A review of the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” season premiere coming up just as soon as I boil all our denim…
Okay, first things first: major, major, major props are due Mr. Rob McElhenny for having the random but brilliant (if not necessarily wise from a personal standpoint) idea to put on 50 pounds in the off-season. Fat Mac(*) is just a marvelous sight gag – in a way, it reminds me of that “30 Rock” episode where Jenna ate too much pizza over the summer(**), only, you know, real – that makes me laugh every single time I see him, while also standing in nicely as a commentary on the state of the gang. They’re getting older, and dumber, and sloppier – and in Mac’s case, fatter – and while another show might take this as an opportunity for personal growth, “Always Sunny” mainly just observes that they’re all getting too old for this shit, then has them keep doing it anyway, cuz it’s really really funny.
(*) Call it, friendos: is Fat Mac a funnier nickname than Big Mac? I can’t decide.
(**) And gave us one of the all-time great Jack Donaghy lines: “She needs to lose thirty pounds or gain sixty. Anything in between has no place on television.”
Fat Mac also gave me the single funniest scene I watched all summer, in which Dennis (who apparently suffers from a severe eating disorder) and Fat Mac go to the doctor and McElhenny keeps mispronouncing “diabetes,” Wilford Brimley-style(***), then hurts his back trying to lift Dennis. Wordplay, slapstick, a fat guy falling down – it’s all you could possibly want in a comedy scene!
(***) Okay, I need some comedy theory here, folks: why, why, WHY is the Wilford Brimley mispronunciation of diabetes (as “die-uh-BEET-us,” which was slightly different from Mac’s “die-uh-BET-us”) never not funny? Why have all the various diabeetus remixes on YouTube been watched more than a million times? Why am I struggling to finish typing this paragraph without laughing myself into hiccups? What is it about that specific mispronunciation that’s so damn funny?
But “Frank’s Pretty Woman” was terrific beyond the fat jokes. Charlie role playing (here as a denim-clad, blood-puking millionaire) is never not funny, Alanna Ubach was terrific as the extremely gross but successful whore and I liked the callback to Dennis’s crack addiction, as well as Fake Donovan McNabb now being Fake Tiger Woods .
A good start to (based on the other three episodes I’ve seen) what looks to be a strong, strong season of “Sunny.”
What did everybody else think?