The 20 best episodes of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'

Making a list of the best-ever episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a futile gesture. With its 16th season, Always Sunny became the longest-running live-action comedy series ever. And this defiantly dark and hilarious sitcom about the five worst people in Philadelphia has maintained an absurdly high quality. In its 170 episodes airing since executive producers and costars Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Glenn Howerton were allowed onto the FX airwaves in 2005, there are remarkably few episodes that wouldn't garner at least a few votes. (The show's rare forays into disappointing flashback episodes being the exceptions.)

That said, the misadventures of Charlie, Dennis, Dee, Mac, and Frank (or "the Gang," as they're known) have produced some truly astounding episodes of television, where the grubby and irresponsible scrabbling of five truly awful people is transformed, inexplicably, into comic gold. As the stellar cast (Howerton, Day, and McElhenney, alongside Kaitlin Olson and TV legend Danny DeVito) and writers have proven again and again, it's easy to be outrageous and offensive, but it takes true artistry to make the Gang's awfulness both riotously funny and shockingly insightful.

So, without more ado, here are the 20 best episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (all of which can be watched on Hulu).

01 of 20

"Charlie Gets Crippled" (Season 2, Episode 1)

It's Always Sunny's short first season saw Dee, Mac, Charlie, and Dennis come out of the gate already as adept at raunchily hilarious terribleness as they'd be with double-digit seasons of practice. And while the show's rough edges were honed away with enviable ruthlessness (Dee's first-ever line saw her telling Dennis she loves him, for crying out loud), it was the FX-mandated arrival of a TV legend that truly whipped the Gang into its final, fruitfully destructive form. Given the ultimatum of adding a name actor to the show's mix or getting canceled, Day, Howerton, and McElhenney set their sights upon former Taxi star DeVito to play Dee and Dennis' heretofore-unseen and estranged father, and we're all the better for it.

Faced with the harrowing news that father Frank had unexpectedly decided to stop by Paddy's Pub, Dee and Dennis set out in a rush, hoping to avoid talking to their wealthy but absent dad by racing drunkenly to the local strip club. Shocked by the appearance of Frank in the high beams of Dennis' Range Rover, Dennis inaugurated the chaos that is Frank by accidentally backing over Charlie, breaking both his legs. Meanwhile, Dee and Dennis discovered Frank's midlife crisis meant not only reconnecting with them, but also giving away his money (to charity, not to them). As Dee and Dennis raced to loot their parents' house, Charlie, Frank, and Mac found that Philly strippers (including future stars Tiffany Haddish and Natasha Leggero) were moved to dispense free lap dances on guys in wheelchairs, a lightbulb moment that ignited the bond between Charlie and Frank. Sunny's hallmark offensive plot twists were here in abundance (drunk driving, fake disabilities, collateral damage on those who foolishly get too close to the Gang), but it's Frank's seamless integration into the Gang in season 2 that truly kicked the show into high gear. As Frank's desire to wallow in the debauchery and squalor of his youth found a home in new roommate Charlie, the show also benefited from having Frank around to bankroll the untold schemes and scams to come. Meanwhile, Charlie and Frank's relationship took root, something that, alongside Dee and Dennis' constant contempt for their now omnipresent father, grew to become the fetid, unlikely heart of the show.

02 of 20

"The Gang Gets Held Hostage" (Season 3, Episode 4)

While the five members of the Gang are usually more than enough to fill an episode with disreputable laughs, It's Always Sunny boasts a fine roster of supporting weirdos orbiting the crew's Paddy's Pub HQ. And none are more uniquely disreputable than the McPoyle clan, the perpetually clammy, milk-guzzling, creepily incestuous former schoolmates led by the exquisitely repulsive Liam (Jimmi Simpson) and Ryan (Nate Mooney).

Here, the McPoyle twins (joined by deaf-mute sister and probable lover Margaret, played by Thesy Surface) burst into Paddy's to take the Gang hostage at gunpoint. Always prepared to throw each other under whatever Philly city bus is most convenient, the appearance of three sweaty, heavily-armed McPoyles sent the Gang into immediate panic and betrayal mode. Alliances were quickly formed and broken, Frank (on the hunt for his will in the bar's air vents for some late Die Hard-esque fun) had to confront the terrors of Charlie's "angry room," Dee came down with rapid-onset Stockholm syndrome, and Dennis, popping off his shirt at the first opportunity, attempted the unthinkable with Margaret to save his skin. It all ended up being a lot less deadly than it seemed (although Frank's ever-present real gun spiced things up), with Frank, Dee, Charlie, Mac, and Dennis left contemplating the shambles they'd made of their bar, and the latest proof that, when the chips are down, the Gang will sink even lower than they'd imagined.

03 of 20

"Bums: Making a Mess All Over the City" (Season 3, Episode 14)

"The streets are flooded with the ejaculate of the homeless, and you people are counting on the police?" When the Gang found an unhoused guy (Tracey Walter) masturbating in Paddy's alley, it was go time — in the sense that everybody flew off in different, ill-conceived directions in order to clean up the neighborhood. For Frank, Dennis, and Charlie, that meant buying an old police car while unsuccessfully searching for a junkyard guard dog (they did come away with a decrepit, gasoline-drinking cat Dennis named Special Agent Jack Bauer). Meanwhile, Mac and Dee, after incredulously finding that the local neighborhood watch group merely watches for crime rather than engaging in hair-trigger vigilantism, formed a two-person Guardian Angels posse, only to be summarily mugged by the white "crackhead" they choose over a friendly, elderly Black man when looking for directions.

The Gang is never more dangerous than when they have a reason to get heated. And so, Frank and Dennis took to shaking down the populace after Frank sprang for two police uniforms, Dee beat the hell out of the unhoused masturbator (while tough-talking Mac froze in fear of actual confrontation), and, most enjoyably ridiculous of all, Charlie seized upon his undercover Serpico cop role to attempt a series of stings on his fellow corrupt fake cops. Charlie Day's gift for unhinged, chaotic babble got its first true airing here, as Charlie, in a fake beard and Pacino poncho, ranted to anyone he saw about the system being rotten to the core. (After all, if you can't trust two dirtbags in phony police garb, who can you trust?) Thankfully, the Gang's enthusiasm for any episode's inciting passion burned hot and fast, and the only casualty, in the end, was the rusty cop car, which an enraged Charlie blew up with a gasoline bomb. Even Jack Bauer escaped the inferno unscathed, indicating that he would have made a fine Paddy's mascot had he stuck around, and Charlie's coda — leaving ineptly recorded proof of Frank and Dennis' corruption — hilariously suggested just how insignificantly the greater Philly area at large thinks of the Gang's burning obsessions.

04 of 20

"The Nightman Cometh" (Season 4, Episode 13)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA "The NIGHTMAN COMETH" L-R: Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney — Patrick McElhenney/FX

There isn't a weak link on It's Always Sunny, but Charlie Day is the show's most reliable secret weapon for sneak attack comic developments, never more than when he allows us a peek inside the wondrously unsettling hellscape that is Charlie Kelly's mind. That Charlie is a musical prodigy is just another of the crossed wires inside Charlie's head, as evidenced by this tour de force musical interlude where Charlie's tortured childhood and scarred psyche inform his latest composition: a creepily symbolic stage extravaganza called "The Nightman Cometh."

With the Gang (and honorary sixth member Artemis, played by Artemis Pebdani) clamoring to bring Charlie's yearning tale of unrequited love and all-too-real nighttime predation to life, the play opened another window into Charlie Kelly's soul as an oft-abused man-child whose lifelong lack of love metastasized into an unstable stew of denial and obsessive need. The final twist (that the whole show was another ploy for the Waitress' affection) was merely the last layer stripped away by Charlie's saga of a helpless, lonely little boy molested in his sleep, a theme as obvious to the rest of the Gang as it is lost on increasingly frazzled control freak Charlie. Throughout the series, Charlie's need is bottomless and twisted by an existence as perpetual bottom-rung victim, turning him into perhaps the Gang's most dangerous member. Here, the musical itself was a grotesquely illuminating treat, from Dee's self-penned improv about how, despite a song lusting after Dennis' "baby boy," she's not a pedophile, to Mac's unintentionally gut-busting turn as the cat-eyed, karate-kicking Nightman, to Frank's inability to enunciate Charlie's already sketchy lyric "boy's soul" as anything but "boy's hole." Performed with an eye toward everyone's maximum embarrassment, "The Nightman Cometh," ultimately, acted as Charlie Kelly's self laid bare, and it was as uproarious as it was jaw-droppingly wild.

05 of 20

"Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens" (Season 5, Episode 8)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA “Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens” (Season 5, episode 9) — FXX

Only the Gang could turn the simple idea of merchandising Paddy's into the cavalcade of stalking, blackmail, fraud, betrayal, and sexual objectification that occurred in this episode. After Charlie's titular concept for Paddy's-hawked knitted cat booties inspired everyone to backstab each other over competing merch ideas, we saw how a single inciting obsession was the starting pistol for the Gang to top each others' awfulness. Besieging the one lawyer in Philly unlucky enough to be on the Gang's radar (Brian Unger, the series' finest recurring straight man) with jockeying and ludicrous money-making ideas (Charlie's mittens; Frank's very real, liquor-shooting mouth gun; Mac and Dennis' comedy "dick towel"), alliances formed, shifted, and double-crossed as the Gang's dreams of sweeping up at the upcoming merchandising convention provided ample motivation for escalating shenanigans.

From such meager beginnings came developments like Frank bursting in and shoving a loaded gun in Mac's mouth while a sex worker hurled tequila in his eyes (Frank hadn't figured out the concept of the water gun yet), Dee and Charlie attempting to extort the lawyer into taking their case (after Mac ate the contract granting Dee 100 percent of the bar's merchandising), and Dennis offering to "frame bang" the lawyer's estranged wife in her sleep in order to get him to switch sides. When the Gang's collective greed and desires are engaged, it's deeply unwise to be in the way, although Unger's deliciously deadpan attorney ultimately used their headlong obsessions against them by swiping Charlie's original idea, and obtaining a group restraining order to boot. (Not even Mac's quick-thinking move to eat the order could save the day.) The Gang can never really win, but, here, it's especially satisfying to watch them suffer their comeuppance.

06 of 20

"The D.E.N.N.I.S. System" (Season 5, Episode 10)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA “The D.E.N.N.I.S. System” (Season 5, episode 11) — FXX

Finding out that Dennis Reynolds has a "comprehensive approach to seduction" is enough to chill anyone's spine, and the lockstep sociopathy of his self-anagrammed, criminally manipulative method of bedding unsuspecting women was laid out by Dennis to an appreciative Mac, Charlie, and Frank like a Bond villain. Sadly for him, once the horrified Dee challenged him to "re-D.E.N.N.I.S." his most recent discarded conquest, Dennis discovered that both Mac and Frank had formed their own systems for picking up the pieces of Dennis' shattered former lovers. "I thought you were my wingman," said a taken-aback Dennis, with Mac responding, "No, I'm swimming in your wake," while Frank (whose blunter approach to "picking up the scraps" involved extra-large condoms and a wad of hundreds) tagged along impatiently.

For each member of the Gang, the need for love and affection is twisted into different, grotesque shapes — that all do damage. So once the "delicate ecosystem" of Dennis, Mac, and Frank's predation in the same pond of misfortunes was disrupted by Dee's challenge, things got comically ugly — quick. Dennis' stubbornness saw him going as far as to hire a fake grandmother to back up his sweaty lies to the sweet pharmacist he was re-pursuing; while Dee, poisoned by suspicion thanks to her brother's evil machinations, wrecked an innocent date with Travis Schuldt's dull-witted but adoring soldier boyfriend, Ben; and Charlie, having completely missed the point of Dennis' scam, hired a carny to simply stab the Waitress. (Dee got it instead, naturally.) Throw in the first appearance of Frank's alias of Dr. Mantis Toboggan, M.D., and "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System" ended in the sort of cacophonous comic chaos that always results whenever the Gang takes their insular absurdity into the wider world.

07 of 20

"The Gang Buys a Boat" (Season 6, Episode 3)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA — Everett Collection

Having come into some money (thanks to some typically sketchy Paddy's Pub merch in season 5's "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens"), the Gang decided it was high time to take their talents to the high seas — or at least as far into the Philly harbor as their decrepit and barnacle-encrusted houseboat could take them. There was a bounty of destructive shipboard shenanigans (Charlie and Frank couldn't wait to harvest some delicious bottom-dwelling sea life, while we got the first sight of Dee's inflatable tube guy dance), but the episode will forever be remembered for "the implication."

It's Always Sunny, like the rats Charlie was tasked with clubbing to death at Paddy's, thrives in darkness. The running theme of Dennis Reynolds' monomaniacal self-regard and possible sociopathy is one of the show's deepest wells of comedy, and his conversation here with an increasingly horrified Mac about his plans for at-sea seduction dunked down into the depths. Glenn Howerton has a way of turning out all light in Dennis' eyes that's as truly chilling as it is hilarious, as when, here, he impatiently explained to Mac that, of course the women they bring onto their boat will consent to his lustful wishes, not because of any overt threat, but because of "the implication." Thankfully (and inevitably), the houseboat burned down before Dennis' schemes could manifest, but it's a testament to Sunny's high-wire comedy act that a glimpse into the creepiest recesses of Dennis Reynolds' (let's call it) soul can be so illuminating, and funny.

08 of 20

"Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats" (Season 6, Episode 10)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, Danny DeVito (right), 'Charlie Kelly: King of The Rats', (Season 6, ep. 610, aired Nov. 18, 2010), 2005-. photo: Patrick McElhenney / ©FX /Courtesy: Everett Collection — Patrick McElhenney/FX/Everett

Someone's got to be on the bottom, and more often than not, that's Charlie's job. That, and hunting down and murdering the swarms of rats that infest Paddy's. But even Charlie has a breaking point, and in this richly funny episode, the rest of the Gang feared that he had reached his, when, emerging from the basement streaked with rat gore, Charlie pondered, "Sometimes I wonder, though, if our lives are really more valuable than theirs, you know what I mean?" "They are," Dennis responded firmly, although he, Dee, Mac, and Frank started to wonder if they'd finally pushed Charlie too far — and if he was going to snap and just murder them all. One of Sunny's most impressive and enduring feats is how it can play with our empathy. Charlie, the most downtrodden of the five main characters, is a near-feral man-child, the product of a failed abortion (after Frank had sex with Charlie's mom) who accepts his lot in life as the doer of every filthy task that needs doing. He's also dangerously unpredictable and prone to equate his bottomless need for love with, for example, the license to stalk deeply uninterested love object the Waitress into a life of misery and fear. So when the Gang decided to pull together a surprise party to cheer their friend up, it came from equal parts concern and worry that, at the very least, they would have to do all the "Charlie work."

What resulted was a wacky — and almost touching — tour through Charlie's mind, as Frank insisted on including the "bridge people" he and Charlie had been hanging out with at Charlie's party, while Dennis, Dee, and Mac plumbed Charlie's alarming and near-illiterate dream journal for clues about what he'd truly like. Their guesses as to what "denim chicken" and "worm hat" might actually refer to were as hilariously wrong as they were sweetly appreciated by the fascinated Charlie, who also received a tricked-out and terrifying new rat-stick. And though sending a reinvigorated Charlie back down into the thick of the rat wars was a self-interested outcome for the Gang, it was also improbably touching.

09 of 20

"A Very Sunny Christmas" (Season 6, Episode 13)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA -- "A Very Sunny Christmas" -- Pictured: (l-r) Rob McElhenney as Mac, Charlie Day as Charlie, Kaitlin Olson as Dee, Glenn Howerton as Dennis. CR: Patrick McElhenney/FX — Patrick McElhenney/FX

There were a few elements working against It's Always Sunny's only Christmas special. First, it was a Christmas special, and, no matter how many bloody and inappropriate Rankin-Bass parody sequences the show throws in, holiday sentiment is a landmine for a show like Sunny. Plus, the show's past and future history with flashback episodes has been almost uniformly disastrous. (Let us never speak of "Frank's Brother" or "The Gang Buys a Roller Rink" again.) Toss in a few higher-profile than usual guest stars (David Huddleston, Pablo Schreiber), and a double-length running time, and there were potentially show-breaking pitfalls everywhere. Luckily, Sunny stuck the landing on almost every front as the Gang dealt with their varied but similarly crappy Christmas childhood memories. Or, rather, everyone but Frank, whose tradition of purchasing every gift Dee and Dennis could desire and giving them to himself saw the siblings pooh-poohing childhood pals Mac and Charlie's last-minute but sincere plans to decorate Paddy's — antique snow-making machine and all.

All four younger members of the Gang, realizing their holidays were ruined by shitty parenting (Mac's criminal father led a family burglary spree, Charlie's doting mom was a Santa-banging sex worker), split up on separate missions to rectify things. Which does not work in any sense, as a PTSD-stricken Charlie bit the nose off of a terrified mall Santa, and Dee and Dennis' Christmas Carol-style redemption arc for their father was thwarted by Frank's swindled but forgiving old business partner refusing to play along. Programmatic as all Christmas specials usually are, "A Very Sunny Christmas" made room for a sweat-drenched, graphically nude Frank emerging from a leather sofa hiding place, a little light gunplay, and Dennis telling his supposedly contrite father to "f--- yourself in your fat f---ing ass," delusional animated epiphany or no. The episode feinted toward genuine rapprochement before yanking the rug out, leaving the Gang pelted with an industrial-grade indoor blizzard and then happily hucking rocks at passing trains, as was Mac and Charlie's childhood tradition. And while it's a dirtbag denouement, it's about as close as Sunny gets to "Merry Christmas."

10 of 20

"CharDee MacDennis: The Game of Games" (Season 7, Episode 7)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, (from left): Charlie Day, Danny Devito (back to camera), Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson, 'Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games', (Season 7, ep. 707, aired Oct. 27, 2011), 2005-. photo: Patrick McElhenney / ©FX /Courtesy: Everett Collection — Patrick McElhenney/FX/Everett

The whirling buzzsaw that is the Gang's multifarious awfulness is a danger to everyone in the greater Philadelphia area, but some of their most inventive chaos is caused when they have no one to torment but each other. Out of such isolated ennui was born CharDee MacDennis, the absurdly complicated, multimedia board game they invented — and that perennial losers Charlie and Mac have never won once in 18 uniquely destructive and booze-soaked contests. And since the game's many activities include categories such as "physical challenge, pain, and endurance," and "emotional battery and public humiliation," the Dennis-Dee vs. Mac-Charlie rivalry has never been more feverish.

One of the Gang's most repressed truths is how interdependent they are, seeing as how nobody outside the core five can stand to be around them. They feed each others' worst impulses in a self-perpetuating cycle of sadism and masochism that's ingrained enough that the Gang has its own insular codes and creeds, which emerged here in the form of one deliriously ridiculous gauntlet of pain and chicanery, all passed off as just a fun way to pass a dull afternoon at Paddy's. With first-time player Frank acting as the gunk in the convoluted game's gears, this round of CharDee MacDennis went even more off the rails than usual. And even if a nifty third-act twist exposed Dee and Dennis' longtime scheming, Charlie and Mac still had to relearn the lesson that, when the Gang plays, nobody really wins.

11 of 20

"Charlie and Dee Find Love" (Season 8, Episode 4)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA Charlie and Dee Find Love - Episode 4 (Airs Thursday, November 1, 10:00 pm e/p) Pictured: (L-R) Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds, Rob McElhenney as Mac, Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds, Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly, Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds — Patrick McElhenney/FX

In a show that trafficks in dark comedy, no episode comes anywhere near the brutal, illuminating darkness at the end of this one. After a fender bender introduced Dee and Charlie to a pair of seemingly too-good-to-be-true rich siblings (while Charlie was stalking the ever-uninterested Waitress), we were primed for the other shoe to drop. After all, these rich and beautiful people couldn't possibly see past Dee's uncontrollable urge to panic-gag and Charlie's uncontrollable desire to shove grotesque amounts of cheese in his mouth, right? Even with the other guys' admonitions not to, under any circumstances, be themselves ("Do not be a drunk, punchy whore!," as Mac advised Dee), Dee and Charlie's improbable success in charming these scions of the Philly upper crust had the guys — and us — both baffled and anxiously awaiting an ugly twist.

But when it came, it wasn't Alexandra Daddario's lovely Ruby holding the knife — but Charlie. Dee, being Dee, fell into the cruel Trevor's predictable rich guy prank-trap, much to the rest of the Gang's indifference. ("She'll bounce back, she's constantly being crushed," Dennis said of his sister. "Or she won't. It doesn't matter.") When the reveal came that the smarmy Trevor (Josh Casaubon) had humiliated both Dee and Mac (there was shirtless wrestling involved), Ruby tearfully confessed that she had really fallen for Charlie, leading to a speech from Charlie that even Dangerous Liaisons couldn't match for cold-hearted ruthlessness. Noting that he'd only been using Ruby to make the Waitress jealous (it didn't work, but Frank's reckless fill-in terrorization had the poor woman yearning for the good old Charlie days), telling the tearful girl with airy contempt, "A quality woman doesn't do that. She doesn't say yes right away. She says no to a man, for years. For, like, 10 years." We're conditioned to love Charlie, for his pain, and his constant, lonely victimization, like the begrudging pity we'd grant a shivering, mangy, and mean dog in the gutter. But this episode showed the true peril of Charlie loving someone back.

12 of 20

"The Gang Gets Analyzed" (Season 8, Episode 5)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA The Gang Gets Analyzed - Episode 5 (Airs Thursday, November 8, 10:00 pm e/p) Pictured: (L-R) Glenn Howerton as Dennis Reynolds, Rob McElhenney as Mac, Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds, Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly, Kaitlin Olson as Dee Reynolds — Patrick McElhenney/FX

While it was theoretically admirable that Sweet Dee was revealed to be in therapy at the start of this episode, the fact that she'd toted the entire Gang plus a tablecloth loaded with dirty dishes to her doctor's office suggested the chaos to come. With able deadpan support from Reno 911!'s Kerri Kenney-Silver as the gamely professional shrink, the episode saw each successive character come in for a brief but uniformly intense session, all supposedly to determine who was going to do the washing up from the Gang's therapist-advised clearing-the-air dinner. Taking the Gang outside their normal haunts and codependent cabal traditionally escalated their already hair-trigger hostility and defensiveness, and Kenney-Silver's impossibly patient yet increasingly alarmed therapist sent each member's protective neuroses into overdrive.

Mac went first, the shrink's well-meaning questions eliciting one of his most wrenchingly self-aware outbursts, before he yanked it back with panicky violence. Charlie, too, revealed just enough vulnerability about his perpetual place as the Gang's designated rat-killer and slime-cleaner, before desperately reverting to slavish, incoherent parroting of the therapist's sympathetic advice. (He also had a dead pigeon in his jacket, which he confessed he may have "hugged too hard.") Frank's pistachio-spitting intransigence melted almost immediately into a tortured backstory of being sent to a childhood "nitwit school" and entering a doomed romance with a girl with no lips. ("Her mouth was still very much in play," Frank assured, through tears.) Dennis, leaning smugly on his undergrad psych courses, fashioned himself as a Hannibal Lecter-esque colleague, ultimately revealing both that he'd been feeding the formerly obese Mac diet pills, and a nude drawing of himself and the therapist. ("It's very generous," he said of the graphic doodle.) Kaitlin Olson made Dee's own session a masterpiece of wide-eyed neediness, obsessively lying about her past and then demanding the shrink praise her for her acting prowess. In the end, nobody could possibly grow, change, or learn, except the fact that no earthly therapist can penetrate the Gang's fortified, enabling buffoonery. This is Sunny after all.

13 of 20

"The Gang Broke Dee" (Season 9, Episode 1)

Kaitlin Olson's boundless comic range got its finest workout in this episode, where it did, in fact, first appear that the guys' incessant abuse of the Gang's one female member had broken Dee. Seen swilling hooch in her pajamas and stuffing herself with week-old discarded cake, Dee anticipated the guys' every insult with dead-eyed clarity, prompting Mac to object, "Don't apologize, that's just sad. Fight back at us!" But, after a lifetime of being on the receiving end of more abuse even than Charlie, it looked like Dee was prepared to pack it in.

Why did Dennis, Charlie, Frank, and Mac swing into action, cooking up a two-pronged strategy to boost Dee's spirits? That's the genius of Sunny, as all the possible answers (annoyance, boredom, fear of consequences, and even genuine concern) appeared to be on the table as the guys first tried to set Dee up with what Dennis called "average, if not below-average men," and the others' urged the despondent aspiring actress Dee up on a stand-up stage, reasoning that, without her (likely delusional) flicker of hope, she might not choke as badly as usual. Both plans looked like they were working, as Dee wowed the crowds (upstaging the headliner's killer diarrhea material), and even booked (and slept with) a talent agent who scored her a stint on Conan. When the entire thing was revealed as a Frank-bankrolled plan to hoodwink her (right down to her getting into bed with a paid extra posing as manager), the big reveal saw Dee emerging not onto Conan O'Brien's stage but in front of a jeering crowd at Paddy's. It was the sort of mammoth hoodwink that only the Gang could imagine, ultimately causing more heartache than help. And Sunny's wheel of pain spins on.

14 of 20

"The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award" (Season 9, Episode 3)

The Always Sunny fandom has always taken perverse pride in the show's complete lack of Emmy attention. (It's been nominated three times — for stunt coordination.) So this episode served as the Gang's uproarious middle finger to a television industry that prefers more middle-of-the-road, inoffensive crowd-pleasers, as the Paddy's crew decided to swallow their pride and enter the Annual Bar Association's best bar in Philly contest. Opting to actually submit an entry form that's not just smeared with poop and racial slurs for once, the Gang did some research at the previous year's winning pub, Sudz, where the bright colors, contemporary pop hits, and electric blue fish bowl-served cocktails all vied with the photogenic staff's quipping and flirting for maximum customer comfort-laughs.

A thinly veiled broadside like this could run out of steam fast if it weren't for how deliciously the Gang's hurried attempted to ape the most popular trends tickle the central theme. Charlie even came up with a jaunty, Randy Newman-style Paddy's theme song, which everyone agreed was just the right tone of forgettably catchy to really cement their win. Of course, Paddy's isn't Sudz, and the Gang's efforts to soft-pedal their antics to be more in line with those mainstream bars devolved into typical Sunny-style hostility and off-putting grossness. (Frank and sometime lover Artemis' grunting attempt to mimic the darker burlesque tone of another current award-winning establishment utterly failed to capture the prestige crowd.) But it was Charlie, escaped from Paddy's basement (with its abundance of inhalants), who ultimately provided the episode's true coda. Sitting at his ready keyboard, Charlie belted out the defiantly anthemic "Go F--- Yourself" as Dee, Dennis, and Mac all shucked their effortfully respectable facades and joined in hocking loogies at the fleeing and horrified industry types. Sure, the Gang all gathered to admit that it would have been nice to win an award just once, but It's Always Sunny will always be itself.

15 of 20

"The Gang Saves the Day" (Season 9, Episode 6)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, (from left): Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olson, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, Danny DeVito, 'The Gang Saves The Day', (Season 9, ep. 906, aired Oct. 9, 2013). photo: Patrick McElhenney / ©FXX /Courtesy: Everett Collectionf — Patrick McElhenney/FXX/Everett

By the show's ninth season, everyone involved was so good at their jobs that a template-breaking episode like this one came off as effortless as a Harlem Globetrotters win. Essentially a sketch show, "The Gang Saves the Day" saw Dennis, Dee, Mac, Frank, and Charlie being pinned down during a convenience store robbery, with the resulting five segments revealing how each member imagined they'd handle the situation — if they weren't busy cowering in the junk food aisle. Sunny's narrative inventiveness works best when plots are used to dig deeper into the rich, wretched soil of everybody's psyches, and this conceit is all buried treasure, each haul more uproariously funny than the last. At least, until the last…

Mac kicked things off by imagining himself as the gravel-voiced, badass, martial arts superstar he maintains he actually is, as his heroic battle against an army of ninjas (the robber was Yakuza) revealed that, even in his wildest fantasy, his friends can't help but point out his weakness at post-kill wordplay. ("What is a pun?," Mac finally growled in alpha-male confusion.) Dee, who died ignominiously in three out of the guys' four fantasies, disarmed the sexy female robber, then shot the guys herself, uttering a contemptuous, "I'll see you in hell, boners," before parlaying her stint in witness protection into a lucrative career as the actress she fancied herself. Frank snapped into action, eating endless hot dogs while he waited for the cops to kill the robber (Dee went down, too, offscreen). Dennis' vision was of being shot in the head himself, only to rebound with a training montage, a sexy rehab nurse/girlfriend, and, after said nurse's breasts were "obliterated" in an accident, mercy-snuffing her with a pillow. And if Dennis' flash of heroism involved his pathological narcissism, Charlie's episode-concluding animated fantasy was another lyrically loopy glimpse at how he really sees things. Saving the arriving Waitress in full Pixar adorableness (Dee still bit it once Charlie shoved her in front of a bullet), their resulting love story was equally repulsive (Charlie commanded a rat army), childlike (they replaced the dead rats with a trip to the Baby Store), and wondrously unhinged.

16 of 20

"Charlie Work" (Season 10, Episode 4)

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, Charlie Day, 'Charlie Work', (Season 10, ep. 1004, aired Feb. 4, 2015). photo: Patrick McElhenney / ©FX Networks / courtesy Everett Collection — Patrick McElhenney/FXX/Everett

It's risky to upend a show's dynamic, but this episode — in which we saw just how vital Charlie's perpetually under-appreciated toil at Paddy's truly was — was a whirlwind of behind-the-scenes surprises. Masterfully constructed as a real-time depiction of all that Charlie has to go through for Paddy's to pass its annual health inspection, it was a tour de force for Charlie Day, and for episode writers Day, McElhenney, and Howerton. Charlie might be the Gang's go-to menial laborer and designated whipping boy, but he's also, as we saw here, the only one actually keeping Paddy's afloat, to the extent that the Gang's dingy hellhole of a bar improbably was above water. Seeing the bar flooded with chickens as part of the others' ill-timed latest scam (something involving mail-order steaks and airline miles), Charlie went into "Charlie work" overdrive, since not only was the inspector on the way, but it was also a hard-nosed replacement inspector for their previous, more lenient one.

In addition to the chickens, Frank flushed his shoes down one of the toilets (it helped him feel in control), Dennis and Dee kept blowing fuses with the scheme's need for a power-sucking vacuum sealer, and the basement was choked with carbon monoxide (Charlie kept it that way to suppress the rat population). What ensued was a seamlessly constructed one-take, steady cam, 10-minute, Birdman-style masterpiece, with Charlie juggling not just the inspector, but also the befuddled steak delivery driver, the Gang's frenzied incompetence, and the fact that Frank has painted his bare torso completely black (he also flushed his shirt). Racing through the bar, bathrooms, basement, and back alley, Charlie's work resulted in improbable victory, even if, as ever, the Gang ultimately was more interested in their chicken caper than anything Charlie's accomplished right under their noses.

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"The Gang Tends Bar" (Season 12, Episode 8)

It was a busy Valentine's Day at Paddy's and Dennis had just one small request of his friends: "Can we just do the one thing we've never tried," he begged, exasperated, "Can we just do our jobs?" You know, instead of Frank and Charlie arguing in graphic detail about why Frank gave himself a tapeworm thanks to some poop from the dark web. Or why Mac had everyone so jazzed up about investigating the old perennial Gang whipping boy Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby) found in the alley. Or plotting to use the never-before-mentioned "yuck puddle" to drive all the inconvenient paying customers away. Mac, uncomprehending, assumed Dennis was suggesting "some sort of booze for money scam," which Dennis was, but only because that's what a bar is.

The first episode written by stellar season 12 addition Megan Ganz, "The Gang Tends Bar" was a seamlessly chaotic ramp-up from the opening seconds to the riotous, horrifying, almost-touching end. Dennis' sudden obsession with actually running the bar had roots in a cleverly seeded reference to a long-ago Valentine's tradition involving a suggestion box full of anthrax, but his rejection of the holiday was speculated as being in line with his supposed, sociopathic lack of human emotion. And while Mac and Charlie impotently attempted to defeat the ever-growing yuck puddle (Charlie found bones in it), and Frank and Dee perilously tried to unclog a disgusting obstruction in the bar's soda gun, Ganz showed how the group's interdependent dynamic made for constant self-incrimination and insensitivity masquerading as selflessness. It was when Mac, after Charlie incited another anthrax attack by Dee over some tapeworm medicine-laced chocolates, wheeled in a crate to the suddenly empty bar that the episode spun its most masterfully gonzo twist. Pulling out the rocket launcher Mac had bought him on the same dark web, Dennis was genuinely overcome, caressing his bucket-list war weapon in stunned gratitude (thankfully, Mac's shady sellers neglected to include the missile), while Mac beamed in what, on any other show, would be heartwarming friendship. The music swelled, all was forgiven, and Dennis Reynolds had a grenade launcher. Happy Valentine's Day from Paddy's Pub.

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"Time's Up for the Gang" (Season 13, Episode 4)

It's hot button time again, as the Gang found themselves summoned to a sensitivity training seminar when Paddy's was listed on an internet "Shitty Bar List" as an unsafe place for women. Dee, imagining herself exempt, entered with popcorn and a gloating "Time's up!" chant, but, as usual, no member of the Gang could escape public scrutiny when it comes to terrible behavior. The outmatched moderators did what they could (a Dee-Mac role-play exercise resulted in the single most explosively funny sight gag in Sunny history), but when it was revealed that the entire seminar was masterminded by one Dennis Reynolds, Megan Ganz's outstanding script twisted into much darker and more illuminating territory.

Sunny often sees the Gang splintering into factions whenever a touchy subject rears its head. And while some members inevitably pay at least lip service to the decent side of any issue, the show is always quick to undermine any perceived morality as emerging from a tangle of self-interest, neurosis, or simple gamesmanship. Here, Mac, Dee, Charlie, and Frank (whose old-school sexism saw him speed-dialing his attorney after accidentally whipping out his dong) were mere amateurs in the face of Dennis' Bond villain-worthy scheme to get them to "tighten up" their own ships when it came to skirting issues of consent. The running gag over the years is that Dennis is a secret serial killer (for the record, we firmly hold that he's actually not), but Dennis the manipulative womanizer is plenty chilling enough, as, here, he put on a PowerPoint presentation explaining how he elicits (or manufactures) just enough evidence to keep him on this side of the law. Even the rest of the Gang had to admit it — Dennis can out-evil the worst of them.

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"The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem" (Season 13, Episode 6)

When It's Always Sunny chooses to do a deep drill down into a controversial issue in an episode, it's guaranteed that the Gang hits the sewer line, a fact never more evident than in this foray into the transgender bathroom debate where, with typical Sunny aplomb, the show itself emerged smelling like a rose. The difference between actual yahoo humor and outwardly boorish satire was abundant throughout this outing, where Mac's decision to poop in Paddy's shockingly clean, barely used women's restroom set the Gang immediately at odds. As ever, factions were formed, with Mac and Dee queasily allied on the "use any bathroom you choose" team, while Dennis and Frank played smug originalists on the opposing side. Charlie sat on the fence, waiting for the argument that's presented most persuasively and forcefully (or, perhaps, just last), especially if that side incorporated validation of his belief in ghouls.

The Gang, with their multifarious and deep-seated prejudices, ignorance, and self-interest, routinely tore contentious real-world issues to shreds, thus laying bare the rhetorical nonsense underlying so much of what passes for American political and social discourse. Here, Mac's manipulative citing of his "as a gay man" allyship with women was slightly undercut when he savagely choked Dee upon her first sign of disagreement. And Frank's old-school bigotry relied on constitutional blather to couch his three-fifths compromise proposal in what he thought of as solid legal ground. As presented in the Gang's self-impressed and illogical scapegoating, fearmongering, and overall manipulative self-exoneration, the debate turned into a farce (notably including no transgender people actually affected by it), which, nonetheless, could be an only marginally punched-up transcript of any nightly news panel discussion. As the Gang came up with their own tortuously ridiculous workaround for what they'd determined was the real problem at hand, we saw, to our horror and shame-faced amusement, that they were us.

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"Mac Finds His Pride" (Season 13, Episode 10)

There's no more divisive episode in It's Always Sunny history than this one. Sincerity will do that. Sunny walks a razor's edge when it comes to humanizing its characters — we're teased with wrenching glimpses inside each member of the Gang at various points, only for the show to yank us back to brutal reality with whiplash mercilessness. Mac's deeply closeted, Catholic-guilty gayness had been treated as a joke throughout the show's run, with the joke never truly being about Mac being gay (for all its apparent boorishness, Sunny is staunchly tolerant), but about how Mac's desperate repression had twisted him into a caricature of grasping masculinity. Oh, and that the rest of the Gang couldn't stand him because he's Mac, and not because he's gay or straight.

And, for its first two acts, "Mac Finds His Pride" serves as another go-round in Mac-bashing, as the Paddy's crew sought his help in drumming up business with some performative Pride Week showmanship. Rob McElhenney's Mac was unenthused, however, even as the now-out Mac has seemingly decided to shut the closet door for good. (And even as McElhenney's physical transformation into Mac's long-aspired-to "beefcake" status finally makes Mac the outward portrait of the masculine ideal he's always pretended to be.) With the irritated Frank's manipulative prodding (and, presumably, Frank's wealth and influence greasing the wheels), Mac ultimately unveiled the real reason behind his buff new physique, as he came out to his terrifying jailbird father in a mesmerizing five-minute modern dance routine (alongside professional dancer Kylie Shea). It shouldn't work. Sunny can't tip this far over into sincerity, to sentiment, can it? It can. Mac's performance was a stunningly physical, wordless explosion of all those years of "Mac is secretly gay" jokes that drew its power from all that accumulated dark comic tension. Mac will still be Mac (the others' stance that he's insufferable regardless of sexuality is part of their dynamic), but, as Denny DeVito's Frank sat, awestruck, and marvels tearfully, "Oh my God. I get it. I get it," it's impossible not to agree. If It's Always Sunny made its bones by being outrageous, then it's incumbent upon us fans to follow it when it does something even bolder.

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