Most sitcoms have become unwatchable by the time they reach season 15. But thanks to a team of writers determined not to repeat themselves and a cast with a deep love and appreciation for their characters,It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiakeeps moving from strength to strength. By all accounts, the show’s fifteenth season should be a forgettable bore and the show should’ve become a shadow of its former self years ago. Against the odds,It’s Always Sunny– which has been renewed up to season 18 and probably won’t stop there – has just pulled off one of its strongest seasons to date.LikeSouth ParkandFamily Guy,It’s Always Sunnyis a show that has struggled to adapt with the times because its comedic sensibility is so deeply rooted in shock value. Its early seasons were defined by theirbrazen, unapologetic approach to taboo subjects. Over the last few years,Sunnyhas struggled to both maintain its edge and address the issue of punching down.RELATED:Ryan Reynolds And Rob McElhenney Kick Off Wrexham’s Cinderella StoryIn season 15, the show has finally found the sweet spot between traditionally biting and self-awareSunnyhumor and a progressive sensitivity to potentially offensive material. From spending a few episodes in Ireland to taking a surprisingly emotional turn, the fifteenth season ofIt’s Always Sunnywas filled with refreshing, unexpected subversions.
More Hit Than Miss
The recent seasons ofSunnyhave been a mixed bag. Each year,It’s Always Sunnydelivers a handful of great episodes and a handful of not-so-great ones, which is perfectly agreeable for a show whose season count is in the double digits. Season 15 was a lot more hit than miss, perhaps because the pandemic gave the writers longer to work out the story and character beats (season 14 hit the airwaves two years ago).
As with the return of most sitcoms in a post-COVID world,It’s Always Sunnykicked off its latest season withan obligatory episode about the pandemic. But it’s not what fans might expect from anAlways SunnyCOVID episode.Sunnyalready did an episode about the Gang being quarantined way back in season 9, so “2020: A Year in Review” takes an anthology-style approach to explain how the Gang was indirectly responsible for all the major events of the year: Mac and Dennis caused the recounts in the U.S. presidential election, Frank made Rudy Giuliani’s runny hair dye, and Dee and Charlie designed the costumes for the Capitol attack. The episode sticks the landing beautifully with the Gang digitally inserted into real footage of these events,wearing Kanye 2020 merchandiseand looking confused by all the carnage around them.
After the COVID-centric premiere, “The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7” took a meta turn as theSunnywriters addressed the racial insensitivity of previous episodes that have been removed from the Netflix library (or, in-universe, removed from the public library). The episode culminates in a hilariously ironic ending as the Gang is frustrated that their story is being told by somebody who doesn’t understand their experience.
The season’s third episode, “The Gang Buys a Roller Rink,” flashes back to 1998 and serves as an origin story for the Gang. When a show’s characters are as familiar and set in their ways asSunny’s, one of the most fun things they can do is act wildly out of character. The younger versions of Dennis, Mac, and Charlie are really nice to Dee. Dennis isdesperate for Frank’s approvaland Dee is surrounded by adoring friends (until she bumps her head and becomes the obnoxious, hot-tempered narcissist that fans know and love today).
Arguably the season’s weakest episode, “The Gang Replaces Dee with a Monkey,” still has plenty of great moments. The A-plot with Dee’s acting class is aimless and disjointed and the entire B-plot only serves to set up the Gang’s impending four-episode trip to Ireland, but the central premise of a bartending monkey replacing Dee is hysterically in-character (and the line “Thank you, monkey,” repeated every time the monkey serves somebody a beer, never fails to get a laugh).
The Trip To Ireland Takes A Surprisingly Emotional Turn
In its early days,It’s Always Sunnymade its name as the anti-Friends, a decidedly unsentimental sitcom about a group of the worst people on Earth who only care about themselves. The series has explored a few emotionally charged moments – namely Mac coming out to his dad in the form of a dance in the season 13 finale – but the show traditionally avoids trying to make the audience feel and instead takesSeinfeld’s classic “No hugging, no learning” approach.
That all changed when the Gang went to Ireland for the second half of season 15. Usually, when the cast of a TV comedy goes abroad for a multi-episode arc, it’s an ominous sign that the show is about to jump the shark. The overseas episodes tend to present the same tired formula in a new location, asparodied by Ricky Gervais inExtras.It’s Always Sunnymanaged to go the other way. When the Gang went to Ireland, it grounded the show and paved the way for some of the most emotionally engaging moments inSunny’s history.
Shot on location (but still featuring some shaky greenscreen footage, presumably from reshoots), season 15’s four-part Irish adventure works beautifully. The initial setup in “The Gang Goes to Ireland” is thatDee has an acting gigin Dublin, but the storyline takes an unexpectedly dramatic turn when Charlie tracks down his long-time pen pal and learns that it’s his biological father, Shelley Kelly, played spectacularly by Colm Meaney. Throughout the series, Charlie’s absentee father has been a running gag, but season 15’s Shelley Kelly storyline digs deep into the psychological toll of childhood abandonment.
Despite the emotional tone of the Irish episodes, the back end of the season doesn’t get too bogged down in the drama. There’s plenty of absurdity involving the rest of the Gang to offset the tragedies faced by Charlie.Dennis is more psychotic than ever– babbling about the smell of red hair, conversing with a haunted castle, coming at Dee with an axe, and cutting out the eye-holes of a framed portrait so he can spy on people from behind it – while Frank disposes of files tying him to Jeffrey Epstein any way he can (including dumping them in the kegs at a pub).
In the finale episode, “The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain,” Charlie recruits his friends to help him get his dad’s corpse to the top of a mountain for a bizarre Irish burial ritual. The writers wring plenty of laughs out of that ludicrous premise, like Dennis dangling from the corpse to protect his Vitruvian back, but the episode takes a heartbreaking turn wheneverybody else abandons Charlieand he’s forced to carry the corpse alone in the pouring rain. After finally giving up, he breaks down next to the body and tells the father who abandoned him, “You weren’t there! And I needed you!”Sunnyfans never expected this show to make them cry (much less sob uncontrollably), but the combination ofCharlie Day’s truly powerful performanceand the solemn bagpipe cover of “Amazing Grace” made the season 15 finale a real tearjerker.
