It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: My Favorites pt. 1

  

The fourth season premiere of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ("Mac and Dennis: Manhunters" 9/8/2008) was not the first episode of the show I saw, though it was the first new one I ever saw, FWIW. I remember it less for that and more for my parents calling me up the day after it aired to tell me they hated it, with some what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you in between the lines. I didn't tell them to watch it or anything, but I'd gotten into the show that summer and had been raving about it so I guess they tuned in.


Let's have a look at what they tuned in to, as it also serves as a pretty good approximation of the type of show Always Sunny is. Plot A: After hearing Frank refer to himself as a great hunter, Mac and Dennis decide the true test of a hunter would be to hunt something that could hunt him back, i.e. a man. They pick Cricket (David Hornsby), a recurring character on the show (from the wiki) "a Catholic priest who becomes defrocked, destitute, abducted, severely injured and addicted to cocaine all directly or indirectly resulting from the influence or action of the main cast." Not all at once in this episode, of course. Here they just want to catch him and teabag him. 

Well, Dennis wants to teabag him. Mac wants to "gorilla mask" him. (i.e. shave his pubes and glue them to Cricket's face.)

Plot B: Tired of Charlie's helping himself to his fridge full of venison and other game meats, Frank decides to lay a trap of raccoon meat, knowing Charlie (and Dee) will eat it, while telling them what they've eaten is actually human meat. Convinced they've contracted the insatiable hunger for human flesh, they quickly unravel. 

"Is that stupid? Oh I'm sorry Dee, then I guess Jaws IV was stupid, okay? Because it's the exact same plot."

The two plots combine at the end, as Frank, either confusing his life with John Rambo (as everyone points out at different points of the episode) or actually having had a similar experience, wants to teach Mac and Dennis a lesson about how hunting a man can lead to disastrous consequences. He works with Cricket to get them to the apartment he shares with Charlie, where, of course, no one learns anything. 

"(Cricket) Get ready for a mouthful of strawberry blonde hair-covered balls. Frank? Grab 'em."

"Yeah, we're not doing that."
"What do you mean we're not doing it?"
"I lied."

"What?"
"What is it with you people? I mean, you guys are always touching each other's nipples, putting your balls in each other's mouths."
"Yeah, it's fun."
"It's funny."
"I just don't understand your generation."
"(Charlie) 'Raccoon meat.' Bullshit! That was human meat, I know it."
"Look, I don't give a shit what you think."

I do love that it's DeVito, one of my parents' generational own, that delivers that "I just don't understand your generation" line. If they made it far enough in to hear that might have struck a chord. In truth practically any episode of the show would have alienated my folks, but this one ends with the protagonists of the show about to sexually assault a homeless man FFS, and the others rancid with tapeworm after bringing a hot plate to the morgue.

Things I Love: (1) How Charlie gets the plot of Jaws IV wrong. There's more context to the line above in the scene, but there are so many things like that with Charlie throughout the series. Charlie Kelly is one of TV's all-time wild cards. (2) Frank's whole Rambo-confusion and the lengths to which he takes it. Both of these aspects (the subtler aspects of Charlie's poor confused brain and the weird, gross intensity DeVito brings to his character) are Always Sunny specialties.

Which brings me to my Fifteen Favorite Episodes. Favorites, not Best. Whittling it down to fifteen was tough enough, and I only allowed myself to run with the below because I have some follow-up posts planned. 

I also haven't seen Season 13, and the show's coming back for a 14th season, so there'll be at least two more posts sometime in the future, ranking those.

Here's all you need to know: Mac, Dennis, and Charlie own Paddy's Pub, a bar in Philadelphia. Dee is Dennis' sister, and Frank is their father. For a few seasons. Then he isn't. Frank moved in with Charlie to basically "get really weird with" his indeterminate amount of years left on Earth. Charlie is in unrequited love with The Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, his real life wife). Mac and Dee are married in real life, as well. Everyone else's arcs and further quirks will be self-evident as it goes along.

And it's all scored to the otherwordly orchestrations of Heinz Kiessling. And without further ado, spots 15 through 11 of the Dog Star Omnibus Always Sunny Furious Fifteen:

15.

Season 4, episode 10. (2008)

After Dee has a mild heart attack, she and Dennis learn they are no longer on Frank's health insurance and vow to live healthier lifestyles. Mac and Dennis split a mail-room job solely for the health benefits, but Charlie cracks under the pressure. Frank is hospitalized in a mental institution when he trips too hard after taking far too many of his high-end insurance anti-anxiety meds.

This last bit leads to a fun little homage to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"Why is the government not providing us with health insurance? I mean, what is this, like some kind of socialist country or some kind of communist dictatorship?"

Just to give you an idea of the bar to clear for my own furious fifteen, here, I consider Charlie's breakdown in this episode to be a Top 10 All-Time TV Moment, right up there with whatever you like.

"You know what, Barney? Give this guy a cigarette."

Like any of the jokes in this countdown it's better seen than described, but here goes: Mac quickly abandons any pretense of working, so Charlie is left on his own to deal with the endless flow of mail. He starts chain-smoking and drinking coffee non-stop and invents an imaginary friend (Barney, above.) We see him slowly losing it through the episode but it's not until he gives Mac his whole idea of what's going on - all scored to Yello's "Oh Yeah" and delivered with a nod to Michael J. Fox in Sweet Smell of Success - that everything goes wonderfully off the rails. He becomes fixated on "Pepe Silvia," a name he keeps seeing, along with "Carol in HR."

Charlie's illiteracy is an ongoing joke in the series, but sometimes they don't spell it all out for you: what he's seeing - or so many Always Sunny fans, myself among them, believe - is 'Pennsylvania" and "c/o HR" on the envelopes, but he's spun this whole fantasy around it.

Another specialty of the show is how it takes a hot button topic (gun laws, abortion, health insurance) in a totally unexpected (often depraved) direction. Often, once you strip away the odder developments, the underlying premise is not without its own argument: health care - the existing model, its reformers, its consumers, its defenders - is skewered pretty unsparingly here. If obliquely. And with "day-bomp-bomp (chick, chickachickahh)." It's the approach I prefer on such things. 

14.

Season 5, episode 7. (2009)

Dee recruits the Waitress and Artemis for a Sex and the City-esque night on the town which turns inevitably to disaster, while Mac, Dennis, Frank, and Charlie try to solve the mystery of the episode's title.

The Dee part of the episode is great fun. Her enormous feet (and lack of funds) make the expensive shoe acquisition part of the re-enactment problematic, and the Waitress' heretofore undisclosed drinking problem torpedoes the cosmopolitans and picking up guys. 

Artemis doesn't help either. Always a scene-stealer, Artemis Pebdani absolutely kills it in this episode.

From the wiki: she is an actress "overly serious about her craft who displays bizarre habits and outbursts."

The poop part is ridiculous, of course, but it's again a great example of the show's developing an absurd premise (Frank and Charlie's whole roommates set-up, sleeping in the same bed "ass to ass", platonically) in an even more absurd direction, ending with a JFK-style mock trial complete with blown-out-lights and black and white 16mm film stock re-enactments.

"Well, right off the bat, I think there's a clear solution could have prevented this entire thing. You guys need to get two beds."
"Oh, maybe I'll get two TVs and two refrigerators. Do we come to your house and tell you how to sleep?" 

"I sleep in a king-sized bed, by myself. When I have to go to the bathroom, I use a toilet."

"Oh! Look at Dennis on his bed made for kings with his toilet made out of gold!"

Starring Fran Kranz as the guy at the college who examines the poop.

13.

Season 7, episode 5. (2011)

The sudden appearance of Frank's brother Gino prompts he and Frank to tell the Gang about their adventures in the 60s and 70s and their rivalry for the love of the same woman, a singer named

"Shady Nasty?"
"Sha-dynasty, asshole!"

Naturia Naughton as Shadynasty, Jon Polito as Gino.

And Lance Reddick as Reggie.

Another damning social commentary delivered by unreliable narrators to unteachable students. I love this crap. DeVito's and Polito's casting-via-Beatles-wigs as their younger selves earned big laughs from me.

I'm leaving so much out it's ridiculous. If there's a funnier or subtler or more disarming examination of white privilege - and there is but we have to wait to pt. 3 of My Top 15 to see it - I don't know it. Same destination as many a commentator on the topic - whole different landing approach. And as with "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack," it's the one I prefer.

12.

Season 7, episode 7. (2011)

Bored, the Gang decides to play CharDee MacDennis, their self-invented boardgame with drinking and byzantine rules. Frank joins Mac and Charlie's team, who in all the years the game has been played have never won a game. Level 1: Trivia, Puzzles, and Artistry (wine). Level 2: Physical challenge, pain, and endurance (beer). Level 3: emotional battery and public humiliation (hard alcohol).

"(Mac, reading question to Charlie) "You definitely wrote this one. 'Dennis is asshole.
Why Charlie hate?'"

"I don't think I wrote that."
"You definitely wrote this one, Charlie."
"I'm not remembering that. I don't think I wrote that one."

"Oh, my God, of course you did. How many other illiterates are in the - Just throw out a guess."
"Pass."
"Son of a bitch! All right, chance to steal."

(Dennis, bursting to answer) "BECAUSE DENNIS IS A BASTARD MAN!"

"That's what it is."
"(Charlie) Oh yeah, I definitely wrote that."

Any group of friends of longstanding usually has some kind of game tradition, rituals that have grown over many years of playing the same game together. It's cool to see that explored here, and one so uniquely adapted to the Gang's particular eccentricities and alcoholism. Frank is the stand-in for the new participant/ the audience, thrown into something that has been ongoing for years.

I forget the name of Mac and Charlie's team (still officially unnamed) but Dennis' and Dee's is The Golden Geese.

One of the rules of round 2 and 3 is "no swearing." This leads to a creative litany of fake swears. I didn't get them all, but they include "Cheese and Crepes," "Cheesum Crow," "Fudge on Crackers, all right?" and "Mr. Falconing sons of birds."

11.

Season 3, episode 14. (2007)

Mac and Dee become vigilantes to solve the homeless problem. Meanwhile, after buying a junkyard police car to scare the homeless away from the bar, Frank and Dennis dress up in police costumes and begin to abuse the public while Charlie dresses as Serpico and tries to expose them.

This one's a lot of fun. The cop car and costumes bring out the fascist side of Dennis and Frank's personalities, while the Guardian Angel costumes Mac and Dee wear fail to bolster their courage or effectiveness. Charlie, meanwhile, goes off into the stratosphere with his whole Serpico thing, which was not something I suspected would happen when originally viewing this one. 

Not the first or last time Charlie's references 70s Pacino.

I don't want to forget the junkyard cat, Special Agent Jack Bauer, that comes with the cop car. "He's got a thing for gasoline - he was born in a pool of it."

I was torn between "The streets are flooded with the ejaculate of the homeless, and you want to call the POLICE?" and "I don't want to see you or your dirty balls in my alley again!" for my leader quote, so there's both of them. There was no question as to which video clip to include, though.

 "I taped over the Spin Doctors mix! 
Look, I'm ready to blow my whistle here."

~
Tune in tomorrow (or Monday if I get lazy) for spots 10 through 6!