7x13 The High School Reunion (2): The Gang's Revenge

[7.3/10] Certainly better than the first part of this one. It had more energy and the collectivity absurdity that fuels the show. The trajectory of this one was particularly good, with everyone starting in a less-than-great place, scratching and clawing to improve their position, and then only digging themselves deeper into their holes.

There’s lots of nice little reveals here, like Dennis going nuts and challenging the head cool guys to a fight, only to discover that it was Mac who slept with his prom date not his rival. I also enjoyed the reveal that Dennis was only cool in his own mind when he was in high school. It speaks to his self-aggrandizing glory and explains why everyone avoids him at the reunion.

Some of the bits were a little contrived, like Dee’s wedgie turning into her using the back brace. Still, this show tends to work best when The Gang is working together, so having them reunite to form the new “Freight Train” and weird out the whole school was good on that front. I did appreciate the disconnect between how their “Plan B” dance looked in their heads versus how it looked in real life, which was the icing on their misery cake.

There was also better use of the old faces in this one. It’s always nice to have Judy Greer pop up in your sitcom, even though her “Fatty McGoo” character didn’t have much to do here. But the episode nicely setup and paid off Jason Sudekis returning as Schmidty to get in the way of Charlie making his move with The Waitress.

Overall, I enjoyed the throughline of this one better -- that The Gang only makes sense in their bar and their attempts to be cool outside of it crash and burn. Not a home run of a finale, but certainly entertaining enough.