In It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s fifth season finale, the gang sinks to new lows to re-stake their claim as Philadelphia Flip Cup champions.  While it wasn’t the hands-down funniest episode of the season and paled in comparison to last season’s closer, “The Nightman Cometh,” the gang kicked out yet another laugh-out-loud episode, leaving fans hungry for more than just 12 episodes and awaiting what antics may come in Season 6. 

As Frank is modeling his new, skinny jeans in an effort to be hip and trendy, Dee rushes into the Pub, eagerly alerting the rest of the gang that the decade-long ban has been lifted and Paddy’s is now allowed back in Flipadelphia.  The gang was banned from the city-wide Flip Cup Tournaments for poisoning the other team. Now they can reignite their rivalry with Molly’s pub – the default winner the last time Paddy’s was actually in contention.

The irony of this is that Dee was the reason why they felt the need to poison the competition.  Dee choked under pressure and couldn’t flip a cup to save her life.  Nevertheless, the gang heads over to Molly’s – now a relatively classy restaurant – and creates a huge ruckus.  Several upended tables, insulted patrons and after Dennis whizzes on the bar, they tell Molly’s owner, Marty Sloane that the rivalry is back on as they open up their jackets to reveal “Flipadelphia” t-shirts.

Satisfied that they’ve planted the seeds for reigniting their rivalry, the gang insists on ousting Dee from their team since she chokes under pressure and that her big man hands can’t accurately flip the cup. Until she can flip 10 cups without dropping them, they refuse to let her on the team. Dee sequesters herself and starts training while Frank is installed in the role of “Team Instigator.”

Meanwhile, Dennis decides to go back to his roots to hone his flip cup skills and heads to his old Frat House.  Claiming he’s a legend at his old frat, Dennis is shocked to find out that none of the new crop of brothers remember him… And that his photo on the wall has a new caption over the top of it, alluding that Dennis has a fondness for penis.  An even bigger shock comes when Dennis discovers Frank (and his skinny jeans) is there, playing hula hoop and attempting to recruit a fourth Flip Cup player for the team in Dee’s stead.  

While at the frat house, Frank pals around with the younger guys, thinking he’s in tight with them, and even snorts a line of Riterol.  Then the frat boys start zapping pledges with a tazer, along with Dennis and Frank, too with the duo retreating from the house and back to the club, vowing revenge. 

Similarly, Charlie and Mac run into their own trouble with the frat boys, this time busting in on a party and grabbing up their women, mesmerized by the fact that the girls are decorating each other with blacklight paint in a strobe-lit room.  The frat boys kick them out. 

The gang reconvenes at Paddy’s and Dennis says that he feels disrespected by them and intends to focus some weird rage on them, possibly involving janitor Charlie’s Good Will Hunting theories.

To make themselves feel better and further escalate the Molly’s rivalry, Dennis and Frank break into Marty Sloane’s house and begin tying the sleeves of all his dress shirts in knots From there, the start overflowing his toilet and sinks and nailgun his shoes.  Frank then slices Sloane’s shower curtain in half, cutting off the bottom half so that when he showers “everyone sees his junk.”  Dennis caps this off with his masterpiece: setting it up a fiery display on Marty Sloane’s lawn that spells out: ”Paddy’s Have Respect Idiot. I am LEGEND!” on the lawn.

Back at Paddy’s, Dee shows the guys that she’s been practicing her Flip Cup skills and successfully flips over 10 cups in a row.  She’s back on the team and the gang declares the Molly’s rivalry old news: This time, they’re headed to the frat to play for the Flip Cup honor of Paddy’s! 

They bust into the frat, demanding a single game of flip cup: If the gang wins, they get to party at the frat any time they want.  If the frat wins, they get free beer for life at Paddy’s.  The frat brothers agree and it’s on!

In what seems to be a show of good faith to Dee who has been on a winning streak, they tell Dee she can start off the team in Flip Cup.  She chugs the beer and flops miserably when trying to flip it over.  Dee stumbles around trying to flip the cup back over while the entire team of frat boys already flips all their cups over and wins.  The frat boys celebrate but their celebration is cut short as Dee and frat boys double over.  Turns out, the rest of the gang poisoned the beer in the cups.  They figured Dee would choke anyway, so to punish her, they poisoned her, too.  Dennis, Charlie, Mac, and Frank then sing the Flipadelphia song as Dee and the frat boys puke their guts up.

This week’s episode of It’s Always Sunny was a decent one, but not necessarily one of the season’s best.  Playing off of director M. Knight Shyamalan’s connections to Philadelphia, the Sunny gang puts their own “twist” on things.

The action kicks off at Paddy’s Pub with Mac and Charlie telling the worst story ever about being locked in a stairwell and meeting a security guard to Dennis.  Dennis could care less, playing with his fancy new touch screen phone. Meanwhile, Frank is using his shirt pocket to dispense and eat large links of sausage.  Dee walks in and announces that she’s landed a featured role in an extra in an M. Knight Shyamalan movie. As is par for the course, the rest of the gang attempts to figure out how they can get a piece of the action.  Frank volunteers his services as Dee’s agent, realizing he can get money for nothing.  Dee declines and Frank ends up as Dennis’s agent while Mac and Charlie attempt to write their own script to pitch to M. Knight.

On the set of the film, Dee learns that her “featured extra” role is that she plays a corpse.  Ooh! What a twist!  As Dee haggles with the production assistant for a larger part, Frank, his sausages, and Dennis and his phone wander on the set and Frank scores Dennis a part as an extra, too.  Outraged, Dee stomps off to the makeup trailer and ends up drenched in enough blood to make Carrie look like a paper cut. 

Meanwhile, Mac and Charlie begin outlining the plot for their new film: The Fifth Sense, a prequel to Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.  The duo decides that they should make with the Hollywood trend of resurrecting the career of an older, bad-ass actor, unanimously deciding upon Dolph Lundgren.  Lauding Lundgren as the most underrated actor ever, Mac and Charlie push their ever-expanding envelope of homoeroticism by creating a storyline in which the former Ivan Drago plays a super smart, muscular scientist who wears “a hot, mesh tank top.”  The Shayamalan Twist on this one is that he smells crime before it happens.  Charlie takes the lunacy a step further suggesting that the scientist has a giant nose for a head atop Dolph Lundgren’s chiseled body. 

Before they pitch the film to M. Knight Slumdog (as they refer to him), Mac and Charlie tell Dennis of their idea.  He thinks the film has potential, but is missing one thing: Full penetration and hot chicks.  Basically, Dennis’s twist on the story turns it into a porno.

Seeking help to write their screenplay, Mac and Charlie seek out a young Pakistani-American college student and pitch their story to him, figuring that Pakistan borders India, so obviously, this young lad must know a thing or two about putting a “twist” on a script.  After telling him their idea, the guy tells them he’s just a “big picture” kinda guy.

Back on the set, Dee prepares herself for her closeup and is dismayed to know that not only is she blood-covered, but her corpse character is laying face-down.  Meanwhile, Dennis gets to lay face-up in the shot and has a minimum of makeup.  Dee tries to steal the scene by pretending to be a zombie corpse, which doesn’t fly with the Production Assistant.  Even worse, M. Knight Shyamalan isn’t even directing this scene, just an assistant.  Dee gets booted from the scene, as does Dennis when his cell phone keeps going off in his pocket.  Dennis hands the phone to Frank who tells the assistant that he now wants in on the scene. 

Fed up with being an agent, Frank wants to act and is there to pick up the scraps the scraps and ends up as the featured corpse in the shot, replacing the ousted Dee and Dennis.  Nevertheless, even as the camera zooms in on faux DeadFrank, he can’t stop himself from taking a bite out of the delicious sausage in his pocket. 

Back in the trailer where Dee and Dennis are clearing out, Mac and Charlie show Dennis the storyboard for their film.  Dennis shoots it down and says that he had been typing up a new script for them to produce based on the horrible story Mac and Charlie had been telling at the beginning of the ep about being stuck in a stairwell and hunted by a psychotic security guard.  Just as Dennis goes to show them his script, the touch screen freezes, having been gummed up by Frank’s greasy sausage fingers. Foiled again!

Ever wondered how Dennis Reynolds pulls in so many ladies?  Do you only dream of being as suave and sophisticated as Dennis?  Well, then!  This is the episode of It’s Always Sunny for you! Dennis outlines his six-point plan for scoring with women and dropping them cold as only he can.  Observe and learn.

Dennis breezes into Paddy’s to share a voicemail message sent to him by the latest chick he’s gotten to fall in love with him.  After the voice on the other end cycles through a litany of derogatory names, Dennis laughs about it and informs his cohorts that this chick who claims to hate him is actually in love with him.  And it’s all thanks to “The D.E.N.N.I.S. System.”

• D – Demonstrate value
• E – Engage physically
• N – Nurturing dependence
• N – Neglect emotionally
• I – Inspire hope
• S – Separate entirely

Using Kayleigh the Cute Pharmacist (and angry voice on the other end of the voicemail message) as an exhibit, Dennis goes over his formula point by point.  He “demonstrates value” by going to the pharmacy and filling a prescription for his sick grandmother.  After asking Kayleigh out, he asks her out to dinner at a restaurant that he knows is closed and then suggests they go to his house for pizza and a movie. This is where Mac-as-Wingman comes in, sporting glasses and a sweater on the couch and declaring he can’t go back to his room because of a spider.  This forces Dennis and his girl into his room to watch the movie, culminating in a subtle seduction on his bed. She’s just been “engaged physically.”

Dennis then “nurtures dependence” by having her car towed, slashing her tires – and his personal favorite — creating a telephone stalker to threaten her.  It will make her want to take the relationship to the next level and drive her crying dependently into his arms.  Once she’s dependent, it’s time to “neglect her emotionally” by dodging phone calls and just ignoring her. 

Taking the emotional rollercoaster a step further, it’s time to “inspire hope.”  Dennis then re-enacts scenes from ‘80s movies such as Say Anything and Top Gun, making a play by saying he was afraid to connect with her emotionally. Once again, he’s back in her bedroom on the basis that he’s made her feel like she’s transformed him from a cold unfeeling guy to someone who truly loves her.

And thennnnnnnn, Dennis crawls out a window and leaves her, enacting the final stage of The D.E.N.N.I.S. System, “Separate entirely.”

Frank, Mac, and Charlie applaud Dennis’s advice while Dee is appalled.  The guys also note that Dee’s probably going to get D.E.N.N.I.S.-ed by her new boyfriend, Ben the soldier who came home from Iraq from a few episodes ago. Sweet, stupid men has been sitting inside a hot car with the windows rolled up, waiting cheerfully for Dee like a sap.   

Later on, Dennis goes to talk to Kayleigh at the pharmacy in an attempt to score again.  She tells him that she knows his grandmother story (and the prescription signed by “Dr. Toboggan”) is a sham. He runs into Mac and Frank at the pharmacy who are also planning to engage the The D.E.N.N.I.S. System.  Mac, however, has his own system:  Move-in After Completion (M.A.C.) and swoops in as the sensitive intellectual type after Dennis humps n’ dumps the ladies. Frank, meanwhile, is content to pick up the scraps and adopts the name “Mantis,” armed with a wad of hundreds and a box of Magnums to “demonstrate value” by insinuating he has a “monster dong.”  Dennis dubs him desperate and insists that the smarter thing would be to have the Magnum sticking out of his wallet. 

Meanwhile, Dee’s boyfriend (wearing the denim shorts that Frank gave him as a homecoming gift) sets up a nice picnic for the two of them.  Dee freaks out, believing this is part of a plan designed to make her dependent upon him.  She falls down the hill and stomps off as Ben innocently tries to help her.

Trying to work the system himself, Charlie, shoving a bag of hair in the Waitress’s sink to clog it, is busted by the Waitress who comes home and sees him having broke into her apartment. After complimenting her on her admittedly hideous shirt that she wears for her other job, Charlie learns the Waitress is now working at a fair.  She boots him from her place and Charlie heads back to Paddy’s to lament how Dennis’s system hasn’t worked for him. 

Back at Paddy’s, Dennis comes up with a plan for Charlie to demonstrate his value by winning a prize at a carnival booth where the Waitress works… and give it to the bustiest chick he can find, thereby demonstrating his total lack of interest in her.  Dennis determines that Dee has no value on her own and needs to de-value Ben and will brazenly flirt with a carny in front of him.  Mac, in turn, will invite Kayleigh to the fair where Dennis will declare his undying love for her.

At the fair, Dennis rents a grandma (who loves to tell stories of her lesbian grandmother who had an affair with Susan B. Anthony) for the day and pushes her around the fair as Kayleigh bait.  Charlie attempts to “demonstrate his value” to the Waitress and comes up with an epic fail.  Ben, on the other hand, delivers a nice nod to the “I like turtles” kid by having his face painted while Dee looks on.  Mac arrives at the fair with Kayleigh in tow.  Frank, however, deviates from the script, insisting that it’s “no more thirds for Frankie! It’s seconds now”, having taken on the role of a Dr. Mantis Toboggan. With Kayleigh looking on, Frank/Dr. Toboggan tells Dennis that his test results came back positive and that “You got the AIDS big time!”

Things go to hell quickly as Dee gets dumped by Ben who declares her too mean to date after she gets stabbed by the carny she flirts with, mistaking her for the Waitress who he was supposed to stab to make her dependent on Charlie.  As usual, the gang heads off by themselves at the end of yet another sunny day in Philadelphia.

After dropping by to torment Dee and borrow some popcorn for their umpteenth viewing of Predator, Mac and Dennis find themselves the brunt of accusatory comments.  Dennis refers to his sister as a “cat lady spinster with no friends.” Dee fires back, hitting a little too close to home by insisting that Dennis and Mac are worse than an old married couple, spending every waking moment together and checking in with each other all the time.

With the seeds of destruction planted, Dennis and Mac protest their union too much, finding ways to argue to ensure that they’re not really “an old married couple.”  After an argument over possibly watching The Transporter instead of Predator during movie night, Dennis and Mac decide to “break up.”  Dennis goes off to spend some quality time with his sister, Dee.  As Dee’s cat goes missing, hiding in a hole in the wall, Dennis suggests she should just let the cat die in the wall and demands Dee do all the things Mac used to for him: peel his apples, light his cigarettes, etc.  

Meanwhile, Mac turns to hanging out with Charlie and Frank, and is appalled at the way the “Gruesome Twosome” live.  Frank insists upon cutting his toenails with a steak knife and then plugging his botched toe with trash.  Mac vows to break Frank and Charlie of their vile habits like eating cat food and their trash-littered apartment decor, limiting trash only to the trash-talking that Mac and Dennis are hurling at one another via cellphone check-ins.

Annoyed by Mac’s attempt to turn the two Oscars into Felixes, he seeks refuge at Dee’s place along with Dennis.  Trying to help solve Dee’s cat conundrum, he decides to bring in a second cat to lure out the first one, attaching a string to its leg and putting that one in the wall along with Dee’s pet. 

Back at Charlie and Frank’s apartment, Mac has cleaned up the place, installing plastic seat covers on the couch, and insisting that Frank and Charlie try to find another sleeping arrangement other than sharing a bed.  Frank finally objects to Mac’s attempts at improvements when he halts him from eating an apple with skin on it and freaks out when Frank uses his toenail knife to remove the skin.  Feeling that Mac wants him and Charlie to put on airs by giving up eating cat food, Frank heads over to Dee’s apartment along with the rest of the gang, sans Mac. 

Meanwhile, Charlie has collected a batch of neighborhood cats to try to lure out Dee’s cat.  Dee, on the other hand, decides that throwing a bird in there on a string will be the best way to get her pet out of the wall… coming up with an Epic Fail.  On top of the calamity, Dennis accidentally swallows apple seeds and Charlie tells him he should through up immediately.  Frank shows up, back on Charlie’s team and reuniting the “Gruesome Twosome” with a series of vigorous pelvic thrusts in-stereo.  Dee, Frank, and Charlie conspire about how to get the cats out of the wall and Mac and Dennis back together so that they stop bothering them as Dennis can be heard loudly barfing in the other room. 

Baiting Mac and Dennis to sit down together at a local restaurant, Dee successfully reconciles the two before heading back to her pad to pry her cat out of the wall.  She comes home to find a house filled with cats and Charlie and Frank taking a sledgehammer to her wall and then decides to climb in herself and wrangle the pesky feline out of the wall herself.  Charlie and Frank, informed via text message and elated that Dennis and Mac are back together, abandon Dee inside the wall as they scamper off to watch Predator with the reunited “couple.”

Picking up on the “As Seen on TV” craze and popularity of such merchandise as the Snuggie, ShamWow!, and any other item shilled by loud, obnoxious spokespersons, the gang decides to market their own Paddy’s merchandise. Spurred on by a merchandising convention, each of the gang comes up with their own heinous ideas to try to pitch at the event.

Inspired by Charlie’s homemade commercial for Kitten Mittens (geared towards noisy cats), the rest of the gang sets about creating their own items to hawk at the pub.  Dee insists that as per a contract she signed, she gets 100% of the rights to all Paddy’s merchandise.  Insisting that it was just something they had her sign to justify her working for slave wages, Dennis hands Mac the contract, which he promptly eats.  Charlie decides he wants to patent Kitten Mittens before the rest of the gang steals his idea and Dee wants to seek legal counsel to see if eating a contract renders it null and void.  Meanwhile, Dennis and Mac team up, excluding Frank who has some ideas of his own.

Dennis sticks to the classics, with a Paddy’s thong which he proudly models for Mac.  On the flipside, Mac’s winning idea for Paddy’s pub merchandise is the Dick Towel, a long, wraparound towel with varying sizes of a cartoon version of the male anatomy on either side.  (And yes, the good folks at It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia even have a website of their own for the Dick Towel.)

Frank, who wasn’t included in the fun, busts in with a busty young lass and his latest creation, a Shot Gun: a small handgun which shoots out liquor.  Although Dennis and Mac veto Frank’s idea, they secretly plan to improve upon it and create a much larger version of the Shot Gun using, well… a shot gun to fire shots into the mouths of patrons.  They also go about getting even bustier women to help sell their product. 

Meanwhile, Charlie and Dee visit The Lawyer who is more than tired of their non-paying ways.  They ask him for help to market and copyright their ideas, although he refuses to work with them.  After finding out that The Lawyer’s wife wants a divorce, they go about trying to figure out how to get them back together as a means to bribe him.  When that doesn’t work, they pick up a hooker (played by Rock of Love’s Heather Chadwell) for The Lawyer and offer her as payment.  Mac and Dennis come up with a similar idea and burst into The Lawyer’s office.

After putting together their own sub-YouTube style commercials, it turns out that Charlie’s idea for Kitten Mittens gets purchased and the Shot Gun doesn’t get picked up.  Either way, no one makes out since the gang blindly signed contracts/restraining orders that grant him 100% of the rights to their merchandise and call for them to stay away from him or face arrest. 

Overall, this was a pretty funny episode, although the miniature commercials for each of the Paddy’s products provided the highlights.  Once again, Season 5 of It’s Always Sunny shows the gang will stop at nothing to backstab each other in the name of a buck.  Only eight episodes into the season, you can only imagine just how much lower they’ll sink.  I, for one, can’t wait to see it!

This week, the It’s Always Sunny gang goes lower than ever before using the current trend of professional wrestling to serve up a tribute to the troops.  The result is infinitely more entertaining and contains better wrestling than anything Monday Night RAW has kicked out in the past few months.  Even better, the gang hits several new lows, Artemis makes another appearance (as does wrestling legend, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) and Frank quite possibly kills Rickety Cricket!

In a rare act of charity, the gang decides they want to host a benefit for the homecoming troops Want to give back to the troops.  As usual, there’s something in it for each of them: Charlie and Mac use it as an opportunity to bust out their old backyard wrestling gimmick, The Pigeon boys and Dennis insists on becoming the third member; Frank wants to promote Paddy’s and try out his brand new gimmick: The Trash Man; and Dee wants to use this as an excuse to get closer to the hot vet she met in a chatroom who’s coming home Stateside. 

Mac, Charlie, and Dennis line-up a wrestler living out of his stationwagon known as The Maniac (Roddy Piper), getting him to appear on the benefit card for their show for $50.  The guys are a bit apprehensive about having hired The Maniac when he demolishes Paddy’s payphone in a fit of anger after a promoter stiffed him out of $15. 

Piper, having acted before (most famously in the horror/sci-fi/camp classic They Live) does a great job with creating the character of The Maniac.  One part Mickey Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and one part crazed Jimmy “Super Fly” Snuka, and one part the Ultimate Warrior at his most ramblingly unintelligible, The Maniac is a walking wrestling cliché of the washed up performer who sticks around for too many chair shots.

While the guys have locked in an appearance by The Maniac, Dee tries to lock in a date with Ben, the returning veteran who she had been chatting with online under the handle “Desert Rose.”  Tarted up in a red dress with green tights, Dee totes her own boom box cued up to play Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” when Ben dismounts from the plane.  Frank is hanging out along with her, bearing flyers to the Paddy’s wrestling promo event and gifts in the form of a pair of denim shorts. 

When Dee sees Ben in a wheelchair, she pretends she’s not really Desert Rose and hightails it away in a display so disgusting even Frank is appalled.  Dee, in her own way, attempts to make things right by pawning off Ben on a willing Artemis who cops to having dated handicapped dudes before. (“I love the power!”)  Artemis shows up in a purple and green ensemble which Dee dubs “Desert Grape.”  After musing whether or not Ben’s dangly parts are a hot mess since he’s in a wheelchair, Artemis still deems him do-able and saunters over to his table in a flurry of pure comic glory.  (Have I mentioned before how It’s Always Sunny should make Artemis a regular?) She reveals herself to be Desert Rose and makes out with Ben on the spot.  Even better, Ben can walk!  He had twisted his knee getting off a plane in Germany and was in the wheelchair to keep off of it.  Seeing that the otherwise hot vet isn’t a cripple, Dee attempts to claim him again while Artemis declares “No changies!”

Back at Paddy’s, the Frank, Dennis, Mac, and Charlie are all trying out their respective gimmicks.  The Pigeon Boys are redubbed the Eagles and have one more member with Dennis. The trio attempts to write a theme song about being Bird Men and the soaring lifestyle of being an Eagle and regurgitating food into the mouths of their young, which comes off only slightly less lame than the Bad Street U.S.A. theme the Freebirds had. Meanwhile, Frank tries out his new gimmick “The Trash Man” on them.  Chucking a full garbage can into the pub and wearing a one-shouldered black singlet (à la Andre the Giant, even more ironic when you consider Danny DeVito is all of five feet tall!), Frank starts eating the trash.  The rest of the gang shoots down his gimmick and relegates him to referee status claiming “No one wants to see a 60-year-old man eat garbage!”   

The day of the benefit show, the gang runs into a problem when The Maniac is carted away in a police car for his unpaid parking tickets.  This leaves the show without a star and a main villain.  As a last minute addition, Frank enlists Rickety Cricket who creates a hilariously offensive (blonde) terrorist stereotype as his in-ring persona. 

The benefit show begins with Dennis, Mac, and Charlie trotting out their new Birds of War gimmick with painted on abs and giant chicken feather wings.  Sporting Garth Brooks-style headsets, they lay an egg with their entrance theme containing such awesomely bad lyrics as “Yes we have feathers… But the muscles of men!”

Not the only ones to sing, Dee volunteers to sing the national anthem to serve her own hidden agenda to wrest Hot Vet Ben from Artemis who’s not having it.  Dee starts singing but halts the Star Spangled Banner after a few bars and tells the A.V. guy to flip the tape over.  Revealing herself as the real Desert Rose, she launches into the Seal song, but gets clobbered in the face by Terrorist Rickety Cricket!  Pandemonium ensues as Dee sits in the ring with a broken, bloody nose and Rickety Cricket beats the crap out of the Birds of War, spouting crazy gibberish all the way.  Frank takes it upon himself to save the day and breaks out the Trashman gimmick and wails Cricket on the mat with the garbage can.  Cricket is gushing blood from his neck in the middle of the ring, which doesn’t look too good.  Frank remarks to himself “I knew this $h*t wasn’t fake!” as he raises his hands in victory and Hulk Hogan’s vintage “Real American” theme plays.

Just when you think the It’s Always Sunny gang has out-grossed and out-shocked the audience, they go and take it to a whole new level.  This episode ranks up there as one of my favorites of the season along with trolling at funerals and Gail the Snail.  So far, Season 4 of It’s Always Sunny is the best of the series to date.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia nailed the Phillies Phenomenon that swept the city last year during the World Series.  With the City of Brotherly Love looking to experience a repeat of Phillies Phever, it makes the gang’s antics on this week’s episode all the more timely. 

Told through a series of flashbacks, the gang finds themselves in court for a plethora of unpaid parking tickets.  Starting out at the home base of operations, Paddy’s Pub, Mac, Frank and Charlie were busy concocting grain alcohol-heavy “Riot Punch” in gallon milk containers. Dennis contributes to the cause by ripping open his shirt to blast his chest, complete with red, Magic Marker “Phillies” scrawled across.  Charlie shows his team spirit by preparing to unleash Green Man yet again, believing it’s the perfect foil for the Philly Phanatic.  The lunacy continues when Sweet Dee bounces into the bar, decked out in pink Phillies gear, outlining her plan to hook a player.  Mac will run interference and Dee will make a break and plant one on a Philly of her choice.

All’s going according to plan and the gang prepares to head to the stadium, until Frank realizes that he left the tickets in his and Charlie’s apartment. It would be a simple fix for Frank, Dee, and Mac to head back to the apartment and pick up the tickets if it wasn’t for the fact that Frank and Charlie’s apartment building was being fumigated for an infestation of bed bugs.  Dennis and Charlie depart for the stadium while the rest of the gang sees the apartment building draped in an extra-large parachute to hold the bug bomb juice in.  Grabbing a hose to breathe into, Frank determinedly rushes into the building to grab the all-important tickets while Dee and Mac wait outside, going over their plan.

Dee wants to make out with Ryan Howard, but Mac attempts to strong-arm her into making a play for Chase Utley.  After some prodding, Dee finds out that Mac has something of a man-crush on the Phillies’ second baseman, having written him a letter that he wants Dee to hand to him after sticking her tongue down his throat.  The letter itself is decorated with stickers and features such gems of friendship as: “I like your hair. You run FAST! Did you have a good relationship with your dad? Me neither! These are all things we can talk about when we become friends.  I think our friendship would be a Home Run!”

Mac’s heartfelt bromance letter is read aloud in court, eliciting peals of laughter not just from his cohorts, but the judge and jury, as well.

Back in flashback mode, Dee and Mac realize it’s been awhile since Frank has gone into the building and notice that the hose has disappeared along with him.  Rushing into the building (more for the tickets than Frank), the trio are overcome by poison gas and an extended sequence of them gagging into the camera before stumbling from the building delivers comedy gold.  Frank realizes that the exterminators stole the tickets from his coffee table when they came in to exterminate.  They eventually crawl from the apartment and attempt to regroup and find a new plan to see the World Series game.

Back at the stadium, Dennis and Charlie are trying to find ways to get in without tickets.  Charlie suggests stumbling in front of an expensive car and shaking them down for tickets in lieu of filing a lawsuit for hitting them.  Instead of taking the fall himself, Charlie throws Dennis in front of a car, which amounts in an epic fail… And some serious bruises on Dennis.  Meanwhile, Charlie is determined to make Green Man a hit with Phillies’ Phans and has a Mascot-Off with the beloved, green Philly Phanatic.  Emboldened by several swigs of “Riot Punch,” Charlie still manages an epic fail against the Phanatic before phreaking out and sucker punching the fuzzy green guy.  Philly phans, not wanting to miss any opportunity to get in on a fight, come to the aid of the Phanatic and serve Charlie a beatdown to remember. 

Joined by Frank, Dee, and Mac, the reunited gang attempts to figure out how they can break into the stadium now that their tickets are gone. Realizing that Mac, who only works his “glamour muscles” in the gym, lacks the upper body strength to scale the stadium walls, the gang remembers a secret tunnel beneath the stadium that will allow them access.  Again, the gang’s plot goes awry and they find themselves trapped for six days in the stadium’s linen closet, resulting in the scads of unpaid parking tickets they were called to court for. 

Not buying “The World Series Defense,” the judge orders them to pay up and the quartet are escorted from the courtroom with Charlie babbling and ranting lines nicked from courtroom dramas and other random Charlie-ness.

This week, the gang attempts to spare Charlie’s feelings by hiding the bombshell that The Waitress is getting married.  (Incidentally, The Waitress’s real name is never mentioned in the episode.)  While engaged in her favorite Saturday afternoon pastime, trying on expensive wedding dresses at a local boutique, Dee encounters her old boyfriend, Brad Fisher from high school and is totally smitten. Noticing he’s decidedly less pizza-faced than he was before she dumped him, Dee finds out he’s engaged…. And engaged to none other than The Waitress.

Bursting with the news, Dee hightails it to Paddy’s where Charlie is attempting to play Winnie the Pooh with a  hornet’s nest that’s somehow been built in the corner of the bar’s ceiling.  As Charlie attacks the nest with a broom and the hornets attack Charlie, Dee takes time out to spill the beans to Dennis and Mac. 

Faced with the possibility of Charlie inding out, offing himself in despair and having to do the “Charlie work” around the bar, Dee’s a woman on a mission.  Intent on busting up the impending union of her high school ex-and The Waitress, the gangcalls out Dee on the fact that she’s most upset that The Waitress is getting married before her. On the flipside, Dennisand Mac attempt to hook Charlie up with a woman to keep his mind off of The Waitress in the hopes that they ensure Charlie doesn’t go postal and cap all their asses.  .

Meanwhile, Frank’s been doing a bit of hooking up himself, getting freaky with food and Artemis — his new booty call.  In between bacon showers, Frank and Artemis find time to re-enact a scene from Lady and the Tramp with a piece of celery at Dee’s wedding shower soiree for Brad and The Waitress.  In an effort to dissuade Brad from marrying The Waitress, she invites Frank, Artemis, and Mac and Dennis’ mothers — both of whom get sloppy drunk and slur insults at The Waitress as per Dee’s plan.  (Oh, the things Dennis’s mom will do for a pack of smokes!)  Through some catty comments, everyone in the room finds out that Dee and The Waitress both went to school together (The Waitress was just really forgettable) and both girls had dated Brad and dumped him for having a complexion like braile.  Eventually, things escalate with Frank outing the sex tape he made with The Waitress a few seasons back and she The Waitress storm out of Dee’s apartment. Minutes later, Brad comes back to tell Dee that he’s still in love with her.

In an effort to brace Charlie for heartbreak, Dennis and Mac pay a visit to him in his apartment and find him smoking out the hornet’s nest from the bar, converting it into what looks like a cardboard box bong.  Toting a laptop, Dennis and Mac decide to create an online personals’ ad for Charlie.  After naming his favorite food as “milksteak”and including “magnets” as a hobby, the rest of the gang fudges a dreamboat persona for Charlie, landing him a date with a lawyer. 

After sweating through his dress shirt at a fancy restaurant and changing his job description from a “philanthropist” to a “full-on rapist,” Charlie bombs on his date.  Not even Mac and Dennis can bail him out when they pretend to be the owner and head waiter at the restaurant, informing him that his “milksteak” will be ready shortly, just the way he likes it. After Charlie makes an inept attempt at groping his date, she runs off and leaves in a hurry, frustrating Mac and Dennis to the poing of blurting out that The Waitress is getting married. 

The following morning, Frank is at the bar, recounting his and Artemis’ sexcapades at Wendy’s following Dee throwing them out of her party the night before. In turn, Dennis tells him that Charlie now knows what happened and expresses concern.  Frank tells him not to worry, that Charlie is okay with this and even wanted to congratulate Brad himself.

Charlie knocks on Brad’s door, bearing gifts: A suspicious looking cardboard box with the large “H” he scrawled on it in his hornet-huffing stupor back at his apartment. Brad answers and Charlie congratulates him on his impending nuptials and offers him the box.  Brad tells him the engagement is off, which delights Charlie.  Empathizing with his fellow former high school geek, Brad lets Charlie in on his little secret.  Now that he’s hot, Brad’s been working his way through dating all of the girls who jilted him in high school, getting engaged to them and then calling off the wedding at the last minute. His latest fiancé is now Dee Reynolds.  In a rare act of one of the Gang doing something nice for the other, Charlie decides to let Brad have the loaded wedding gift after all before walking off happily.

While this week’s episode lacked the all-out shock factors of last week’s intervention, the Gang is really progressing at regressing towards new, societal lows.  Artemis’s appearance is always welcome and if It’s Always Sunny pursues a freaky-deaky relationship between her and Frank, they’ve got potential gold on their hands.  At the recent live show based on the “The Nightman Cometh” episode, the audience went wild during Artemis’ appearance onstage.  Hell, why not make Artemis a regular already!? She’s a perfect fit for the bottom-feeding antics of those loveable rascals from Paddy’s!

In perhaps the best (and raunchiest) episode of the season yet, the gang stages an intervention for Frank who not only has peaked at a level of debauchery, but revels in it. 

The gang finds themselves en route to what Frank calls an outdoor function, crammed in a car with Frank drinking boxed wine out of a soda can.  The outdoor affair turns out to be the funeral of Frank’s dead ex-wife’s sister’s husband.  Frank, wearing a wine-stained shirt and slurringly drunk, states his intentions to “bang” Dennis and Dee’s Aunt Donna. The entire scene is pure, outrageous gold!  Just when you think It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has hit a level of jaw dropping, shock-tastically crude comedy, they go and outdo themselves.

Frank strikes out with a completely repulsed Aunt Donna and Mac attempts to mack on the fifty-ish woman, citing that he was once her deceased sister’s “lover.” To try to improve his chances and gain an “in” with Aunt Donna, Mac suggests that Frank go one step further and attempt to hook up with Donna’s daughter, Dee and Dennis’ cousin, Gail. Dubbed “Gail the Snail” by Dee and Dennis for the fact that you have to throw salt on her to get rid of her, Gail — looking like a refugee from a methadone clinic — leeches onto Dennis and Dee in spite of their best efforts to dodge her.   Thoroughly creeped out, the gang resents Frank for dragging them there and involving them in a sticky, snail-fueled predicament.  After concluding that Frank has gone too far in his level of depravity and decide to stage an intervention.

Dee, Dennis, and Charlie meet with an intervention specialist to get pointers on how to best deal with Frank’s issues.   Taking a page out of their father/former father’s book, the trio turns up to the meeting swigging boxed wine out of empty soda cans with telltale wine stains on their mouths.  Each of the gang airs their grievances with Charlie hitting the nail on the head: He doesn’t mind so much that Frank is getting drunk, it’s just that he’s getting drunk without him.  And they don’t crawl around in the dark and play Nite Crawlers anymore, either.  After shooting down the intervention specialist’s theories that Frank needs to be gently coerced into sobriety, the gang decides to do the intervention their way.

Meanwhile, Frank takes Mac up on his suggestion to hook up with Gail for maximum shock value.  The two end up not hooking up, just smoking up and doing some serious drugs and alcohol before stumbling downstairs where they find Mac attempting to make breakfast in Aunt Donna’s kitchen.  Having busted in a window to gain access, Mac is confident he can bag Donna for his own.  Things don’t go quite according to plan as Aunt Donna comes downstairs, aghast at seeing her front windows destroyed, Mac in the kitchen, and Gail attempting to give her Uncle Frank a “handy” under the breakfast table. (“You’re not. You’re just mashing it.”)

After kicking Mac and Frank out with Gail the Snail tagging along behind them, the trio make their way back to Paddy’s where Dee, Dennis, and Charlie — smashed out of their collective gourds on box wine — take a stab at an intervention.  Frank thinks they’re giving him a roast and things get even more out of hand from there. 

After giving up on the intervention, the gang comes to the conclusion that drinking wine out of a soda can is far superior to drinking out of a wine glass, giving the drinker the ability to gesticulate wildly with a modicum of spillage.  They send not only the intervention specialist packing, but Charlie manages to flush out the ever-irritating Gail the Snail out by throwing salt on her until she flees out the door, but not before attempting to invite the gang to a rave (“I have glow sticks…”). 

With the menace disposed of, the gang does what they do best… Drink!  Hoisting their cans of wine high with a fresh box of wine ready in the background, it’s just another sunny day in Philadelphia and the credits roll on the best episode of the season so far.

The de-evolution of Frank Reynolds from Season 2 when Danny DeVito became a regular cast member is really hitting its stride, making him one of the most shocking and hilarious characters on television right now.  Frank has gone from a materialistic businessman and father to former trustfund babies Dennis and Dee to the middle aged and (really) crazy, booze chugging, spliff-lighting, piece-wielding, pint-sized deviant over the course of three seasons.

With the entire gang, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia takes the Seinfeld formula of really reprehensible characters and cranks it up a notch.  Each of the players (most of whom are the writers) have natural comedic delivery that makes this show such a slice of life… A really, truly, disgusting and totally awesome life.