#ESPECIALLY after dtamhd

[nightcrawlerzincorporated]

All of Charlie’s art in Dee Made a Smut film has always fascinated me. But today I want to focuses on a couple that really stood out to me and why I think they help teach the message of the episode.

This painting shows a woman with dirty blonde hair and a halo ripping out a man’s heart while he’s wearing The Boy footie pajamas from Nightman. I think when Charlie painted this, he intended it to be him and the Waitress—she ripped his heart out when she rejected him after his play but he still sees her as an angel.

But doesn’t it also kind of look like Dee and Dennis? Especially with the messy makeup on the woman, the way the man’s face looks like it can have facial hair or be clean shaven depending on how you look at it. In this scene where the painting is shown, Dee is confronting Dennis with his trauma, showing everyone his bloody ripped out heart and acting like she’s doing him a kindness (killing him while seeing herself as an angel). Also super interesting in hindsight when you consider that in DTAMHD Dennis fantasizes about eating a bloody heart to sooth himself, taking the trauma back into his own body in a sense.

Let’s look at some more.

A painting of dogs barking (at a human shape maybe? Hard to tell) and a rat covered in blood. To Charlie, I again think these are pretty straightforwardly about his life—he was illustrating Cricket’s dog orgy and the rats he bashes at Paddy’s.

But in the scene they’re framing Dennis, who is in the middle of trying to make excuses for the CSA he suffered. He’s trapped like a rat who’s being bashed, he wants to scream and howl like those dogs but he can’t. And the dog orgy is literally Cricket being assaulted by dogs and then playing it off casually so that’s also a pretty obvious parallel.

In this scene Dennis also explains that he thinks good art is just whatever the “right” people say is good art. Because he’s never been able to connect with his feelings due to his trauma, Dennis has always had a hard time connecting with art on a personal level (in sharp contrast to Frank, who sees himself in art depicting WWII so deeply he has an out of body experience). Like most things in life, Dennis only sees art for its social and commercial value, not as a way to feel connection. That’s why he’s so dismissive of all art that isn’t porn, because porn at least has an obvious tangible use. But even then, even then, when he tries to make “artistic” porn, his mind immediately (subconsciously) tries to express his trauma, using art to express his deepest wounds in a way he isn’t even aware of. And I think Dee sees that and tries to help him through her own interpretation of his art, continuing the metaphorical conversation he started, but she’s also petty, and bitter about him mocking her art at the beginning of the episode, so she does it in a way that’s vicious and public. Art can hurt you, make you think about things you don’t want to, and Dennis hates that. He doesn’t see the emotional connection he could make with Charlie’s art or Dee’s or even his own because he won’t let himself.

[angrymac]

DTAMHD predictions and rambles

so the episode starts with Dennis going for a physical again (obvious parallel to Frank’s Pretty Woman) except maybe he goes without Mac this time, or if they go together, now Mac is healthier than he is. Either of this things would bother him, especially coupled with learning about his high blood pressure

Dennis is prone to building up these ideas in his head of what he thinks his life should look like, traditional milestones and experiences that he believes a normal person would have, and that he in turn should replicate.

So he comes up with the newest “scheme” to turn his attention away from the sudden reality of his own mortality and the fact that he only has so much (little) control over his own health. (Look back on his behavior in 7.01, 9.07, 15.06 for reference— Dennis sees physical illness as a personal failure, and in turn, he’s likely going to try to make up for this by forcing some semblance of a normal experience.)

but of course, unfortunately, life doesn’t and never will go according to plan, or to script. And throughout the episode, little things will pop up that gradually chip at Dennis’ resolve, bit by bit, testing his control over his anger and encouraging him to explode.

being away from The Gang may also force him to address the things (and memories) that their company, constant schemes, and involved conversations are always distracting him from.

so all of these memories are coming to the surface along with his own mortality, finally accepting that he gets sick sometimes and that he needs food and that he’s not a Golden God, just a human person in a human body.

which will be a huge body blow. because, and allow me to cross-reference Bojack Horseman for a moment if I may:

if he’s not a Golden God, and the pain that he’s endured and ignored hasn’t turned him into some all-powerful immortal being, “then all the damage [he] got isn’t good damage, it’s just damage. and all the years [Dennis] was miserable was for nothing.”

depriving himself of things that he needed— food, Mac, the ability to be vulnerable, was all for nothing. he wasted so much time for nothing.

and it won’t take much for him to break down after that. hopefully this will be something cathartic for him and will lead to a real breakthrough (his MFHP moment in the rain).

[charmac]

it's been more than a week since DTAMHD aired, have your thoughts changed on the episode? is there something that was particularly interesting to you? i love your takes and with dennis there's always so much to chew on.

Thanks! Honestly I don't think my thoughts have changed much but I haven't really sat down and played with it as much as I need to but I'll do a little thinking here for you.

(Honestly with DTAMHD I think there's a lot of ways to interpret different scenes, and there's clearly a lot of threads you can pull at. Ross Maloney engaging with a lot of the 'I want this broken down' tweets has me buzzing and hrrrr-ing and goddamn it PAY THOSE WRITERS AND ACTORS and let the man SPEAK. I think there's a lot of ways to MISanalyze this episode, so a lot is kinda up to people's individual understandings and ideas until we get the real stuff from the guys, so, I think everything I see and say is taken with a grain of salt)

What's most interesting to me is that in order to control his body, he has to slowly work himself up mentally. He already has high blood pressure, physically he's there, but because he goes through this process it means, mentally, he isn't. He has to reach a state that aligns with his body in order to control it. He wants to temper his frustration up to a boiling point that will allow him to reach out and grab control, reach catharsis but only after the build. He creates a day of trickling frustration, building and building to a peak.

And how does he do that? He takes himself away from the Gang. I think that can say a lot here. He gives himself doses of them, on the phone they're frustrating him being idiots, but part of his build includes that they're ignoring him: Don't answer the phone, it's a test from Dennis.

Not answering Dennis is part of building his frustration in his fantasy. The Gang reaching out to him, that's a build, but the Gang not answering him, that's also a build.

I don't want to go too deep (I think I could theory-spiral here), like I said I really want to hear from Ross and Glenn, but I like what that says on an easy surface level about Dennis' relationship with the Gang. They're both a source of his frustration, a way to build his anger, but they're also a solution to his problem in his mind. And the only reason they hurt him, the only reason they don't come to his aide, is because he told them not to.

This contributes to my favourite little recurring instance of Dennis shooting himself in the foot over the amount of sway he has over the Gang (Mac especially). Eventually, they listen to him too well and then it just does him in.

Dennis being able to control his body by mentally reaching his physical state is extremely fascinating to me, and I absolutely love that it has to be a slow build for him. It has to culminate to a peak, in order to get there, he has to work himself up. There's always so much preamble.

[whim-prone-pirate]

THIS IS WHAT IM SAYING !!! the finales for 11, 12, 13, and 15 were breathtaking. this was not.

mac wrestled with god and faith itself to come to terms with a feeling he'd been pushing down for decades. he sends out desperate cries for help to god over and over, and he never gets any answers.

the gang learns that dennis has what is essentially another gang and he leaves them (it's later revealed that each member of the gang thought they had a bigger part in his goodbye than they did, it affected them mentally no matter how hard they deny it).

mac, even after all the self actualization and learning he's had to do to stop hating himself, still can't be comfortable in who he is because of a man who never loved him and never will love him; he practiced a performance for months to show this man who he is, to help him learn to love his son, and he couldn't make it halfway through—but frank did. frank is who matters.

charlie's two wants in life are the love of the waitress and the love of his dad. he thinks he has that, and it falls apart spectacularly—nevertheless, he carries out the dying wish of his father: to be honored the way the kelly men always have been. charlie tries and tries and he drags that fucking body bag up a mountain in ireland, through heat and rain, losing his friends along the way, but he has to realize that this man in the body bag wasn't there for the little boy he made. charlie now knows his dad, and he might be worse off.

and then there's dennis takes a mental health day. bad. bad bad bad bad. cute for a midseason break-the-formula thing, like making dennis reynolds a murderer or being frank, probably like a 7.9 to 8.2 out of 10 on imdb, but a finale ?? especially with this history ??? we KNOW they can do grand emotional 22 minute sitcom episodes so why did they stop? especially when mac finds his pride got CRAZY press?? there was opportunity and they did not use it when they could have done something monumental.

sidebar, sunny has a history of hit or miss formula breaking. charlie work is the top episode of the entire show. being frank was so-so. i do think that dtamhd was OKAY. but by virtue of it being a finale, the fact that the plot was just okay and it being entirely unrelated to any previous episode tanks it's value. it doesn't mean anything to us because it should have been more.

I think why I’m mad is I just really hope they don’t consider this their Dennis episode like MFHP was considered Macs and the Gang carried a body up a mountain was Charlie’s like I think that’s why I hated this one so much because this was not a dennis catharsis moment and we better actually get one I’m on my hands and knees I’m BEGGING

This is just like… Reddit dennis this isn’t big feelings dennis give me big feelings breakdown dennis