Friday, November 4, 2016

Always Sunny Conflict

I am a huge fan of the FXX series It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In this comedy show there is an episode where "The Gang" holds a fake trial to determine who was at fault for ruining the interior of Dennis' car, Dennis or Frank. The problem began when Dennis was driving his car while eating cereal at red stop lights. Frank on the other hand was driving while listening to his roommate Charlie's road directions on a tape as if it was a GPS telling him where to go. Frank started to lose patience and was unable to understand the directions on the tape he was listening to and starting driving towards Dennis from behind. At this point Dennis is eating his cereal because the stop light was red and about 5 seconds later Frank rear ends Dennis making him spill his cereal all over his car.
From Dennis' perspective he was doing nothing wrong since he was driving like a responsible driver in his eyes since he would only eat his cereal when fully stopped. Even though that is still irresponsible, he was unable to see that and admit to the irresponsible nature of his actions. On the other hand, Frank thinks he should not be held accountable for ruining the interior of Dennis' car since to him Dennis was clearly being irresponsible for eating while stopped even when Frank was the one that rear ended Dennis. As one can see, both people were unable to see the other person's point of view so when they came back to the bar they own, "The Gang" (which consists of Charlie, Mac, Dennis, Dee, and Frank) decide to hold a trial in order to handle things internally.
As the trial commenced, Charlie decided to be Frank's lawyer while Dee, Dennis' twin sister, decided to be Dennis' lawyer and Mac was the self-appointed judge. However, the reason she wanted to be his lawyer was because she wanted to set a precedent for taking responsibility when someone ruins someone else's car since "The Gang" has ruined/destroyed a few of her cars in very unfortunate events. After plenty of irrelevant discussions during the trial, they decide that the only way to settle this is to replay the whole situation all over again, so Dee and Charlie go in Frank's car and Mac goes in Dennis' car to see how the whole thing plays out. Eventually a misunderstanding occurs between Dee and Frank where Frank thought Dee said left but she actually said right just like Charlie, and Frank ends up rear ending Dennis again making him spill his cereal all over his car. At this point Dennis is furious and asks Frank how he could rear end him yet again. Frank puts the blame on Dee for confusing him and in the end they decide that Dee should pay for all the damages even when it wasn't her fault, ultimately screwing her over once more. Side note: the nature of "The Gang's" view of Dee is that of an annoying person that they use as a scapegoat whenever it is in their best interest, hence why they placed all the blame on her. In the end, the problem was resolved but in the least fair way possible that caused an innocent person to pay for the damages. The problem was completely avoidable but the nature of each of their characters is what caused the whole thing to escalate, starting from Frank's inability to follow the tape Charlie gave him and Dennis' irresponsible act of eating cereal while driving to "The Gang" settling the dispute in a logical manner.
This whole conflict is quite comical mainly because all of the characters have very complex personality disorders such as Grandiose Delusion.

3 comments:

  1. I confess that I haven't seen the show. I wonder if somebody else who has seen it would find your telling of the story reasonably good. I had a hard time following it. So I will begin with some questions.

    1. Did Dennis and Frank get along otherwise? Or were they in conflict before the car accident?

    2. In a real world car accident, being rear ended is almost always the fault of the person from behind. If it happens at very slow speed there might not be much damage to the vehicles because the bumpers are designed to absorb the collision. Was that the case here?

    3. It is hard for me to understand what is a logical progression versus what is forced by the screenwriters for comic effect. Was the replay actually necessary? Or did the viewers know who was at fault?

    Because it is hard for me to say whether something about this show is meant to be preposterous, to get laughs, I am not sure there is any lesson to take away from this. In writing the prompt, I supposed I had a melodrama in mind, not a comedy.

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  2. I have seen this episode more times than I'd like to admit, so I understand this scenario extremely well. In your eyes, do you feel like the situation at play was more of a Model I or Model II example from the "Reframing Organizations" chapter 8?

    In my eyes, since Dennis and Frank were so narrow-minded that it was the other person's fault, they never really looked at it from the other person's point of view. Maybe, instead of going through the example exactly the same way again, the roles could have been reversed. Maybe Dennis should have driven behind Frank while Frank ate the cereal. This way, they would understand the other persons point of view.

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  3. It is a little bit tough to follow the entirety of your explanation of the episode, but from what I can draw it seems that both sides were rather ignorant to others perspective.

    There is not a perfect model from chapter 8 regarding this type of conflict as the characters in the show do not particularly represent those of rational human beings. It would be interesting to analyze the dynamic of many of these conflicts in this show as many of the irrational personality traits are exaggerated representations of common traits in most people.

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