“The Nightman Cometh” is one of the best episodes of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but even Stephen Sondheim worked on another musical after West Side Story. And in the season premiere, the Gang will head back into the boy’s song hole, so speak. According to the plot summary, “After an electric heating blanket shorts out while the gang watches The Wiz, they look in the mirror and realize they’ve turned black. They have to figure out how to get back to being themselves by going through all the classic body switch movie shenanigans they encounter.” The episode title: “The Gang Turns Black.”
FXX just released a promo for the musical slash body-swap comedy (I love It’s Always Sunny so much), and it shows the Gang as they see themselves: Charlie is a child, Frank is super tall, Dennis is fat, Mac is muscular, and Dee, well, Dee looks pretty much the same. Except she, and everyone else, is black. The episode could be a meta-reference to a popular fan theory that originated on Reddit, because of course it did: “In the final episode of Always Sunny, the bar will have to close and Frank will take a picture of Mac, Dennis, and Dee for old time’s sake. Once the picture is shown, it is finally clear that all three of them look completely different from what we see as an audience,” the theory goes.
Is the Gang black and pretending to be white, or are they white and pretending to be black? What if It’s Always Sunny is actually social commentary on race relations in the 21st century? That’s pretty deep for a show about pooping in beds. Anyway, season 12 premieres on Jan. 4, 2017.
Here’s another promo:
