Frank: What the hell is that?
Mac: It's a baby we found in the trash.
Frank: Well, put it back. It doesn't belong to you.
Mac: It's a baby we found in the trash.
Frank: Well, put it back. It doesn't belong to you.
After finding a baby abandoned in a dumpster, Dee and Mac decide to raise it as their own and end up trying to turn it into a child star. Dennis tries to join an environmentalist group but embarks on an elaborate revenge when he's snubbed by their leader, and Charlie wants to know whether Frank is his biological father as the two of them go dumpster diving.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Sage, the hippie who responds to Dennis' misguided yet sincere desire to help the environment with unwarranted antagonism. One of the few people the gang takes down a peg that sincerely deserves it.
- Batman Gambit: Dennis baits Sage by suggesting the idea and volunteering to chain himself to the tree first, knowing that Sage's smug, self-righteous attitude would compel him to insist on going through with it instead so he could claim all the "selfless hero" credit.
- Break the Haughty: Sage, a holier-than-thou hipster who snubs Dennis when he tries to join their cause, gets this hard. Dennis tricks him into chaining himself to a tree overnight through pouring rain, sleeps with his girlfriend, and has the tree bulldozed the next morning.
- Brownface: After being told that Latino babies are more in demand for advertising than white babies, Mac and Dee try to put the baby in a tanning bed to give it a "base". When they're told that this would be massively illegal, they decide to paint it with shoe polish insteadnote .
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Lampshaded when Frank points out that Dennis has no problem addressing him as "Frank" since finding out they're not biologically related.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Bonnie tells Charlie that Frank would have made her throw him in the trash if he'd known the abortion didn't take, Charlie takes this to mean that the dumpster baby is actually the product of Frank's one night stand with the Waitress - despite the fact that it only took place three months previously.
- Continuity Nod:
- Charlie wants to know whether or not Frank is his biological father.
- Charlie admonishes the Waitress for falling in love with Dennis and sleeping with Frank.
- Daddy DNA Test: Charlie wants Frank to take one, but Frank refuses.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Dennis responds to the lead environmentalist's condescending rejection of him by infiltrating his organization, sleeping with his girlfriend, and then making him watch as the tree he spent all night chained to in the middle of a storm is bulldozed.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dee and Mac act like a resentful married couple while trying to raise the baby, with Mac as the stereotypical Lazy Husband dumping all the childcare on Dee.
- Dumpster Dive: Frank and Charlie's plot revolves around them sifting through the trash in search of anything valuable, though they take it too far and end up keeping just about everything.
- Evil Versus Evil: Played for laughs. Sage is almost as much of a haughty dickhead as Dennis, with both of them using their environmentalism as a excuse to act superior to others, but only one is willing to go to sociopathic lengths for revenge's sake.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted; Bonnie claims that she did try to go through with having Charlie aborted at Frank's insistence, but it didn't take.
- Granola Girl: Asriel, the hippie girl whom Dennis seduces.
- The Grunting Orgasm: Dennis has one during his sex scene with Asriel.
- Harmful to Minors: The episode ends with Child Services entering the bar as Dee and Mac are attempting to paint the baby while Dennis, Charlie, and Frank fight over an "Ali Baba sword" over its head.
- Is That Cute Kid Yours?: A passerby approaches Dee and Mac to gush over the baby as they're about to return it to the trash, commenting that it should be in commercials.
- Littering Is No Big Deal: Dennis calls out Mac for dropping his soda cup in the street at the start of the episode, but Mac and Dee don't see what the issue is.
- Manipulative Bastard: Dennis manipulates Sage, the leader of the environmentalist group, into chaining himself to a tree all night in the middle of a storm so that Dennis can bang his girlfriend.
- Only Sane Man: The Waitress responds to Charlie coming into her coffee shop with a baby strapped to him by calling Child Services. She also points out that it can't possibly be her baby, as it's only been three months since she slept with Frank.
- Parents for a Day: Mac and Dee decide to try and raise the baby rather than return it to "the system". Naturally, they fail spectacularly.
- Really Gets Around: Frank claims that Bonnie was "a giant whore" and that she probably got knocked up again immediately after he made her have an abortion.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sage delivers a particularly cutting one to Dennis when he first tries to join the environmentalists.Sage: Listen, bro, I know your type. Straight-edge, mainline, weekend warrior coming down here in your cashmere sweater with your moussed-up hairsprayed coif. This isn't just a hobby for us, so why don't you take your phony, suburban, half-ass bullshit someplace else.
- Shout-Out: Dennis is suddenly obsessed with global warming after watching An Inconvenient Truth.
- Slippery Slope Fallacy: Mac opines that if Dee doesn't help him raise the baby, it will lead to a series of events resulting in the baby contracting "full-blown AIDS."
- Skyward Scream: Sage does this while chained to the tree, after realizing Asriel has abandoned him.
- Stage Mom: Mac and Dee attempt to make the dumpster baby into a child star for their own profit.
- Waving Signs Around: The environmentalists do this to protest a tree being cut down.
