How Jimmy Buffett And The Piña Colada Song Helped Always Sunny Solve The Bathroom Problem
Jimmy Buffett is no longer with us, the famous singer having passed away on September 1, 2023 at age 76. One group of people who got to see him in concert while they had the chance? The Gang.
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" season 13, episode 6, "The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem," features the eponymous leads preparing to go to a Jimmy Buffett concert. For the occasion, they're all dressed out in Hawaiian shirts and, in Dennis' (Glenn Howerton) case, a ship captain's hat.
However, the quintet aren't quite the Buffett experts they claim to be. Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Charlie (Charlie Day), and Frank (Danny DeVito) fall into the myth of believing "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" is a Buffett song and hope he'll play it at the concert. In reality, Buffett sang about a different kind of alcoholic beverage (see his 1977 hit "Margaritaville"). Even when Dennis corrects the others that Rupert Holmes sings "The Piña Colada Song," they don't believe him. Mac (Rob McElhenney) then exits the women's bathroom singing "The Piña Colada Song," which kickstarts the real story of the episode.
Dee believes Mac shouldn't be allowed in the women's bathroom, while he protests that as a gay man, he should. What follows is an episode-long five-person debate, echoing the real "debates" (read: right-wing hysteria) over trans people being allowed to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender.
Buffett himself does not actually appear in the episode — we never see the concert onscreen. The backdrop of a Jimmy Buffett concert isn't incidental, though.
Alternative facts
Why a Jimmy Buffett concert specifically? Such a set-up hardly seems necessary to kick off a Paddy's Pub bathroom debate. And if there needed to be a concert, why Jimmy Buffett? (Aside from the comic touch of the Gang wearing Hawaiian shirts).
Episode writer Erin Gloria Ryan explained that it was a thematic touch, one that ties into the aforementioned "Piña Colada" myth. As she recounts, the scene of Dennis explaining that Rupert Holmes wrote the song was lifted from a day in the writers' room when one of her fellow writers did the same to the others. Ryan decided to incorporate that anecdote, and her shock from the revelation, into the episode (the first she wrote for the show). She puts the message as such:
"The Gang [believe] it to be an analog to people deciding to live with their differences in opinion rather than what the takeaway should have been, which is that everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."
True enough, the episode ends with the Gang heading off to the Buffett concert still singing "The Piña Colada Song" (a needle drop carrying out over the credits), ignoring reality even confronted by it. As for how they "solve" the bathroom problem? After many failed solutions, they decide to just label the washroom door "Animal S***house." Jimmy Buffett helped the Gang "solve" their bathroom problem by making them realize they shouldn't spend so much time thinking about something no one wants to think about in the first place.