First season, this cold open would have seem over-the-top … but now we know these people. Of course they’re stuck in some unfortunate family’s closet. Of course they decided they needed to take the priceless vase. Of course Mac is wearing a Indiana Jones hat and Frank has a whip. I also love them debating the movies (and yes Mac, Indy 4 was awful).
Anytime Mac and Charlie are stuck in a room together for most of the episode, I end up laughing. They are both two very different varieties of stupid that compliment each other nicely, and the chip debate was a nice running joke. I don’t remember if we’ve established this, but I’m pretty sure husky Mac is eating at least 99% of the time he is on screen this season. And there is something wonderful about the fact that Danny DeVito is so tiny, he can impersonate a stuffed animal. Brilliant.
The whole episode is a bit of a mystery, and I like that they threw us into the middle of this stupid, stupid plan and let the details unravel was we went on. Before we found out the details of this “adventure,” I wondered if they were going to take something from Dennis’ ex-wife. In case you were wondering, I noticed the family had separate people doing the over-the-top southern accented voice overs. We never did find out why the wife had so many tickets to the Jay Leno show, did we? One thing is for sure — this was the easily strangest day of this family’s life.
All the best quotes:
“This family should not have the artifact. It belongs in a museum!” — Charlie
“It belongs in a museum, bro!” — Mac
“Don’t! We should not be making plans that is based on dumb movies!” — Dennis
“… Excuse me? Indiana Jones is a dumb movie?!” — Charlie
“We are in a very dangerous situation here. These people are from the south!” — Dennis
“That’s weird, people from the south don’t usually move up north.” — Charlie
“Oh no, they come up. These carpetbaggers come up by the truckload just to steal our artifacts.” — Mac
“Carpetbaggers, huh?” — Charlie
“A whole bunch of tickets to the Jay Leno show?” — Dee rummaging through the stranger’s stuff
“Who cares?” — Dennis
“No, listen to me … who wants to see Leno 15, 16 times?!” — Dee
“No one! No one wants to see him once!” — Dennis
“At all, right?” — Dee
“I’ll do a Swedish accent.” — Mac
“No, you do not do a Swedish accent, you don’t know how to do one. And you don’t need to — these people don’t know who you are!” — Dennis
“I can’t just tell them we’re there to steal their artifact, Dennis!” — Mac
“… There’s a huge amount of middle ground between those two things!” — Dennis