Well, I don’t know what to say. I think It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is trying to make me look bad. After I go on and on about how Emmy wrongfully ignores this show, they turn around and give me the blandest episode I’ve seen in a long time.
There were some funny moments throughout, and it had all the crazy Sunny shenanigans we’ve come to expect, but overall it just didn’t work. I can even forgive the blatant plugging for Dave & Buster because it was well incorporated into the story. But that’s also where the problem started.
One of the strengths of the series is in the rapid-fire dialogues these idiots find themselves in. And usually it goes in some pretty funny directions. But this discussion between Mac and Dennis didn’t work at all. It felt forced and unnatural.
On the other hand, the earlier discussion with Charlie about trash-burning had a hilarious climax. See, Charlie burns the trash in the same furnace they use to heat the bar to get a “nice smoky smell in here, and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.”
“That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about stars to dispute it,” is Mac’s response. That’s classic Sunny, but it was one of far too few moments like that.
There was no humor to be found in Dee and Frank’s efforts to sell vacuums and knives door to door, and no humor at all in Dennis an Mac’s plan to print and distribute Paddy’s money.
Part of the problem is that there’s always been an element of the unpredictable on this show. Absolutely crazy-ass shit happens all the time, coming at us completely out of left field.
It was those moments, for me, that generated the most laughs. The opening shot of Frank hanging from a noose in the bar was hilarious. Even more so because he’d apparently been hanging there awhile and Dee and Charlie just let him be; his neck is too thick to die by hanging.
Later, when he tried it again in that potential customer’s bathroom, it was priceless. Even the incredibly awkward scene with Charlie’s mother and his Uncle Jack was brilliantly wrong. We always knew someone had probably inappropriately touched Charlie, and now we know who.
That’s the kind of surprise humor I love about Sunny. Too much of what was in this episode I saw coming a mile away.
What’s the point in wasting so much time on the Paddy’s bucks when we already know exactly how it’s going to turn out. And they offered us no twists and turns along the way.
Luckily, I’ve already seen next week’s episode where the gang decides Frank needs an intervention, and it’s got everything going for it. I wonder if it was intentional that even though I got four episodes of Sunny in FX’s preview pack, I didn’t get this episode.
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Oct 03, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
