throughout her childhood and he’s attempted to throw both of his not-offspring under the bus for his own illegal dumping of a Tesla Cybertruck and hundreds of gallons of baby oil. Apparently, the throughline of this year in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is that Frank believes that he wasn’t a bad enough father when Dennis and Dee were children, and he’s trying to make up for lost time by desecrating and destroying what’s left of their inner children.
