WARNING: The following contains spoilers for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 15, Episode 2, "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7," now streaming on FX on Hulu.
As It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia begins its record-breaking 15th season, the show remains practically unmatched at toeing the line of absurdly offensive behavior for satirical purposes without becoming too offensive to enjoy. However, that doesn't mean the comedy is perfect, and the use of blackface, yellowface and brownface in earlier episodes crossed enough of a line that five episodes were pulled from streaming as a result (one has since been re-added). Rather than avoiding the subject, It's Always Sunny confronts the issue head-on in the new episode, "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7."
It follows up on two of the show's pulled episodes, "Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth" and "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6." In those episodes, Mac wore blackface to play Roger Murtaugh in the Gang's nonsensical homemade Lethal Weapon sequels. "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7" opens with the news that Lethal Weapon 5 and 6 have been pulled from the local library due to complaints about the blackface. While Frank's initial reaction is, expectedly, whining about "cancel culture," the episode quickly moves on to something more interesting: the Gang's desperate attempt to make a "woke" Lethal Weapon 7.
Because the members of the Gang are horrible people, their attempts at being "good" end up going horribly. Mac wants applause for stepping down from the role of Murtaugh, asking what's the point of not being racist if he isn't going to be praised for it. Finding a replacement actor for the role is a challenge since the Gang hardly knows any Black people aside from "pimps and prostitutes." They first hire one such pimp, Pepper Jack, but he's far too angry for the role; they eventually recast Pepper Jack as Riggs and get a guy impersonating "Don Cheadle" for Murtaugh.
The production of Lethal Weapon 7 makes various attempts at woke respectability, from hiring Frank's Persian ex-lover Artemis as an assistant director to having Dee play the villain "Karen White," because entitled white women are one of the few groups it's OK to villainize. Fearing even the latter decision might be too uncomfortable, they even try to make the film without a villain at all, just running from a tidal wave (not a "tsunami," which sounds too Asian). Dennis makes the hardest push towards wokeness, which seems strange until he reveals that this is all just an excuse for him to try bedding younger activist women.
Had the episode simply ended with Lethal Weapon 7 sucking, it might be possible for people to misinterpret this as a statement on wokeness killing creativity. That would be a misreading, given that the Gang never had much artistic creativity in the first place, but the episode's ending goes out to make the real point clear. In one last attempt to virtual signal for applause that they won't receive, the Gang gives "Don Cheadle" complete creative control over the film. He turns it into a documentary about the miserable production experience and the Gang's self-congratulatory ignorance, titled White Saviors. It's a hit, and the Gang's not happy about it.
The content of this episode, which has a Black director (Pete Chatmon) and co-writer (Keyonna Taylor), makes an interesting comparison to how the crew of It's Always Sunny has much more successfully diversified. Speaking to the New York Times, creator Rob McElhenney said, "At its foundation, it’s a show about five ignorant, white people, right? So, at first we thought, well, how does it even make sense to have different points of view in there? Then we were like, Oh my God, of course. Who could better understand how it feels to be in the wake of ignorant white people than people who aren’t ignorant white people? Ignorant white men, specifically." This sense of perspective gives The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7 its bite.
New episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia premiere Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FXX and stream the following day on FX on Hulu.