the gang chokes is basically a repeat of mac and dennis break up just a decade later, except in some ways it's sadder because dennis has grown to resent mac for being dependent while he also resents himself for being exactly the same. and you can see it, when he snips at mac, "i'm feeling better, ... no thanks to you", and then moments later insists he wants to drink another of mac's shakes because "i feel like the shakes are finally kicking in and that's why i'm feeling a little bit better". and he claims that he hates mac and maybe it's true a little bit but he has also latched onto mac like a parasite and resigned them both to living in this misery forever.
and mac's better at acting like it's all okay, because it's been 10 years and dennis still needs mac to rub his calves and tape his ankles and carry him all the way home. and mac likes to feel useful, he's always liked to feel useful, and if this is what he needs to do to be useful then he's decided that that's fine! and dennis will tear him down and mac will retaliate in his own way with poisoned shakes and pollen in the air and they'll survive one another, because that's what they've learned to do.
you looked like a monster
idk i can understand being frustrated that it feels like people are just going "macden macden macden" instead of focusing on dennis meta but i also think you guys need to realise that the macden dynamic is also inherently a part of dennis' life + it has shaped him significantly. it's not just a matter of ignoring a character to focus on a ship or vice versa; this episode in particular, i think, really unpacks dennis and mac's relationship from dennis' perspective, which is super important because even though there is the comedy within the whole "roommates for 20+ years" thing, it also means that the two are incredibly intertwined. that's why dennis begins the monologue talking about him and mac !
so much meta in this episode unfortunately i do not think i am qualified enough to touch it. go off dennis fans i will be nodding in the background
i'm just here to point out that while everyone else adopted a character to play, dennis insisted on trying to appear normal, and was judged only by his appearance as bossy and old, mean and angry, (the more popular) mac's boyfriend, who is holding him back - a villain to root against. a vampire. old, ugly, controlling, scary. he's been trying to be a more moderate version of himself where he actively suppresses his anger at the gang and still gets apprehensive "ooh"s from the crowd as they feel him snap. throughout the season he's been telling everyone to be themselves, but being themselves is not acceptable either. he scores the lowest by being himself. he is defined by the absence of over the top traits, a literal straight man. and when he tries to ask the audience to stop mischaracterizing him, they see his vulnerability as frightening. when the unintentionally comedic tone drops, they can't laugh, they have to reckon with how uncomfortable it makes them feel.
dennis tends to adopt personas in order to protect himself with a layer of detachment. "that's not me, that's my character, and it's a falsehood anyway", so it rolls off easier. you see this with the DENNIS system, and any other time he constructs a backstory for himself. while he wasn't truly being himself here, he's still unintentionally injecting enough of himself for the criticism to hurt. it's people disliking him for the real parts of himself shining through. the simmering rage and his physical appearance, both of which he tries to cover up.
he isn't doing an accent, wearing a costume, telling jokes; his entire goal is to be bland and unoffensive, and so the things that stick out to the audience are the ones that he reveals by accident (or mac does). they don't dislike him for being boring. they dislike him for who he is beneath the mask. this is most commonly the cause of his outbursts throughout the series, it happens when people see through him, when he's ineffective at masking.
huge fan of the running storyline of dennis being suffocatingly alone and unable to get his true feelings across to anybody bc hes spent his life so desperate to curate his image that genuine honesty now comes off as disturbing to those around him. his moment of genuine desperate earnestness being horrifying to witness and completely rejected by audiences which will inevitably lead him to cling even more frantically to any sliver of control as it keeps sliding further from his grasp. bro ur mind is a haunted house and u built it brick by brick. you are the ghost here
get you a friend like charlie
i feel like we as a fandom don't do enough with mac being religious while dennis and charlie are not. in school mac would be laser focused on their bible study class meanwhile charlie and dennis are playing tic tac toe with each other in the margins of their notebooks. they wanna hang out on a sunday but mac blows them off cause he's going to church, so they hang out anyway and get high making crude jokes about how mac is probably getting diddled in there and it's not even that funny but they're laughing like it hurts. mac's priest says that new horror movie that's coming out is demonic so he won't be seeing it with them and now there's another inside joke that even if they explain he'll never get. charlie may be his oldest friend, and dennis may know him better than he knows himself, but they'll both never understand him in this one thing and even worse, they bond over how much they don't care about it, rolling their eyes and sharing a look everytime mac calls something a sin. mac prays for them cause when he goes to heaven he really wants them to be there with him, although he knows they probably won't be. but also, when he starts getting scared that he's going to hell there's a part of him that thinks "at least dennis and charlie will be with me" and that's the only comfort he can get