RATQUEEN

unironically listening to Rick Astley because he genuinely enjoys it.

“talking to myself, but that’s just cause I got shit to say, you know?”

“I can’t believe they didn’t include me in their suicide pact.”

his overuse of the word “goddamn.”

defending evolution and science from Mac without fully understanding the concept himself.

staring into a camera for 2 hours.

“you remember feelings?”

studying psychology at college but then just opening a bar.

“You assholes are securing your places in hell.” “We’ve thought about it. We’re willing to roll the dice.”

4. Charlie

Charlie is almost impossible to manipulate – his mind works so differently from everyone else’s, the gang can rarely even guess at his weak points. He doesn’t respond to incentives like sex, spa days, or even positive attention; a date with the Waitress is always a surefire motivator, but there’s only so many times the gang can employ this tactic. In “Charlie Rules the World” Dee successfully persuades Charlie to her side by offering him $5 – but this is more like straight bribery than true manipulation. Charlie’s resistance to manipulation is effectively his superpower within the gang, and it’s likely the reason that he and Dennis rarely hang out one-on-one (more about this later).

3. Dee

Dee is also surprisingly difficult for the gang to manipulate. This is ironic, because outside the gang – as we see in “Underage Drinking: A National Concern” and “High School Reunion” – she is absolute putty in the hands of people she perceives as the popular crowd. Given her desperate and lifelong need for attention and validation (”Tell me I’m good! Tell me I’m good!”), she should be incredibly easy to manipulate. It’s not that the gang is unaware of her insecurity, but in practice, they’re not particularly clever at exploiting it. Dennis in particular tends to attack her physical appearance, projecting his own issues onto her and foolishly failing to recognize her remarkable lack of vanity about her looks (perhaps stemming from her relief, even now, simply to be out of the back brace). Interestingly, it’s Charlie who seems most skilled at getting into Dee’s head (as we see in “The Nightman Cometh” and “Charlie Rules the World”) – partly because she underestimates him and hasn’t built up the defenses against him that she has against Dennis, Mac, and Frank; and partly, I think, because on some level she genuinely admires Charlie.

2. Mac

Mac is ridiculously easy to manipulate, as Dennis knows well. What Dennis doesn’t quite understand, however, is that Mac is not manipulable so much as suggestible: he never truly outgrew being Ronnie the Rat, and he’ll always side with anyone he perceives as an authority. (If it’s not immediately apparent who’s in charge, he’ll “play both sides” until he figures it out, as we see in “Frank Retires.”) Dennis devotes a lot of time and energy to manipulating Mac, but in fact, this is wholly unnecessary; Mac would likely be just as responsive to direct requests, as long as they’re coming from Dennis. The entirety of “Ass Kickers United: Mac and Charlie Join a Cult” could probably have been avoided, for example, had Dennis simply said, “Hey, Mac, stop eating my Thin Mints.” Likewise, while Mac and Dennis were manipulated into buying a timeshare together in “Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare,” you just know that if Mac had been alone, the guy could have asked him “Want to buy a timeshare?” and Mac would immediately have been like “Sure!” without needing to be convinced at all.

1. Dennis