‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Season 4, Episode 2: “The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis”

Written By: Charlie Day, Sonny Lee, Patrick Walsh

Original Air Date: Sept 18th, 2008

Where to Watch: Netflix

What It’s About: For much of the mid-2000s, oil prices radically increased worldwide. The speculated causes are myriad: some say it was the added transportation costs from the increasingly global economy, others argue that financial speculation from sovereign wealth funds and fuel subsidies artificially drove costs upward. Complex, yes, but Mac’s (Rob McElhenney) plan to fix this crisis is simple: but a shit ton of gasoline and horde it until prices are even higher, and then sell it to people. Charlie (Charlie Day) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) enthusiastically get in on this plan, realizing that it’s a chance to form a “team” like in Ghostbusters or Scooby Doo. Meanwhile, Frank (Danny DeVito) and Dee (Kaitlin Olson) decide to spy on Bruce, her biological father, because he is donating money to an Islamic charity.

Why It’s So Good: There were shows about irredeemable assholes before It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Seinfeld comes to mind. But what makes It’s Always Sunny unique is how low its stakes are. None of these people matter to anyone in society but themselves, and the stakes couldn’t be lower in “The Gang Solves The Gas Crisis.” We’re quickly disavowed from the idea that The Gang wants to solve anything, and instead move on to the idea that The Gang could somehow be a better, more effective Gang by fitting into roles like “The Brains” and “Wild Card.”

It’s Always Sunny’s lack of award nominations has always been a glaring oversight for the people who give out TV awards, especially when worthless, vaguely racist shit like Modern Family continues to win Emmys. Watching Dennis and Mac pointlessly argue over who deserves to be “The Brains” in their very poor respective plans is a fantastic critique of the worn-out tropes that usually get hailed in a lot of television, and watching it escalate to a competition to over which one of them a banker will take in the back room and bang shows off It’s Always Sunny’s nihilism with the lightest of touches: here are three men arguing about essentially nothing in order to achieve a plan that is essentially pointless, all for the sake of taking their shirts off. Mac’s plan is terrible, Dennis’ plan of selling the gasoline door-to-door is equally terrible. Plans don’t matter, “Gas Crisis” is saying. Group dynamics doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. All you can try to do is make your yelling into the bottomless void louder and louder.

This is also a show known for going dark, and there are few things darker than waterboarding. In a scene that calls to mind another mid-2000s hit, 24, Frank gleefully waterboards his daughter, Dee, convinced she once had a plot to murder him. Unlike on 24, though (or on most dramas which involve torture for that matter), It’s Always Sunny gleefully admits the truth, that waterboarding doesn’t work. “I got Dee to admit to things she never did!” Frank exclaims proudly. Dee is the only one who came up with an actual plan during this episode: in order to frame Bruce as a terrorist, she wants to plant fertilizer and other bomb-making equipment in his apartment. While not rock solid, it’s a good first step. Frank just wants to find weird things with a baby monitor, like sex with dudes, or maybe sex with dudes who are also babies. They’re not even in the right apartment, aside fr om a picture in a newspaper Bruce never appears in the episode.

The gasoline plan and “frame Bruce as a terrorist” plan eventually converge in the third act, when the realization is needed that the entire Gang is needed to form a working team: Frank as the muscle, Mac as the brains, Dee as the useless chick, Dennis as the looks and Charlie as the wild card. With determination in their eyes and a plan, a new plan, a special plan, the best plan yet, they crash their van into the car of a man credited as Random Guy (Zachary Kingston) whose life they have been slowly destroying for the entire episode. His car goes up in flames, they sneak away with no consequences. Nothing matters.

The Best Moment: The episode is eminently quotable, but Charlie’s final act as the Wild Card, to cut the breaks of their van for no reason other than it’s what a Wild Card would do, is the perfect climax in what might as well be an Edward Albee play adapted for twenty-two minutes with dick jokes.

David Grossman is a wild card based out of Brooklyn.

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Photos: FX Networks