After Mac manages to get the bar on Bar Rescue, the Gang becomes convinced they've been cursed when bad things start to happen to them.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Bonnie suggests three ways to lift Frank's curse: slitting Frank's throat with a goat's horn and drinking a bowl of his blood; beheading the seagull Frank killed and having him wear its skull around his neck for the rest of his life; and giving the seagull a proper burial.
- Artistic License: Just like in real life, the fictional Chase Utley replied to Mac's letter in a video
. However, Chase mistakes Mac's letter to be one written by a little kid when, in reality, the response video shows Mac's face, meaning that Chase should have known that Mac was a grown adult. - Buffy Speak: Dennis experiences severe brain fog as a side effect of mold exposure that makes him forget various words, for example describing houses as "the-the-the things, the boxes that people live in."
- Call-Back:
- Casting Gag: That old woman who cursed Dee? That's Rhea Perlman, Danny DeVito's wife.
- Continuity Nod:
- There are a couple of hints that Dennis may have murdered Maureen Ponderosa.
- Cricket is able to curse people with authentic Latin because he used to be a priest.
- Curse: The Gang tries to figure out what has cursed them, with many, many possibilities of the curse's origin. It's subverted, however, in that all of the supposed effects of the curse have mundane explanations.
- Country Matters: Dee presents a "cunt of the year" trophy, which the rest of the Gang gave her, to a neighbor who complains about the noise Dee is making. The neighbor is one of the suspects for the origin of the curse.
- Doing In the Wizard: The year-old monkey corpse caused high levels of mold in the bar, which was responsible for every single manifestation of the "curse" (except for Frank's egg bleeding, but that was because it was a seagull egg and they are just that way).
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The monkey bartender is found dead after getting stuck under the kegs.
- Friendship Moment: Twisted and warped, but the Gang sure put a lot of effort into making a trophy gift they wanted Dee to have, even if it's titled "cunt of the year". Part of the complaint is that Dee earned it and the recipient must be nominated, which Dee sheepishly agrees with.
- Freudian Slip: Dennis says he was "murdered" to Maureen.
- Gamer Chick: Dee is shown to be one, as her playing them with the volume loudly is what leads to her suspecting that her neighbor who came to ask her to lower it was the one who cursed her.
- Good Luck Charm: Mac's monkey paw that's eventually stolen by Chase Utley.
- Irony: Mac spent 11 years believing Chase Utley never received his letter, (or possibly threw it out,
depending on how deep in denial he was during his explanation). It turns out Chase not only read it, but—believing it to be fanmail from a child—he took the time to compose a personalized response. Mac never received it.- Mac also believes the monkey's paw he found to be good luck like a rabbit's foot, despite its cultural prominence as a cursed item.
- Precision F-Strike: Frank drops the f-bomb twice as he was beating the seagull to death.
- Dennis also uses it when describing the time when the monkey who worked for them robbed them and also fucked their faces.
- Ruder and Cruder: This episode really takes advantage of the internet's looser language restrictions.
- Rule of Three: Lampshaded by Charlie, who asks Bonnie why she didn't just mention the normal way of lifting Frank's curse first, rather than suggesting two gruesome alternatives first.
- Running Gag: People kicking the corpses of dead animals under various places in the bar to avoid cleaning them up.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Lampshaded. The gang go around trying to undo their various curses so their appearance on Bar Rescue can go off without a hitch, and meanwhile the film crew leave because nobody is at the bar. The gang then discuss that the only real bad luck they experience is the bad luck they constantly make for themselves. (But judging by how they believe Cricket's misfortune has no explanation, they will forget this by next week.)
- Superstition Episode: The whole episode centers around Charlie convincing the Gang to perform superstitions, "just in case".
- Superstitious Sailors: While nobody in the episode is a sailor, Frank killing a seagull prompts Charlie and his mom to warn him of the bad luck sailors say it'll bring; and the ways he can undo it.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Downplayed, but things are going pretty well for Cricket now. Going from disfigured homeless drug-addicted urine-drinking prostitute to disfigured homeless drug-dealing urine-drinking pimp seems like a promotion. It seems once you hit bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.
- Mac finally meets and has a conversation with Chase Utley, and even though it goes south later it is a relatively tame letdown.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While he's keeping the ashes out of spite more than as a trophy (though he probably did kill her), Dee has no problem with Dennis being a Serial Killer.
- Weight Woe: Dennis complains that Mac didn't tell him earlier about Bar Rescue, because he hasn't been working out enough and his shirt might fall off.
