It’s been 10 long months since we last saw The Gang and, man, they are a sight for sore eyes.

Mac’s no longer fat, although I know a lot of people were high on that storyline from last year. Most would say Season 7’s Fat Mac was way more likable than Sweet Dee-being-preggers arc from Season 6 (2010). So, what will be the running gags this year? The duster has survived and now it appears the ‘ocular patdown’ glasses might become a mainstay.

Personally, I’m psyched to see Charlie in braces, spitting and lisping like a flustered, an angsty man-child.

It’s tough to say which character combos make for the best comedy, but "Pop Pop: The Final Solution" certainly makes the case for Dee with Dennis and Charlie with Mac, as Frank roams the territory as a lone wolf.

That said, I’d be interested to see what would happen when all of these characters are isolated from one another; a scenario in which they wake up out of some haze and they’re separated in unknown locations and have to get back to the bar.

Perhaps the most compelling character who’s seen and done it all is Cricket. He’s gone from a priest to a bum to a dog executioner/janitor. And though The Lawyer wants nothing to do with the Reynolds clan, his charismatic know-it-all, above-it-all bravado getting rained on by the team is a formula for success.

I love the callbacks in this episode. Pop-Pop’s Nazi paraphernalia as the impetus for revealing each character’s insecurities, weaknesses, and flaws; Cricket sustaining yet another scar from a dog; the Lawyer’s inability to escape The Gang. Why introduce new characters when you can have so much fun with the ones you got?

Of course, The Gang’s crutches continue to be their unending quest to be rich and famous. Even when they have experienced brief flashes of
each, they implode and collapse into and unto themselves. We face-palm over the ‘original Hitler’ but we know in a different timeline, any reward or compensation would’ve been blown hard and fast. The Gang’s history with History will never get old.

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