Mac and Charlie try to fix up an abandoned pool in order to beat the heat wave; Dennis and Dee try to beat the heat in a more 'dignified' and 'upper-class' way.
Recap[]
12:30 PM on a Saturday, Philadelphia, PA
Act I[]
Mac and Charlie are trying to get into an exclusive swim club. They talk about the terrible heat wave Philly is having. They are drinking beer, and they are stopped by an attendant who tells them that they cannot drink beer at the club. He also says that he doubts they are members of the club, and when Mac and Charlie tell him to sign them up, he says they must be sponsored by two existing members...but the club is at full capacity. He suggests they try the public pool. After arguing with him, Mac and Charlie storm out, spilling beer everywhere and shouting obscenities at the attendant.
After they leave, Mac tells Charlie that they have been "big-timed": the attendant has assumed they are lower-class (which Charlie admits is true). Charlie asks Mac if they should go to the public pool, which they both agree is disgusting. Mac says he has a better idea.
Mac and Charlie go to a diving pool they used to go to as kids, but the pool has been abandoned and is full of garbage. Mac says that the pool looks the way it is because of a "pattern of discrimination" against lower class people, but Charlie says it's because Jamie Nelson, an old friend of theirs, drowned in it. They decide to fix up the pool.
Act II[]
Back at the bar, Charlie and Mac are preparing a presentation to get Frank to invest in their idea to fix the pool: Mac has even bought a snazzy gold chain for it. Frank immediately passes on their idea. Dee and Dennis both say that Charlie and Mac are obviously bothered about being shut out of the swim club, and they they, since they are from the upper class, could easily get in there. (As Dennis and Dee explain how they were born "high class", Frank picks his toenails, ears and teeth with a swizzle stick.) Frank says that he "quit on that shit", and that he now "lives on the fringe." Frank suggests they beat the heat by "popping a hydrant", which both Dennis and Dee agree is "about as low class as you can get", and they go off to the swim club.
At the swim club, the same attendant tells Dennis and Dee that they are "at capacity." Dennis and Dee argue they should be let in anyway, and Dennis offers him a bribe. After the attendant tells Dennis that he is "embarrassing himself", Dennis calls him a "hatemonger" and Dee says she doubts they have any black members. The attendant points out an African-American family there, and Dee accuses them of being merely tokens, "dancing monkeys" they can show off (a phrase she immediately regrets.) The attendant again suggests the public pool. As they leave, Dee insults the attendant's shirt and blows her nose on him.
They go to the public pool, which is very crowded with a bunch of kids who don't particularly seem to have any adult supervision. Dee notes that people are jumping in the pool with their shoes on. They run into Frank there. He has a towel; when Dennis asks where he got it (they haven't brought one because they expected to get one handed to them by an attendant at the swim club), Frank says he borrowed it from a guy at the pool in exchange for a bite of his hot dog. Dennis and Dee seem horrified by this.
Back at the old diving pool, Mac and Charlie are hard at work clearing out the pool. Mac is up top and Charlie is down in the pool. Mac goes down to help him, and they toss a mattress that had been leaning against the wall of the pool up. Once he's down there, Mac asks Charlie how he's been getting in and out, and Charlie tells him he's been using the mattress, "as a ladder type of situation." They then realize they're stuck.
Back at the public pool, Dennis and Dee are stuck in the corner because the pool is too crowded to actually swim. They are repeatedly splashed by kids diving in. Dee realizes why people are wearing shoes: the bottom of the pool is covered with broken glass. Frank tosses a greased watermelon into the pool and cannonballs in, splashing Dee and Dennis yet again.
They get out of the pool. Dee has borrowed "hot dog guy's" towel, and is walking gingerly on cut feet. They decide to call Mac and Charlie to see how things are going at their pool. When they get to their chairs, Dee finds out her shoes have been stolen. She calls Mac and Charlie.
Back at the old diving pool, Mac is apparently trying to do some sort of ninja martial arts back-flip to propel himself out of the pool, but, of course, he isn't even coming close. Charlie is completely freaking out about the situation, accusing Mac of not knowing how to do a back-flip, and saying that Mac only knows "how to make me do shit where I get stuck in a pool, where I'm going to definitely die..." but when his phone rings, he calms down somewhat. Still, Mac tells him not to tell Dee that they are stuck in the pool, because that would be incredibly low class. Mac takes the phone and tells Dee everything is going well, and Dee, for her part, pretends that they are at the swim club, though her act almost goes awry when Mac asks her about some Mexican music he hears playing (which she says is one of the attendants playing a boom box), and after Dee spots the shoe thief and yells at them (which she explains was yet another attendant taking her shoes to go shine them.)
After the call, Mac asks Charlie where he got a cell phone, and Charlie tells him it's a disposable cell phone, a burner, which Mac tells him is a very low class ("felon-class") thing to have. They hit upon a plan to get themselves out: order food, then get the delivery guy to help them out. Charlie wants Chinese food, but Mac tells him that a delivery guy for a Chinese place will probably be too small to help them out, and they should get a pizza so a "big Italian lug" will show up to deliver it and fish them out of the pool.
Act III[]
Back at the public pool, Dee says the pool is a "shithole" and she'd rather go to Mac and Charlie's pool. Dennis refuses, because he does not want to let Mac and Charlie know that they couldn't get into the club. Dee is nailed in the forehead by a rock, and she realizes that the kids are throwing rocks at each other: she angrily wonders "What kind of savages would throw rocks at each other for fun?" After Frank asks Dee to help grease him up so he can be the "watermelon" for the greased watermelon game, Dennis and Dee decide to get out of there and try the pool club again.
Back at the abandoned pool, Mac and Charlie are throwing rocks at each other for fun. The pizza guy shows up: and it's an Asian guy, which isn't quite what they planned. They ask him to help them out. They have no money, and the pizza guy starts to leave, but Mac offers his gold chain in payment. Mac tosses up his chain, and the pizza guy throws the pizza down to them, but Charlie drops it so it ends up on the ground. The pizza guy tosses a hose down to them. He examines the chain and declares "This chain's fake as shit, man." The pizza guy leaves in disgust without helping them further, but does leave the hose. Mac attempts to climb up the hose, which breaks, and starts to pour water into the pool. Charlie says he is going to call Dennis, and again Mac refuses, saying "This pool is going to lift us into the middle class." Charlie says that Mac should admit that he is white trash, and Mac says that Charlie is white trash too. Mac agrees to finally call Dennis -- but then they see that Charlie's phone has fallen in the water.
Dee and Dennis make one last attempt to get into the pool club. Dee says that they "look bad" and probably should go home and take a shower; they are both very sweaty and disheveled, and Dee is bleeding from where she was hit by the rock. They accost a family and ask them to sponsor them, which completely horrifies the family. Frank shows up, saying he was kicked out of the public pool, after a "Filipino (sic) lady went crazy on me" and started "scratching me like a velociraptor." The attendant comes out and again insists the pool is at capacity. Dee, Dennis, and Frank rush past him, running for the pool, Dennis saying he's going to jump in the pool, Frank saying he's going to piss in it. Dennis is tackled by another attendant, and Dee and Frank think better of their plan to jump in the pool and slink off.
Act IV[]
Night has fallen. Mac and Charlie are still in the pool, which now has several inches of standing water wih garbage floating in it at the bottom. Charlie scrawls a crude memorial to Jamie Nelson on the wall of the pool. Mac suggests that they say a prayer for Jamie. He offers a traditional Catholic prayer, but Charlie, thinking that they are trying to ward off Jamie's vengeful spirit, starts doing voodoo chants instead. Mac asks Charlie to not undermine his prayer with voodoo.
Dennis, Dee, and Frank show up. Charlie tells them that they're stuck, though Mac continues to deny it. Mac confronts Dennis about why he's there and not at their "fancy pool", and he figures out that they never got in either. He demands that they admit they're lower-class too. They scream at each other for a while, which Frank finally stops by saying he knows a way to beat the heat "Philly-style."
We cut to Frank cracking open a fire hydrant, and as the credits roll, we see the Gang having fun in the spray.
Alliances[]
Charlie and Mac - Try to get into fancy pool and are turned away. They realize they are white trash, but Mac is upset that they are being discriminated against. They then try to convince Frank to invest in converting an abandoned pool; then get stuck in an abandoned pool and scheme to get out of it.
Dennis and Dee - They ally up to prove that they are upper class and can get into fancy pool, but are turned away; then go to public swimming pool and are disgusted; then try to scheme their way into Charlie and Mac's fancy pool which they aren't aware is abandoned and filled with trash.
While talking at the bar, the Gang agrees that popping a fire hydrant is the lowest class of beating the heat and is beneath them. But by the end of the episode, they pop a hydrant together.
On 00:58 Mac says to Swim Club Manager "Fuck you" (but it was censored) - it's the second regular episode which contains obscene language (first - Mac and Dennis: Manhunters).
Charlie exclaiming "DENNIS told me about these shorts!" is a reference to The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition. In that episode, Dennis explains the difference between jean shorts and cut-off jeans and demonstrates the increased flexibility of cut-offs.
In the extended scene from this episode, Charlie explains why he uses these "burner" phones -because the Waitress always changes her number.
When Mac and Charlie hold hands to pray, you can tell that they wanted to laugh.
The episode seems to recall the 1989 movie 'Do the Right Thing' with the heat, discrimination, racial invective, stereotypes, pizza delivery and hydrant splashing.
At Charlie and Mac’s Pool the mattress moves from being on the edge to hanging over the pool after they realise they can’t get back out
One has to wonder if Jamie Nelson (aka the guy who drowned in the pool) was related to Ingrid Nelson (aka Fatty McGoo).
Quotes[]
Dee: I bet you don't even have any black people here.
Pool Attendant: Excuse me, ma'am, but there's an African American family right there.
Dee: Well good for you. You keep a couple token ones around. Do you parade them around like a couple dancing monkeys?
Dennis: (to Charlie and Mac) You're born into class. It's about pedigree. It's about upbringing. It has nothing to do with your present circumstance.
Dee: See, Dennis and I were born upper class. Therefore, we currently are and will forever remain upper class. Frank, stop picking your teeth for one second and back us up here.
Mac: (to Charlie as the pool fills up with water) This pool is our bootstraps. It's lifting us up to the middle class.
Mac: Let's order some food and then we can have the delivery guy come and get us out.
Charlie: And we'll get some Chinese food because that's the classiest pool side food you can have.
Mac: Yeah, we probably shouldn't get Chinese because those delivery guys are always Chinese and he's won't understand a word we say and plus he's gonna be too short.
Charlie: Could really go for some Chinese food, though. It's gonna be good.
