Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack

"Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack" is the tenth episode of the fourth season of the American situation comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It contains allusions to several popular movies.

Plot

Dee (Kaitlin Olson) has a heart attack and is taken to the hospital emergency room. After she recovers, she discovers she doesn't have health insurance, and is kicked out of the hospital. Fearing another medical emergency without insurance coverage, she and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) decide to adopt a healthier lifestyle. After showing up at the gym they then leave without working out to first buy supplements and new workout clothes. When they return to the gym in their new clothes and pumped on supplements they get in an argument with the spin instructor (Danso Gordon) are kicked out of the class after attempting to change the music. They then leave the gym again without working out. Outside they rationalize that the supplements are all they need to be fit and resolve not to return to the gym. Afterward, they decide to inject their faces with collagen on their own. After Dee fouls up Dennis' injection, his eye swells shut making Dee nervous. With Dennis' swollen eye and Dee fearing another heart attack as a result of her anxiety, they both rush to the free clinic.

Charlie (Charlie Day) and Mac (Rob McElhenney), also alarmed at not having health insurance, become mail clerks at a large corporation for the benefits. When Mac discovers one of the executives is on vacation, he decides to camp in his office and pretend to be a new executive, alluding to the 1987 film The Secret of My Success. In the mailroom, Charlie believes he has evidence of a scam at the company, connecting several parcels of mail while hallucinating the existence of a man in a trench coat named Barney in an allusion to the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind. After getting a phone call, Mac is sure the company is on to him. Charlie informs Mac that they have been fired and no longer have insurance. They then go to the free clinic where they wait for hours in the waiting room with Dee and Dennis who are already there.

After overdosing on anxiety pills, Frank (Danny DeVito) gets placed in a mental ward similar to the one in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which also starred DeVito. There are numerous references to the film, including Gaetano Vincini as DeVito's character Martini, the head nurse (Judi Barton) resembling Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched, Tim Sampson as a Native American patient called "Chief" in homage to his real-life father Will Sampson's portrayal of Chief Bromden, a patient lying in bed resembling Christopher Lloyd's Max Taber, the musical score and the closing scene. Tim Sampson, who resembles his father, had also played the Chief in the Broadway stage adaptation and in the episode "Mettle" of the British television series Spaced.