Bryan Cranston Breaks Out Walter White For It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 16 Appearance
By this point, we're used to celebrities showing up in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Beloved Phillies second-basemen Chase Utley made a memorable appearance earlier this season, and it was still a pretty normal episode of the show. So when it was first announced that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul would be making an appearance in season 16, it wasn't a huge surprise.
What was surprising is that the "Breaking Bad" reunion we get in "Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab" would never be acknowledged as such by Paddy's Pub gang. Our main characters only know Bryan Cranston as the guy from "Malcolm in the Middle," referring to him as "Mr. Malcolm" the whole time. Meanwhile, they assume Aaron Paul is the grown-up actor who played Malcolm, and this confusion is never corrected.
The misunderstanding makes sense because the characters of "Always Sunny" are famously trapped in their youth, out of touch with pretty much any pop culture developments that have gone on throughout the past twenty years. Considering the absurd hijinks the gang was getting up to in seasons 4 through 9, it's hard to imagine they were taking the time on Sunday nights to catch up on the latest episode of the slow-paced prestige series.
It's probably for the best that they didn't, too, considering that they almost certainly wouldn't have picked up on the fact that Walter White (Cranston) was a bad guy. We can only imagine what sort of misguided scheme they would've come up with if they were using that show as inspiration.
A weird storyline, even by this show's standards
"Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab" seems at least partially inspired by Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston's many other cameos on other shows (or Super Bowl commercials) where they played their characters from "Breaking Bad." These little sketches are always amusing, sure, but they do sometimes lead audiences to wonder if the actors are doing okay. It's like in the pre-"Barry" days when the first thing we saw Bill Hader do after "SNL" were those T-Mobile commercials. It's fun to still see him around, but we can't help but fear the best days of his career are over.
"Always Sunny" plays around with this idea, revealing in the second half that Cranston's only doing this business venture in Philadelphia in the first place because he lost all his money from gambling. It's apparently why the relationship between Paul and Cranston is so strained, with Paul bossing him around and forbidding him to shake anyone's hand.
Unfortunately for Paul, no Bryan Cranston appearance in a TV show is complete nowadays without letting the guy go full Heisenberg. When Cranston finally does shake Dennis's hand against Paul's wishes, it appears to activate the darker side of Cranston's psyche. "Maybe being in the alcohol business places your head so far out in front of you that you don't even realize that your neck is exposed," he says to Paul, his voice lowering into an intimidating growl.
"Enough to be lopped by a public so thirsty to taste the blood of greedy celebrities... So when they come, and they will, who are they gonna come after, huh?" Throughout his speech, the repeated question of "Who is in charge?" becomes a clear reference to Walter White's famous "Say my name" scene.
Not the show's best outing
Luckily for Aaron Paul and the rest of the gang, Bryan Cranston doesn't stay in Heisenberg mode for long. "And, scene," Cranston says, revealing that everything he just said was a fun little act he was doing, as a way to reminisce about his days starting out in the theater. The gang suggests that Cranston should consider doing a drama, and once again, neither actor bothers to explain to them what's wrong with that sentence. They both definitively reject the gang's business offer, and that's the end of the episode.
Admittedly, it's kind of a weird, unsatisfying "Always Sunny" episode altogether. Whereas Chase Utley's appearance in "The Gang Gets Cursed" was seamlessly integrated into the larger story of Mac's monkey's paw causing trouble, it feels like this entire episode was written specifically for the sake of that Walter White speech, with everything around it being phoned in. Dee and Frank's subplot of being stuck on a plane the whole time felt particularly like a placeholder, and the gang's celebrity booze scheme seemed unusually half-assed, even by the gang's standards.
It was still a fun time, of course: we got a nice came from Gritty, as well as a fun subplot where Charlie has a belly full of nickels. Not to mention it's always nice to see Cranston and Paul acting together again, no matter the circumstances. Still, it just feels like "Always Sunny" could've given them something a bit more memorable than this.