Despite some good gags, this episode had predictable plot lines that lacked in originality and humour. Fans will find echoes of older, better episodes here.
In the B-story, Mac and Charlie are awed by a man "rawdogging" life and start following him around. This part was stronger and had several funny gags. But the storyline of the gang members considering a dubious person to be cool isn't exactly new, and you could broadly predict how this one was going to go.
The A-side involving Frank, Dennis and Dee was far worse. It is always fun to see Dennis and Dee degrading themselves out of greed and stupidity, but this one lacked the gradual build-up of better episodes (ex: Family Fight, High School Reunion). Instead, Dennis and Dee were made dumber than they are, and the final 'twist' was far too predictable because we have seen this play out several times on Sunny. The only positive was some top physical comedy from Dee.
The deeper criticism I have is that it feels like the writers don't know who the gang members are anymore. They act like dumb 30 year olds, even though they are all nearly 50 now. I understand that the gang members are supposed to be guys who refuse to grow up mentally, but that is different from acting like they are trapped in time. It feels like they're still trying to write most of the stories for the much younger characters they created. For example, looking for a guru that's rawdogging life felt like a young person's idiocy.
The show needs to let the gang grow up a little (they do this once in a while, like when Charlie met his father and then roll it back) and have more age appropriate concerns (the blood pressure episode was the best of last season).
Let them act like dumb 50 year olds, get a mid-life crisis, struggle with understanding gen z, getting called boomers by younger folks and so on.
Edit: My criticism above was more than addressed in the next two episodes.
