This week's episode took a break from the political commentary to give us good old-fashioned gang adventures. My favorite storyline here was the exploration of Dee and Dennis: Trading Places. It was both awesome and ugly. Dee got a taste of what it's like to be the golden god(des), and Dennis got a taste of being an actual human being like Dee. The other two storylines were much more basic. Frank taking Driver's Ed again and Charlie and Mac chasing their stolen bikes. Both of those I felt like could have been expanded into their own episodes with a lot more twists and turns than they had here.
What's starts off Dee and Dennis's Freaky Friday is that for the first time since Dennis has been back, he asks about his car. I feel like that should have been brought up the day he got back, but the gang has been pretty busy with escaping rooms, beating Boggs again, and going to sexual harassment seminars. Anyway, Dennis is all, Dude, Where's My Car? (Yeah, this is going to be movie reference-heavy review) and the rest of the gang are forced to tell him what happened when he left. As you may remember from last season's finale, they blew it up with a rocket launcher.
Now Dennis has to buy a new one, but it will be difficult to replace his precious golden god Range Rover as he finds out from the dealer. He's going to have to buy an updated version. Actually, scratch that. Frank is going t
have to buy it, or so Dennis expects. Frank does buy it, but not for Dennis, for himself. But Frank runs into his own car-buying problem when it is revealed that his driver's license is expired. He has to go back to Driver's Ed and in the meantime Dee gets to drive the Range Rover. And while Dennis, Dee, and Frank get adult vehicles, Charlie and Mac decide to buy bikes for their own transportation to replace ones that were stolen from them as kids.
Since Dennis couldn't get the Range Rover, he got himself an economy car instead. This is where his ego starts to get deflated to a normal size. He's mistaken for an Uber driver, and in an attempt to protect his fragile self-confidence, decides being economic is better than driving a gas guzzler. Essentially, being normal is better than being a golden god. He turns into a fantasy football-playing, baseball cap wearing, awkward with women average Joe.
At the same time, Dee is taken in by the glitz and the glamour of the Rover, especially when the Range Rover attracts the attention of some rich women and Dee is allowed into their circle. The car strangely posses her as it must have done Dennis, turning her into an arrogant, sociopathic, vengeful golden goddess with an easily bruised ego. And those rich women bruise it very quickly. Dee gets her revenge on them in a very Dennis-like fashion; by sleeping with someone close to them. While she thought it was one of the women's husband, it was her underage son, who turns out to be Frank's Driver Ed's classmate, fulfilling the wish Frank promised him.
See, while at Driver's Ed, Frank was not doing well. The class rules of the road versus the street rules of the road didn't match up. Because Frank doesn't like to follow any rules at all, he bribes a student to help him pass with the promise of porn. But the student wanted the real thing instead. Before Frank could provide that, Dee provided it herself on accident.
Storylines finally converge by the end when everyone ends up needing a ride from Dennis in his new old Range Rover he got from one of his average Joe friends. So dies the golden goddess and so rises the golden god once again.
This wasn't my favorite episode of the season, but it wasn't all bad either. I enjoyed Golden Goddess Dee for as brief as we got to see her, and seeing Dennis act like a human being for a change. Dennis not being able to stop talking about farts in front of that woman was pretty hilarious.
