Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation

Look at that title!! We have our first episode title of Season 17!

Via Zach Knighton on Instagram

The Director of this episode, Zach Knighton, is actually a Sunny alumnus, featured in the episodes The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis and The Gang Squashes Their Beefs as "Random Guy" (Or better known as the guy the Gang mistook for Bruce Mathis, stalked, blew in his apartment and up his car, and then trapped in their burning apartment). 

We're also able to gleam that this episode was written by Rob and Charlie (which makes at least two episodes this season written by the duo)!

Today, Zach was nice enough to share a photo of himself with the Gang:

And it's clear they're in wardrobe.. and all wearing vests!? (Mac's resting on Rob's arm) This sneak peek, combined with the title of the episode, gives us a bit of ground to speculate on... 

With the vests in play likely being a uniform for the Gang, and filming clearly taking place in Paddy's, my mind immediately goes to the Gang running some kind of grift... Lest we forget Sunny's proclivity for spoofing its own, Rob being one of the writers of this episode coupled with the launch of his own Corporation, More Better, this year definitely shouldn't be overlooked when trying to speculate what this might be about... I would put quite a few of my Paddy's eggs on the idea that we're getting an episode parodying LinkedIn leadership kind-of-bullshit, where Paddy's, having decades of existence behind it, gives the Gang the ability to front themselves as experts in keeping small business(es) afloat, willing the share their tips and tricks to others in the field (for a price, of course). 

Also in that Instagram post, Zach shared his Director slate, which reveals this episode was filmed (in part) on Friday, November 1st:

Interestingly, we know that there were some on-location shoots happening October 31. Might they be related? It's hard to know just yet, since on-location scenes typically don't film in order, but it's certainly possible... (it is funny considering the guest star who filmed the day before this shot (at least) was in an episode titled Underage Drinking: A National Concern, a very similar cadence to this brand new title...or is that too much of a stretch here?)

There's a lot of unknowns, but with some hard knowns, things become much more fun to speculate on. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Personally, I'm jonesing for the return of Frank's Fluids—some how or some way!

-Seth