by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
The funniest show on television is back on the air and it has finally been awarded a real season. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the most underrated show on prime time cable. Much like the smarter and more complicated Arrested Development, I spent every off-season fearing that the show will never return, but It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia didn’t just get renewed for a third season, it got a real fall premiere instead of the short summer sessions that the last two seasons got.
And it’s funnier than ever.
Just when you thought this outrageous crew of self-centered dimwits couldn’t do anything crazier than the antics they got into in previous seasons, they top it again with side-splitting scenarios that even Seinfeld and Larry David couldn’t have thought up. In the first season they tried to sell Dennis (the cute one) and Dee’s grandfather’s Nazi uniform to a history museum. In the second season the twins Dennis and Dee became crackheads for welfare money and the gang got juiced up on steroids to be part of a street fighting ring. It was during that second season that Danny DeVito joined the cast as Frank Reynolds, saying that the writing reminded him of Taxi. But Taxi was never this funny, this inappropriate, or this clever in its commentary about the average American.
If you don’t know the show, it is simply the story of three guys that went to high school together that own a bar in a rough neighborhood in Philadelphia. Charlie is the nerdy poor kid that eats Hot Pockets out of the trash, hates kissing and fancies himself a filmmaker even though he is all but illiterate.
“That door is marked Pirate. Do you think they really have a pirate in there?”
“That door, Charlie? That door is marked private.”
Mack is the jock-ish wannabe hustler who has being seeing a pre-op transsexual for all three seasons because he/she is hot and Mack wants to be in good when he/she finally gets the surgery. Dennis is the pretty-boy rich kid that was popular in high school and always got the ladies, a triumph he is slow to let go.
“I’ll come back tomorrow!” Dennis says to Fatty Magee.
“No, please don’t,” she replies.
“Those words have never worked on me.”
And then there is Dennis’ twin sister Sweet Dee, who is the bartender at Paddy’s Irish Pub, the bar Charlie, Mack and Dennis own together. This is the core of the “gang” but there is also Danny DeVito. He was introduced last season as Dee and Dennis’ father, although that was dispelled in the season finale last summer and this season it looks as though he may actually be Charlie’s father. Charlie’s mother tried to abort Charlie after her affair with Frank Reynolds but it “didn’t take.”
“I’m an abortion survivor!” Charlie is eager to inform.
Every Thursday at 10 pm they are playing two new episodes of Sunny back-to-back, so get ready to laugh until you are red in the face as the gang solves the North Korea situation, tries to find some new “guy friends” to party with them in their mansion through a flier shaped like a bicep, or maybe it’s a penis. (“Whatup? We’re three cool guys looking for other cool guys to hang out with us in our party mansion. Nothing sexual. Dudes in good shape encouraged. If you’re fat, you should be able to find humor in the little things. Again nothing sexual.”) That’s not even half of the humor in this season. Frank and Mack have already run a sweat shop, the gang found a dumpster baby, they tried to play with the Philadelphia Eagles “like the guy in that New Kids on the Block Movie,” and Dee catches Charlie masturbating to a picture Dennis drew. All this is only a portion of the hilarity found in the first three Thursdays of the new season.
I admit that The Office is a very funny show and I am on the edge of my seat waiting for 30 Rock to come back with new episodes, but the truth is that the only show on television that even holds a candle to the humor of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is Larry David’s own Curb Your Enthusiasm. But if you don’t have HBO, then this is as funny as it gets. Just imagine self-involved characters with no particular drive, like on Seinfeld, but make them twenty-somethings that never made it through college and you have one helluva comedy that will keep you in stitches. If you can’t wait until Thursday night (if you miss the 10 pm episodes, they play them both again at 11) then just hop online and watch some clips at fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/sunny.
I don’t know why everyone isn’t talking about this show, but I think it’s time you told your friends about it. When I watch shows like this, I can’t figure out how anyone could stand television back in the days of Cheers. In a world where shows like Arrested Development get canceled but shows like Prison Break survive, you got to get the good stuff in when it’s around.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
