Recap: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Episode 9.08 – "I just realized I have two ears."

Recap: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Episode 9.08 – Flowers For Charlie

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The Gang is at a lab hoping to get chosen to be a test subject (with $1000 in compensation!) for an intelligence test. Dennis, Mac and Dee try to show the European and Asian scientist their superior intelligence (or willingness for sex), but the scientists are actually looking for quite the opposite and they find one in Charlie.

They offer to give him a pill that would make him 7x smarter.

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At the bar, Charlie is telling Frank he’d like to learn in peace as he explains to Dennis how he’s using one ear to learn Mandarin and the other to listen to Beethoven. It’s a waste, after all, to only listen to one thing when you’ve got two ears.

He’s been listening to five audiobooks this morning since taking the pill. Dennis thinks the pill is just a placebo, but Charlie says he’s thought about it (and yes he knows what it means) and doesn’t think so.

Mac and Dee come out of the office hoping to get Charlie to kill a rat they saw, but Charlie refuses. He’s got more important and intellectual things to do.

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At his apartment, Charlie tells the Chinese scientist about realizing how his friends have exploited his labor for years and they agree it “completely conforms” to Marxist theories. Charlie thinks the pills in conjunction with his readings are leading him to big, groundbreaking ideas.

Charlie thinks his IQ is up to 175 and asks if he should double the dosage to break 200. The Chinese scientist says they’ve got to be careful and asks Charlie about any side effects.

Frank walks in with Mongolian BBQ and Police Academy for his and Charlie’s Gruesome Twosome Tuesday, but Charlie says now’s not a good time. In fact, he thinks both of them should stop playing these childish games.

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Charlie says something in Mandarin to the Chinese scientist about Frank and he’s surprised he knows how to speak. They start conversating and laughing in Mandrin much to Frank’s bewilderment.

Back at Paddy’s, the others are looking for the rat. Mac wants to use Charlie’s rat stick to bash it, but Dennis wants to seduce the rat with brie cheese and Chicago’s “You’re The Inspiration.” Dennis demonstrates and it seems it works… on Mac.

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Mac moves ever closer to Dennis when Dee comes in and thinks glue traps are too messy. Dee has some ultrasonic rat repellant that bursts the rat’s stupid little eardrums forcing it to leave and never return. She sticks her hand into the wall to put the repellant in place, but instead gets her hand stuck on the rat trap. The rat comes by and climbs over her hand to eat the cheese and leaves.

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Back at Charlie’s, he and the scientist are playing chess and talking about Stephen Hawking. Frank has a Mandarin-English dictionary, trying to learn, but Charlie pooh-poohs his efforts. Suddenly, he hears high pitched sounds that gives him a headache and eye pain.

At the bar, they are trying to figure out how to get Dee’s hand free from the glue trap. Mac suggests gasoline and before they pour it onto the glue, they decide to check that it really is gasoline, so they smell it.

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And it smells good. They take a couple of puffs when they see the rat scurrying across the bar. Sonuvabitch. Oh well, they decide to just “pass the gas” instead.

Charlie’s at a nice little restaurant reading War and Peace when The Waitress suddenly pops in. She says she’s here because Frank offered her $500 to have dinner with Charlie. Charlie gets it. He explains in very wonderful language about his situation with Frank, but The Waitress does not understand.

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Charlie puts on “training wheels” for their conversation and instead asks how she is these days. She starts, like, talking about her new boss and, dude, her dreams of opening her own nail salon. Charlie starts hearing that high-pitched sound again.

Dennis, Mac and Dee are watching cat and mouse cartoons when Frank comes in to say they need to bring their foundation, Charlie, back and drag him to the bottom, the sewer where he belongs. They tell him about Dee’s hand and he tells Dee to just let go of the trap. Her hand is free!

They go back to sniffing gas.

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Later, Dennis, Mac, Dee and Frank go to the university where the scientists are giving a lecture on the results of their experiment. Charlie is in an old fashioned wheel chair and struggles to get up. He uses a cane, hobbles and speaks with an accent to describe his groundbreaking findings, his new invention.

He unveils… the technology to allow spydars to talk with cats.

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The European scientist says their test failed and they failed to make their test subject smarter. They did have interesting findings though. Like how their test subject grew more arrogant even without gaining intelligence. Turns out Charlie was only speaking Mandarin gibberish. He also was stupid in maths. But the most fascinating, Charlie’s disinterest in a woman he was obsessed over because of her perceived stupidity relative to himself.

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All the side effects were also in his mind. Charlie doesn’t even know how to pronounce “placebo.”

The Gang stands up to the stuffy scientists. They ask what the point of the experiment was, but they don’t let the scientists explain whether Charlie was even smart or not in the first place. They decide to just go home and watch Police Academy.

“Stupid science bitch couldn’t even make I more smarter!”

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Episode Thoughts
I think I loved this episode. It was hilarious and honestly, truly fascinating.

Okay, so, like, seriously. Is Charlie really a genius who represses his intelligence? Or is he just the king of the rats that responds to supersonic repellant? We may never know.

But it was fun to watch. Charlie Day was excellent this episode, he was on point at every turn. Absolutely random, but totally hilarious.


A detailed recap is nice and all, but you know what’s even better? Actually watching the full episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia!
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It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Season 9 - It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

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