It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia S16: The Monkey's Paw Explained

This article contains Spoilers for "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" Season 16, Episode 3 — "The Gang Gets Cursed."

Luck has always been a lacking quality for the folks who populate Paddy's Pub in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." They have a terrible collective tendency to lose out on love, money, and just about any type of good opportunity. So it goes in "The Gang Gets Cursed," when a string of eerie circumstances lead each group member to suffer from terrible luck and frightening omens. They try to reverse their karma before the crew of "Bar Rescue" arrives at Paddy's to give the place a makeover. Only Mac (Rob McElhenney) is spared this bad luck streak, and he thinks it's because of a monkey's paw he found. To wit — he soon "accidentally" bumps into his idol, baseball player Chase Utley, and subsequently finds himself in a scramble to cough up a terminally ill child to act as his son so he can play catch with the star.

The notion of using a monkey's paw for good luck isn't something invented for the show; it's a long-held literary tradition. The trope first surfaced in the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs in 1902. As it goes with Mac, it goes for Jacobs' protagonist; they wish (in Mac's case unwittingly) for something good to happen. They then get what they want — but their fortune ends up twisting into something unexpected or horrible. It's a trope that's been used on television and in movies to great effect before, most memorably in the "Treehouse of Horror II" segment "The Monkey's Paw" from "The Simpsons."

As the episode progresses, Mac comes to realize that the monkey's paw he's found once belonged to a simian Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito) brings to the bar to replace Dee Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson) when the gang thinks she's become emotionally unstable due to the onset of menopause during "The Gang Replaces Dee with a Monkey" from Season 15. The gang isn't too horrified by this sudden revelation, as the animal was less-than-kind to them during its time working at Paddy's Pub.

In "The Gang Replaces Dee with a Monkey," the unnamed monkey ends up wrecking the place and assaulting everyone but Dee after putting whiskey in their beer. Frank briefly explains that the monkey's long history of abuse has resulted in its untoward behavior, which is apparently a long-held part of the monkey's lineage. After it runs away at the foot of the episode, we never find out where it went — until "The Gang Gets Cursed." At least it isn't roaming around causing further chaos to unsuspecting people out in Philly.

While during "The Gang Gets Cursed," Chase Utley confirms to Mac that there's such a thing as good luck charms. Mac continues to stubbornly believe that his luck comes from God. When he realizes his pursuit of time with Utley has resulted in them losing out on a visit from "Bar Rescue," he simply chalks it all up to fate. Since the monkey in question definitely didn't bring the folks at Paddy's any sort of fortune while it was alive, that seems to be a credible enough notion. No matter how you slice it, the gang's luck remains firmly on the wrong side of circumstance's ledger.