‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ – ‘The Gang Gets Trapped’: The last crusade

Haven’t written about “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in a while, but last night’s was a very good one. A quick review coming up just as soon as I dream of opening an imported leather shop in Arizona…

One of the things that’s great about the “Sunny” gang is how they overcommit and overreact to everything. As Dennis (once again providing vast amounts of comedy just by being the sane one) points out, they’re here committing a crime based on beliefs that are two hours old, and something as small as the wife having a Southern accent generates all kids of paranoid fantasies about being shot, lynched, or locked in a torture basement. They can go from Zero-to-Insane in no time flat, and episodes where they do that early and often tend to be among the show’s best. In particular, Charlie and Mac’s reactions to everything from the surveillance van were hilarious. (And they also provided an opportunity for another of the show’s humor goldmines: the smarter members of the gang knowing exactly what buttons to push – almost literally in this case – to get those two to turn on each other.)

I was especially pleased that the episode began with Dennis and Sweet Dee trapped in the closet and just went forward from there, never flashing back to see how they came to this point and only vaguely discussing what the idea is behind the vase, museums, Indiana Jones, etc. Just as Dee knows Mac and Charlie well enough to make Charlie mistrust Mac with a single comment, we know the gang well enough to not really need an explanation for why they’ve broken into a family’s home to steal a priceless vase. Just drop ’em in the situation and go; very minimal exposition needed, at most.

I wish the ending had been a bit bigger – though the gang’s confusion at seeing that the Southerners were all Asian was amusing – but everything until then was terrific.

What did everybody else think?

×