14x01 The Gang Gets Romantic

[8.7/10] It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is back! You knew it! And what a season premiere. “The Gang Gets Romantic” is a classic bit of IASIP buffoonery, mixed together with a romcom and the show’s usual black comedy, to make something fantastic.

Every part of this is wonderfully calibrated to be a sideways spoof of romcom tropes. The Mac/Dennis/Dee is more of a straight lampoon, with the trio trying to fill various roles in the traditional romcom structure and continually coming up empty. Mac and Dee’s devotion to the structure is some hilarious trope-heavy humor, and the way the pair apply it so misguidedly vis-a-vis clogged toilets is a laugh and a half. Plus, Mac trying to mix the standard beats of a romantic comedy with Dennis’s usual predatory bent wrings a lot of humor from the juxtaposition.

My one knock on this storyline is that it became an easy guess pretty early on who the “Teddy” the couple was arguing about was, but even with that, the punchline is dark but absurd (especially with Dennis’s mismatched soundtrack) in the best IASIP. The three knuckleheads from The Gang trying to fit a dying child into a romcom framework proves surprisingly fertile ground for comedy, and walks the tightrope that almost no other show can.

But the Frank/Charlie storyline is even better. It’s a hell of a swerve that Mac is straining to forge a romcom in his half of the episode, but the show actually delivers the meet/lose/reconcile rhythms of that genre with Frank and Charlie and another father/son pair from Austria. The four guys initially bristling at one another, but then bonding over toe utensils and radiator cooking is surprisingly sweet. And while the hot European chicks who are “free with their bodies” feels like a lazy trope (even with the twist that they’re drug addicts), Frank and Charlie giving them up to play the “go to him” game with Nicki and Alexei is a cheery but bizarre note to go out on, which is what I like from this show.

On top of that, the little jokes and references peppered in throughout are just as good. Playing on the famous romcom lines with “you had me at gash” and the Pretty Woman jewelry box bit works really well here. And all the gags and misunderstandings of the term “meet cute” amount to the running joke that keeps on giving. It even proves to be the cinch of the Frank/Charlie story.

Overall, this is just more inspired work from a show that has no right to be this good as it nears a decade and a half on the air.