It 39;s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Full Episodes
Maya Malbon
In August of 2022, a clip from the "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" 2009 episode "The Great Recession" went viral. It was the scene where Mac and Dennis realize that Paddy Bucks, their self-created currency designed to beat the nationwide economic downturn, is a sham that they don't even understand. To call it funny is an understatement. It was attached to a tweet about crypto investors and the failing crypto market of 2022; to call the Paddy's Bucks clip prophetic is also an understatement.
This is the lasting appeal of Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Glenn Howerton's groundbreaking FXX show in microcosm. The half-hour comedy primarily set at Paddy's Pub is about the worst people on Earth (Mac, Charlie, Dennis, Sweet Dee, and the latter two's father, Frank). They do reprehensible things with startling frequency. Within their consistent awfulness, though, is an equally constant incisiveness about toxic masculinity, white supremacy, social structures, and the human condition at large. Paddy Bucks are just the tip of the comic iceberg.
So even if it proves disastrous, we're attempting to rank the 25 best episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," one of the best TV comedies to ever air. I promise to be a wild card and wear kitten mittens throughout. Rev up your starter cars, finisher cars, and transporters of gods, because here we go.
"It's Always Sunny" isn't a show about baseball, but it is, occasionally, a great and singular baseball show. Two episodes on this list detail the gang's relationship with America's pastime and both approach the sport from oblique angles. "The World Series Defense" looks at a pivotal Phillies game and how wistful fandom quickly turns toxic. "The Gang Beats Wade Boggs" is about how athletes can inspire. Because it's an episode of "It's Always Sunny" and not, say, "Full House" or "The Big Bang Theory," the inspiration involves alcohol, naturally.
More specifically, 70 beers, which were (supposedly) drank by Boston Red Sox legend Wade Boggs set on a cross-country flight to L.A. The gang boards their plane to the West Coast and aim to topple his record. By "It's Always Sunny" standards, the debauchery that follows is less memorable than the show's A-tier. For all intents and purposes, it's a minor entry to the show. That's also why it's excellent. The leisurely pace of baseball feels like a North Star for the episode's gentle madness.
"The Last Jedi" picks apart the cultural reverence for "Star Wars" mythos. The recent smash "Top Gun: Maverick" is about the inevitability of facing extinction far more than it is a hyper-masculine triumph. "Chardee MacDennis 2: Electric Boogaloo," the follow-up to "Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games," is an unflinching look at how the gang's games beyond this one are entirely dangerous for strangers; in this case, a Mattel executive named Andy (Andy Buckley). "Chardee MacDennis" is a madcap "It's Always Sunny" installment. "Electric Boogaloo" makes it look crazier retroactively.
How crazy? The first level of the game ("Trivia, Puzzles, and Artistry") involves Frank's very unfortunate team flag (four F's in a shape unnameable here), Charlie swallowing glass, and Dennis sculpting the image of a woman's head in a box. The episode's sight gags are stronger than its structure, which means it doesn't crack the series' top 20. But the truth it reveals about the gang makes it an essential part of the canon: They are dangerous to each other, but the boundaries of their fun and games they play with each other are implicitly understood. "Chardee MacDennis 2: Electric Boogaloo" makes it hysterically clear that's not true for anyone else.
"The Shining" is hardly a traditional touchstone for comedy, but "Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs" treats it like one all the same. That's why the Season 11 episode is beloved and memorable. It contains some of the finest work Glenn Howerton has ever done as Dennis, and director Todd Bierman stage horror beats that go far beyond "homage" status. When Dennis strips nude in broad daylight to confront his cheery neighbor Wally during the episode's third act, the moment is genuinely disquieting. Most of "It's Always Sunny" is a horror show if viewed through an objective lens, but this episode represents the program's breaking point with comedy. The suburbs shatter Mac, Dennis, and "It's Always Sunny" equally.
There's another sly reason, though, that "Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs" is an essential installment: the tacit character development of Philadelphia. The city of Brotherly Love is, as depicted in "It's Always Sunny," a place where professional sports teams demean their fans and the Most Dangerous Game can be played. It's also the only thing keeping Mac and Dennis' sanities intact. The suburbs break both men instantly, and this creative choice brings home once and for all that the gang needs Philly more than it has ever needed them. For them, maybe it is always sunny in Philadelphia after all.
That's also why "Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games" is so lasting in its effectiveness and comedic force. For once, Frank has no idea what's going on. Frank Reynolds is the audience's surrogate for the Season 7 episode, in which a sadistic board game the gang made up is played to the hilt. The entire installation is one long set piece rich with classic hijinks (the war dance, the dart throwing sequence), and Kaitlin Olson's portrayal of inebriated Sweet Dee almost steals the episode.
But it is Frank Renyolds that makes "Chardee MacDennis" a classic. Whether it's Frank eviscerating the Chardee MacDennis rulebook or hanging out in an animal crate that serves as jail, the character is at his best because he's out of his element. It's a lane the show rarely swerves into, but it pays off on a top-tier level here. That makes it worthy of a spot on this list, even if it doesn't offer Frank at his most moving ("Mac Finds His Pride") or Frank at his most hysterical ("The Great Recession").
"Wolf Cola: A Public Relations Nightmare" is "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" at its most expansive. "Expansive" isn't a word one normally applies to deliberately crude sitcoms, but it applies here with force. The Season 12 episode bounces from Paddy's Pub to the Middle East, from the terrorist organization Boko Haram to the UFC, and from Wolf Cola to Fight Milk. More than anything, it reaches far and wide to put and keep the gang in the public eye.
For much of this episode's runtime, Dennis, Sweet Dee, and Frank attempt to assuage concerns about their terrible soda while Mac and Charlie further the financial prospects of their crow-filled beverage. By the episode's end, everyone has failed. The gang is an institution unto themselves, but when they meet other institutions in society (the news, or a massively popular combat sport), their insular logic crumbles like dust.
That's why Sweet Dee shatters any hope of Wolf Cola getting back on the public's good side by playing her idea of a CEO right before Dennis's anti-dog sentiments bury the hatchet once and for all. It's also why UFC President Dana White bans Charlie and Mac from the UFC forever. Public relations nightmares hinge on the public and, in "Wolf Cola," we learn once and for all that the public can't handle our crew. Plus, it features the series' funniest ever cold-open. It's an all-time great "It's Always Sunny" installment that's almost one of the 20 best.
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," like many half-hour sitcoms before it, hasn't been shy about incorporating its cast's actual lives into the series' plot. But the FX show, arguably, has a longer leash to do so than almost any other on TV as its stars are the show's creators. So when Kaitlin Olson, who is married to Rob McElhenney, got pregnant, both chose to make Olson's pregnancy a season-long story arc.
The narrative culminates with "Dee Gives Birth," an episode that is not only one of the funniest "It's Always Sunny" has ever done but one of the sweetest. Every sequence of Mac, Charlie, and Dennis trying to become a good dad for Dee's impending child is priceless (Dennis banishing a nurse while invoking Thor is particularly giggle-inducing), but it's the ending that is peak "It's Always Sunny." The episode ends with Dee, newborn in her arms, being wheeled towards a cadre of Philly's worst humans, each of whom thinks they're the father, while a maudlin song plays. The child is played by Olson and McElhenney's actual son. The moment is legitimately moving.
Then the reveal occurs: Dee has been serving as a surrogate mom and leading men on throughout the season, manipulating them into sex and being, well, very Sweet Dee about being pregnant. The plot twist makes Dee's debauchery throughout Season 6 even more stunning retroactively and proves that even at its most sentimental, "It's Always Sunny" is a deliciously bleak look at what makes us human. Even if this isn't the funniest "It's Always Sunny" episode, that blend of sweet and cynical makes it a notch more important than the manic "Wolf Cola" or "Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs."
Dennis is arguably the most fascinating character in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," a would-be sociopath whose firebrand tendencies undermine his attempts to pass for high society. Dennis fancies himself a ladies' man and savant. He's neither. To his credit, though, he's often organized. The method to Dennis' madness comes front and center in "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System," which finds the eldest Reynolds child teaching the gang how he meets and picks up women (or, as Thought Catalog put it, "The BS women keep falling for").
It is hysterical watching them fail to do so instantly, as is Sweet Dee's B-storyline (the pratfall-punctuated scene in which Dee ruins a sweet picnic date through cynicism alone is an all-time favorite). Neither element is so fascinating as what the episode reveals about Dennis. By the time he's borrowing an elderly woman who can't stop talking about Susan B. Anthony to pose as his grandmother, it is clear that Dennis prioritizes success over anything that would make him a reputable boyfriend or reliable partner. The Dennis system, like Dennis himself, is fraudulent.
c80f0f1006