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In 2010, Entertainment Weeklytasked Glenn Howerton—co-creator and co-star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—with an unenviable challenge: to pick his 12 favorite episodes of the raucous comedy. He admitted that playing favorites “actually sucked,” noting that, “It's kind of like being asked to pick your favorite child. Now, it's not that you don't have a favorite child; you do. It's just that you don't want anyone to know that.”
Dedicated fans of the show—which makes its ninth season debut tonight at 10 p.m. on FXX—can understand Howerton’s trepidation. While we may not share in its royalties, viewers who discovered the show in its early days (even before Danny DeVito added a bit more legitimacy to the madness in season two) feel a deep affinity for Sunny and its characters and can more readily rattle off a list of favorite moments than entire episodes (Dee rocking out to Steve Winwood and learning some “amazing moves” from an inflatable man in “The Gang Buys a Boat” is a personal highlight, though the episode didn’t make the final cut here).
What makes the task even tougher is that Sunny doesn’t follow a typical sitcom structure, wherein plot and subplot work together to create one overarching storyline. Sure, there are episodes where the entire gang—a.k.a. Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee and Frank—all work together toward a single goal (and they’re some of the best). But more often, there are two distinct storylines that take the characters in different directions, with Paddy’s Pub being the single throughline that brings them back together.
The traditional rules don’t apply to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—which Jonathan Storm once called “Seinfeld on crack”—and that’s part of its genius. If the promo trailers for season nine are any indication, depravity will rule yet again. Also worth noting (and setting your DVRs for now) is “Flowers for Charlie,” the ninth episode in the upcoming season, which was penned by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
Until then, here are our picks for The 25 Best “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” Episodes (So Far).
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25. "Charlie and Dee Find Love" (Season 8, Episode 4)
After promising The Waitress that he will cease all stalking activities, Charlie and Dee get romantically involved with Ruby and Trevor Taft, members of one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest families. After their attempts to act sophisticated fail miserably, the duo reverts to their typical heathen ways. Yet Ruby remains genuinely smitten, causing the rest of the gang to worry what sort of Cruel Intentions-esque game these upper-crust siblings are playing: "Can the girl not smell Charlie?,” Dennis wonders. “Can the guy not see Dee?"
But the joke is on all of them, as it’s Charlie who emerges as the game’s victor, telling a heartbroken Ruby that he only used her to make The Waitress jealous. And it worked. His happy ending comes when The Waitress reduces the distance cited in her restraining order from 100 feet to 50.
24. "The Gang Gets a New Member" (Season 4, Episode 13)
Jason Sudeikis guest stars as Schmitty, a long-lost member of the gang whose personal clashes with Charlie led them to oust him from their circle of friends years earlier, with Dennis unceremoniously throwing him from a moving car while shouting, “You’re out of the gang!” But times have changed and Mac and Dennis want Schmitty back, so they set about reinitiating him while Charlie bows out and begins a new career as a substitute janitor at the local high school (where Dee has been hanging out with her former acting teacher, trying to reignite the passion he had for the theater so many years ago).
As it turns out, Schmitty isn’t as compliant a friend as the gang is used to, and he’s not impressed with some its rituals, like Dennis dictating what everyone eats or Mac’s displays of sweet roundhouse kicks during the gang’s induction ceremony. So back to the car they go to, yet again, push Schmitty out of their lives.
23. "Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games" (Season 7, Episode 7)
Board games aren’t typically a spectator sport, but Chardee MacDennis is not your average board game. It is The Game of Games—an interactive, alcohol-fueled, possibly-illegal-in-some-states diversion created by Charlie, Dee, Mac, and Dennis (hence the name) where the two main goals seem to be public shaming and alcohol poisoning. Like Monopoly, players can be sent to jail, which in this case is a tiny dog kennel, as Frank quickly learns. His only way out? To eat the ingredients of an entire cake. That act alone is worth the 22-minute time investment.
22. "The Waitress is Getting Married" (Season 4, Episode 13)
The Waitress is getting married and this is a problem for everyone: Charlie, because she is the love of his life; Mac and Dennis, because they’re afraid of what might happen to them if Charlie goes postal once he finds out; and Dee, because the groom-to-be is her former high school boyfriend Brad, whom she dumped because of his acne (“You told me I was going to grow up to look like Edward James Olmos,” he reminds her.)
So the gang hatches a plan: Dee will work to sabotage the nuptials by attempting to seduce Brad and throw an engagement party with only Philly’s least desirable in attendance (including Mac and Charlie’s moms) while Mac and Dennis create a Match.com profile for Charlie to get him out on the dating scene. But his profuse sweating, culinary preference for “milk steak” and mangling of the word “philanthropist” to “full-on rapist” don’t bode well for a second date. Fortunately for everyone—except Dee—Brad’s whirlwind romances were all a ploy to get back at the women who couldn’t see past his acne in high school.
21. "Who Pooped the Bed?" (Season 4, Episode 7)
If the title alone doesn’t intrigue you, don’t bother watching. Because the episode could easily be retitled “Law & Order: Fecal Unit,” with the first part of the show following the gang’s in-depth investigation into figuring out who has pooped the bed that Frank and Charlie share two nights in a row. Their investigative tactics include all four men sleeping in the defecated bed in question and taking their “evidence” to a lab for analysis. When the scientist concludes that the sample includes newspaper, pieces of a credit card, and wolf hair, both Frank and Charlie deem it “inconclusive.”
The “Order” part comes courtesy of Artemis, who points the finger at seemingly every possibility—including a so-called “turd merger,” when two poops fuse together and become one. It’s all too much for Frank, who eventually admits to being guilty, even pointing out the little present he left on the floor during Artemis’ diatribe.
20. "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore" (Season 7, Episode 2)
Nostalgia. It has bitten all of us in the ass on at least one occasion, as Dennis and Dee learn when they take the gang on a road trip to their childhood playground: The Jersey Shore. From the get-go, they wonder if the magic of the place was all in their imagination as they check into their dump of a motel, stroll a beach full of hypodermic needles and feral dogs, and discover two homeless guys having sex under the boardwalk in the same spot where Dennis had his first kiss. And this is all before Dee’s hair gets stuck in an amusement park ride, which lands them at the hospital where they hook up with a band of local thugs, who force them to rob, murder and take angel dust.
Charlie, meanwhile, bumps into The Waitress on the beach, where they spend a fun-filled night together gazing at the stars, collecting shells, and talking into the wee hours. (Unfortunately she's high on ecstasy and doesn't remember any of it the next day.)
But the real star of this episode is none of the regular gang—it's Rum Ham, Frank's beloved liquor-soaked ham that gets tragically lost at sea like Wilson in Cast Away, only to be later caught—and enjoyed—by the guidos who rescue Frank and Mac. Can we get a fist bump?
19. "The Gang Gets Whacked: Parts 1 & 2" (Season 3, Episodes 12 & 13)
It’s rare that the storyline from one episode carries into the next, so we think it’s fair to count this two-parter as a single episode, as its plotline certainly deserves an hour to play out. The inciting incident happens when the gang inadvertently stumbles onto a big bag of cocaine, which they sell for a whopping $300 in order to make some electrical repairs at the bar. The problem is the coke belongs to a couple of local mobsters, who saw them take the drugs, which are worth $25,000.
Over the next near-hour, each member of the gang must utilize his or her individual talent(s) in order to raise the money they now owe to the mob. Mac becomes an apprentice to the mob boss they owe (where he is nicknamed “Pussy Hands” after bragging about his cat-like reflexes); Dennis becomes a male prostitute, with Frank as his manager; and Charlie and Dee enlist the help of Rickety Cricket to sell even more drugs, but fail the first rule of dealing: don’t get high on your own supply.
18. "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats" (Season 6, Episode 10)
Inside the mind of Charlie Kelly could be a fascinating—or frightening—place to be, depending on your perspective. When Frank suggests that the gang throw their resident rat basher a surprise party, they decide that the best way to figure out what Charlie wants is to get a hold of his “dream book,” a collection of nearly impossible-to-decipher words and images that often occupy his mind, and create real-life versions.
From what they can tell, this includes the meme-worthy denim chicken (a pair of jeans to fit a cooked chicken), a bird with teeth (which Charlie believes may very well exist in nature) and a worm hat, which the gang is a little confused about, so they create three versions: a hat made of worms, a hat that makes you look like a worm when you put it on, and teeny-tiny top hat for your teeny-tiny worm.
Turns out that none of their interpretations were correct: Hans Worm Hat is a German guy who appears in Charlie’s dream, where he shoots at him from a biplane. And that’s what it’s like to be inside the mind of Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats.
17. "Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth" (Season 4, Episode 13)
Dee may get top billing, but this episode belongs to the guys. When Dee lands a substitute teaching gig at the local high school, she uses it as a way to boost her self-confidence—to inspire the students in her classroom to achieve their dreams. But her enthusiasm is cut short when her lack of tenure (or even a permanent position) prevents her from doing much more than babysitting a classroom full of kids who could care less. Charlie, too, is doing the mentor thing; he’s taken up residence as the school’s substitute janitor and has taken a young juggalo under his wing.
Worlds collide when Dee asks Dennis and Mac if she can use the bar to set up a movie screening for her students, which the guys turn into a focus group for their self-financed movie, Lethal Weapon 5, in which the two of them switch parts to determine whether blackface is indeed offensive. (It is.) But what’s most repulsive is Frank’s ultra-gratuitous sex scene.
16. "Mac and Dennis Break Up" (Season 5, Episode 9)
The funniest part of “Mac and Dennis Break Up” has less to do with the too-close-for-comfort best friends taking a break from their friendship and more to do with the personal havoc their separation wreaks on the rest of the gang. As usual, the brunt of the dysfunction lands on Sweet Dee, who ends up getting a gaggle of cats, a couple of birds, and eventually herself stuck in her apartment wall.
15. "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off" (Season 3, Episode 15)
Charlie’s illiteracy paints the gang into a tough corner when he mistakenly signs a contract offering up Paddy’s Pub as both the venue and prize to be won for a nonstop dance marathon. Which means that the gang must dance their asses off in order to save their bar. But a prize this tempting draws a large crowd of both strangers and familiar faces, including The Waitress and Rickety Cricket, both of whom are anxious to take the gang down.
Rivalries within the gang don’t help matters much, with each member of the group trying to outwit, out-manipulate, and out-dance the others; Dennis’ dance-offs against Mac to “Poison” and Charlie to “Take My Breath Away” are two scenes you will rewind.
14. "Frank's Pretty Woman" (Season 7, Episode 1)
Frank has got big news in the season seven premiere: He’s getting married! And the lucky lady is a vile crack-whore named Roxy, who is prone to spout off such gems as “It's tighter than a dick skin,” when describing an expensive leather jacket she wants to purchase. But the rest of the gang are convinced that Roxy’s just in it for the money, so Frank gives them 24 hours to change his mind.
Charlie has a foolproof plan to introduce Frank to someone new: he has set up a date via an online dating website claiming to be some sort of cowboy magnate with Frank playing the role of his driver, who will swoop in and continue the date when Charlie falls mysteriously ill. But Charlie miscalculates what swallowing a bunch of blood capsules might do to one’s stomach and the date setup turns into a full-on fake bloodbath.
Dee, meanwhile, opts to give Roxy the Pretty Woman treatment by taking her shopping, but quickly realizes that Roxy has got her beat in matter of money-making and tongue-lashing (even if she’s does need to ask for Dee’s help in digging some crack rocks out of her ass). It should be stated for the record that the bulk of this episode’s humor rests on Alanna Ubach, the criminally underrated character actress who is probably best known as one of Elle Woods’ BFFs in Legally Blonde. Unfortunately for Roxy, Frank is nothing like Richard Gere, so her ending is not quite so happy.
13. "The Gang Gives Back" (Season 2, Episode 6)
If there’s one thing Sunny is lacking it’s innocence. Which makes its kid-focused episodes all the more entertaining. Following the gang’s arrest for arson (in “The Gang Goes Jihad”), they’re forced to perform community service: Charlie is sent to AA (where The Waitress agrees to become his sponsor) and is cleaning up trash on the side of the road while Dennis, Mac, and Dee become basketball coaches at a local community center. But when Dennis lands the league’s only talented player, Dee and Mac fight back with everything they’ve got: dirty tricks, smack talk, and bribery. It’s The Bad News Bears meets Semi-Pro. Hey, nowhere in their sentencing did it state that they had to serve as positive role models for their kids.
12. "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack" (Season 4, Episode 10)
Political issues are a favorite topic of Sunny’s writers and “Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack” is a perfect example of a political statement wrapped in a package of absurdity. The short version is this: Dee has a heart attack but doesn’t have insurance, so is thrown out of the hospital as soon as she stabilizes. Frank, on the other hand, has got a premium PPO thing happening, so he takes the opportunity to get a full medical workup, which leaves him flush with top-notch anti-anxiety pills, which he chases with a couple of beers.
Totally blindsided by the high cost of healthcare, Dennis and Dee and Mac and Charlie each come up with a plan for the future: Mac and Charlie will get jobs that offer paid health insurance (they end up splitting one minimum wage mailroom gig) while Dennis and Dee head off to the gym to take their well-being into their own hands. Unsurprisingly, both plans fail terribly: Dennis and Dee can’t get past the fact that the spin instructor doesn’t have Steve Winwood on his playlist and Mac and Charlie become convinced that they’ve stumbled onto a corporate conspiracy of The Secret to My Success proportions.
The kicker, of course, is Frank, who overdoses on his anxiety meds and ends up in a mental ward straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (His escape from said mental ward is lifted from the film, too—sink through the window and all.)
11. "The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis" (Season 4, Episode 13)
If the number of patrons that occupy a stool at Paddy’s Pub at any given moment is any indication, Dennis, Charlie, and Mac are not the world’s swiftest businessmen. But they understand the rule of supply and demand and the idea of inflation, which leads them to a foolproof plan: with the cost of gas on the rise, they’ll buy up a bunch of it, store it in Paddy’s cellar for a while then re-sell it at a profit thus, essentially, solving the gas crisis.
Less brilliant than the idea itself is the business plan they draw up to attract investors: a simple chart anchored by two (hand-drawn) big-breasted women. When that doesn’t work, the gang resorts to selling their stockpile of gas lemonade-stand style, utilizing every bit of showmanship they’ve got. Sounds like how Microsoft got started…
10. "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties" (Season 7, Episode 3)
“Frank Reynolds’ Little Beauties” takes all the creepiness of TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras” to a whole new level of depravity. Frank tells the story of how he once met a strange man at a titty bar who offered him what looked like a great opportunity to invest in a beauty pageant, a business Frank has long wanted to be a part of because you “make a lot of cash and ogle some broads.” But now his partner has been arrested for propositioning one of the contestants and it’s up to Frank to legitimize the operation. There’s just one problem: it’s a kiddie beauty pageant.
Some of Sunny’s finest hours happen when the gang is working together, and “Frank’s Little Beauties” is a prime example of that. As Dennis, Mac, Charlie, and Dee prepare the pageant itself—arranging its song and dance numbers and coaching the kids—Frank tries desperately to prove that he’s not a pedophile by, well, repeatedly telling the crowd that he’s in “no way attracted” to their kids. Frank’s constant reassurances—coupled with his mortician-assisted makeover—don’t make for a particularly persuasive case.
9. "Hundred Dollar Baby" (Season 2, Episode 5)
After her male cohorts abandon her in the midst of a mugging, Dee takes it upon herself to learn a little self-defense. Frank—a former boxer—offers to help train Dee at the local gym, where they butt heads with Bobby and Jade Thunderson, Frank’s former nemesis and his jacked-up daughter. After a bit of shit-talk, a date is set for the women to fight and Dee decides to train for the main event by going on an all-out steroid spree.
She’s pissed off, moody and prone to frequent bouts of violence (you would be too if you had to shave your face each morning). And when, on the day of the fight, she realizes that Charlie has gobbled up all of her stash, the beatdown comes earlier than expected—and with a different opponent. As if witnessing Dee and Charlie hopped up on ‘roids wasn’t entertaining enough, the episode gives Dee some of her best one-liners: “I will eat your babies, bitch!”
8. "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" (Season 5, Episode 4)
Being utterly grotesque in every way possible is one of Frank’s most endearing qualities. But his most recent bender has the rest of the gang worried. First he drags them all to the funeral of his ex-brother-in-law, so that he can proposition the widow (his ex-sister-in-law) right there in front of the casket. When she makes it clear how disgusting she finds the idea, he makes a move on his former niece, Gail the Snail (played to perfection by Mary Lynn Rajskub). Though the gang enlists the help of a professional, she takes issue with the fact that the entire group is drunk during their meeting—they’ve adopted Frank’s idea of drinking wine out of a soda bottle, because “the guy’s got great ideas”—and is debating whether to bring a gun to the intervention itself. But the gang decides that they can handle this one on their own, as all it takes to stage an intervention is to con a guy into a room and start pointing and screaming “Intervention!” at him, right?
7. "Sweet Dee's Dating a Retarded Person" (Season 3, Episode 9)
If one ever needed proof that Sunny’s creators were serious about not softening with age, this third season episode is it. Dee is bragging about her new boyfriend, an up-and-coming rapper named Lil’ Kevin, who Dennis remembers as a special needs student from elementary school. Dee is indignant, but Dennis persists, even accompanying Dee to Kevin’s house (where he lives with his mom) to prove that Kevin is indeed mentally challenged. The evidence starts to weigh in Dennis’ favor: Kevin’s inability to drive, his love of cartoons and juice boxes, the way he holds a popcorn bowl, his tendency to put his clothes on inside out....
When Dee confesses her trepidation just before Kevin gets on stage, he makes his mental status known with a special song he dedicates to Dee in which he asks: "Just one question Dee/Before you take your bow/Your gravy train's leavin’/So who's retarded now?"
6. "Charlie Gets Molested" (Season 1, Episode 7)
Throughout his decades as a film critic, Roger Ebert subscribed to what he called the Stanton-Walsh Rule, which declared that no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role could be entirely bad. One could just as easily create a McPoyle Rule for Sunny, as the episodes featuring creepy brothers Liam and Ryan McPoyle are undoubtedly some of the show’s most memorable.
"Charlie Got Molested" is their series debut, in which they accuse their junior high school gym teacher (played by Dennis Haskins, a.k.a. Mr. Belding) of sexually abuse. They rope Charlie into the scam when they remind him that the false accusation was his idea (flashback to a drunken night where Charlie does, in fact, introduce the idea as a possibility). While Dee and Dennis try to out-Psych 101 each other, Mac’s just pissed that the teacher didn’t find him attractive enough to victimize. “If the McPoyles got blown, and Charlie got blown, then why didn't I get blown?” he demands to know.
“Charlie Got Molested” was the last episode of Sunny to air on Fox until it appeared in syndication five years later; various sources maintain that the content of this episode in particular was a source of the show’s move from Fox to the more adult-friendly FX.
5. "Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare" (Season 2, Episode 3)
As surreal as some of Sunny's storylines may be, one of the aspects that keeps the show grounded is the genuineness of the relationships between its characters. Charlie and Dee make a particularly powerful duo when playing off of each other’s insecurities, and when Dennis and Dee pair up there’s a recognizable familial quality to their interactions. Like so many of the show’s best episodes, “Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare” tackles real issues—unemployment and social assistance—in extreme ways.
Tired of being bossed around at Paddy’s by their dad, Dennis and Dee quit their jobs and pursue their dreams. But when they realize that unemployment pays better than the bar, they decide their dreams can wait just a little bit longer. When the unemployment runs out, it’s time to step up to the plate and apply for welfare; unfortunately, the welfare officer needs medical proof that Dennis is a recovering crack addict (he’s not) and that Dee is mentally challenged (she’s not—but wearing a pink bike helmet to the office was a smart touch). So Dennis and Dee do what any responsible American citizen would: they develop an addiction to crack just long enough that their blood tests will be positive.
4. "Mac is a Serial Killer" (Season 3, Episode 10)
There’s a serial killer on the loose in the City of Brotherly Love. And the more media coverage the case gets, the more the gang believes that there’s a killer among them: Mac! The evidence is all there, according to Frank: his secretive behavior, those mysterious scratches on his neck… So the gang decides to investigate. As Frank and Charlie play Law & Order, Dennis and Dee try to lure the killer by dressing Dee up like a prostitute (which leads to an awkward encounter with a Fraggle Rock-loving pimp named Pepperjack) and, when that fails, attempt to adapt a killer’s mindset. It’s one of the show’s most gag-heavy episodes—and one of its most supremely funny.
Oh, and Mac? He's not a murderer. He's just into transsexuals.
3. "Charlie Gets Crippled" (Season 2, Episode 1)
Dennis and Dee have a problem: their father is looking for them and is headed to Paddy’s. In a rush to escape the bar for the solace of a strip club, Dennis accidentally hits Charlie with his car, landing him in a wheelchair. But the gang soon discovers a silver lining to Charlie’s newfound handicap: pity! Yep, even the strippers are offering up free lap dances. From there, it doesn’t take long for Dennis, Mac, Dee and even Frank—who makes his series debut at Dennis and Dee’s dad—to catch on and procure their own wheelchairs, crutches, braces and sob stories about their afflictions (Dennis and Mac are fighting over polio).
As usual, the gang's back-stabbing ways and irresponsible behaviors are their ultimate undoing, as Mac and Dennis plow his Range Rover into the rest of the gang at the end of the episode. Frank's initiation into the crew is official when he slips into the role of father figure, telling the bickering foursome that they should all be thankful that nobody important was seriously hurt (cut to: Dee's bandaged, bruised and full body-braced date for the evening—the crash's only real victim—whose hospital room they've been arguing in).
2. "The Nightman Cometh" (Season 4, Episode 13)
“The Nightman Cometh” is Sunny’s single best-known episode, and for good reason. It answers the question: What would happen if an illiterate man wrote a musical as an attempt to woo the girl of his dreams, who is more interested in filing restraining orders than walking down the aisle?
The result is sheer spectacle, with each member of the cast filling a role in a nonsensical rock opera where daymen, nightmen, princesses, and trolls belt out a series of terribly catchy tunes that all seem to unintentionally hint at pedophiliac undertones. Case in point: Frank’s butchering of the lines to “Troll Toll,” in which he declares “You gotta pay the Troll Toll if you wanna get into that boy’s hole.” A year later, the cast launched a nationwide live tour of the play.
Even Howerton admitted his surprise at the episode’s overwhelming popularity: “When creating this episode, we asked ourselves: Will any of this make sense to the audience? Our answer: Who cares? And now we (the actors) are touring this musical episode all over the nation. Confused? So are we. It's awesome.”
1. "The Gang Gets Racist" (Season 1, Episode 1)
Choosing a TV show's first episode as its best (or even one of its best) is a rarity akin to a movie sequel that surpasses the original film. Unlike other offbeat comedy series that have “grown into” their wackiness with time (The Office, Parks & Recreation and The League being three notable examples), Sunny laid its depravity on the table from the very beginning, tackling racism and homophobia in a way that was so absurdly offensive that it couldn’t be taken as anything other than farce.
Unlike the initial episodes of pretty much any other series, there’s also none of that awkwardness between characters as they attempt to establish clear relationship dynamics, both as characters and as actors. Even the look of the show has remained decidedly low-tech—despite significantly larger budgets—making Sunny’s earliest episodes almost indistinguishable from its most recent efforts. Which is an achievement that few series can claim.