After 12 years, 2018 will be our first without a new season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” The gang announced in May that they’re taking an extended hiatus and that the show will not resume with season 13 until 2019.
There are two ways to get your “Always Sunny” fix. The first is to watch “The Mick,” Kaitlin Olson’s hysterical new television series broadcast on Fox, also streaming on Hulu. The second is to rewatch the best episodes of the past 12 seasons. To get you started, we’ve put together a list of the top five episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Enjoy!
5. ‘The World Series Defense’
After racking up $1,000 in parking tickets, the gang goes to court and tells the judge they should not be held liable on account of the Phillies winning the World Series. With a funny look from the judge, the show switches to a 2008 flashback when the gang got tickets to game five of the World Series.
As one should expect, the gang, unable to simply go and enjoy the baseball game, devised a series of schemes that eventually got them locked in a hotel linen storage room, where they were trapped for six days—hence the expensive parking tickets.
Highlights:
- Frank leaves the tickets at his and Charlie’s dirty apartment. When Dee, Mac, and Frank go the apartment to pick up the tickets, they discover the apartment is being fumigated for bed bugs. Frank tries to retrieve the tickets using a hose to get fresh air. When this obviously fails, Dee and Mac follow him in, only to find the exterminators stole the tickets.
- A hilariously disturbing gagging/suffocation sequence follows as they’re all breathing the poisonous air. While Mac and Frank’s puke faces were funny, Dee’s was the funniest. Nobody makes a better puke face than Sweet Dee.
- Dee has a plan to run on the field and kiss a player. Mac is being bossier than usual, demanding that it be Chase Utley. Later, we find out this is because Mac has written Utley a love letter WITH STICKERS. Mac is very frustrated because he has tried several times to get the letter to Utley, including attempts through his lawyer, his manager, and his mother. Dee is his last hope. Watch Dee read the letter here.
- Meanwhile at the stadium, Dennis and Charlie are trying to get into the game by jumping in front of cars to bribe people for their tickets. They agree that for the best possible tickets, the car they choose has to be a nice one. Too scared to do it on their own, Charlie ends up pushing Dennis into a car. Because the driver sees the push, he does not give them the tickets. Dennis is just injured.
- In the parking lot, they spot the Phrenetic. Charlie puts on the Greenman costume and says he can talk to him “mascot-to-mascot” and that’ll get them into the game. This backfires. Charlie and the Phrenetic fight and then Philly fans beat the crap out of Charlie.
- A poisoned Mac and a just-hit-by-a-car Dennis get into a pushup competition.
The judge rules the gang had to pay the full $1,000 in parking fines.
4. ‘The Waitress Is Getting Married’
Dee finds out Brad, her high school boyfriend who is now very handsome, is getting married to the waitress Charlie obsesses over. Frank, Mac, and Dennis build Charlie an online dating profile to get him back onto the dating scene. Dee is jealous of Brad and the waitress, so she plots to ruin the wedding.
Highlights:
- We get a glimpse into Dee’s world outside of the gang, and it’s not pretty. Dee frequents a boutique to try on wedding dresses alone, pretending to the sales staff that she’s engaged. It’s when Dee is confronted by a salesgirl, who has doubts Dee is actually getting married, that she sees her ex-boyfriend, Brad. Charlie’s waitress is there trying on dresses too.
- When Mac and Dennis find out the waitress is engaged, they’re worried Charlie might go postal and murder them over the news, so they devise a plan to find Charlie a new girl to stalk. They go to Charlie’s apartment and find him trying to extract honey from hornets in a cardboard box by smoking them to death with a cigarette.
- Mac and Dennis try to set up an online dating profile for Charlie, but none of Charlie’s answers are usable, as his favorite meal is “milk steak” and jelly beans. He doesn’t like “people’s knees” and he likes “little green ghouls.” So Mac and Dennis fabricate the whole profile and end up landing a date with a lawyer.
- To no one’s surprise, Charlie ruins the date. He orders milk steak, he sweats profusely through his shirt, and instead of telling the woman he’s a philanthropist, he terrifies her by wrongly pronouncing the word as “full-on-rapist,” admitting he’s a janitor and, per Mac’s advice, mauls her.
- Dee’s plan for sabotage unfolds during a wedding shower for Brad and the waitress. She’s invited Charlie’s mother, Mac’s mother, Artemis, and Frank. Dee gets Charlie’s mother stinking drunk and convinces her to hate the waitress for breaking her son’s heart. She tells Mac’s mother, a.k.a. Mrs. Mac, that she’ll give her an entire carton of cigarettes if she says the waitress looked like her when she was young. Dee encourages Artemis and Frank’s disturbing dirty talk about their sex life in a dumpster behind Wendy’s. Nothing goes as planned, and Charlie’s mother ends up throwing a drink on Dee. But when the waitress leaves, Brad confesses to Dee that he loves her and has always been in love with her.
- Charlie disguises the box of hornets as a wedding gift and gives it to Brad. Brad tells Charlie the wedding is off and he’s actually finding all the women who broke his heart in high school when he had acne, proposing to them, and breaking their hearts. Charlie tells Brad to keep the “gift.”
3. ‘Charlie Has Cancer’
Charlie confidentially confides in the gang that he has cancer. The gang sets out to make Charlie feel better, but it instead just turns into them manipulating women. Dee’s friend Artemis wants to work at Paddy’s.
Highlights:
- Dennis stops by Charlie’s apartment to borrow a basketball. When Charlie tells Dennis he has cancer, Dennis reacts in a painfully awkward way and tries desperately to worm his way out of the conversation.
- Dennis, Mac, and Dee decide that to make Charlie feel better, they need to find him a woman to sleep with. In their hunt for a woman for Charlie, Mac finds a gorgeous woman for himself named Carmen. When Dennis tells him she is transsexual and has a penis, the camera pans to a bulge in her jeans. This does not deter Mac. He tells her he’ll give her a call sometime.
- Dee’s friend, Artemis, is a struggling actress who needs a job. Knowing what Dennis would want, she tells him Artemis would be totally into the whole “coyote ugly” dancing on the bar thing. When Dennis meets Artemis, he sees immediately she’s not his type, but it’s too late. She’s already mid-performance wearing a cowboy hat and leather bell bottoms. The audition ends with her licking Dennis’ face from his chin to his eyebrow.
- Dennis knows Charlie is obsessed with the waitress and wants to convince her to give him a chance, but when Dennis tells the waitress Charlie has cancer, the waitress calls him a “poor baby” and they have sex. When Dennis tells Mac he slept with the waitress, they decide to give the waitress $250 to sleep with Charlie. She’s mad, but agrees to do it.
- When Charlie arrives cheerful, the gang thinks the plan worked—but Charlie tells Dennis he doesn’t have cancer. Angry, Dennis tells Charlie they had to pay the waitress to have sex with him, and Charlie tells him they didn’t have sex. Mac and Dennis try to get their money back, but the waitress shuts her door on them.
2. ‘The Gang Solves the North Korean Situation’
For the annual pub crawl, the gang finds themselves in a rivalry with a local Korean restaurant. The Korean restaurant owner looks exactly like Kim Jong-il. The gang plots to take them down.
Highlights:
- For the pub crawl, Dee wants Paddy’s to host a talent show. This is an opportunity for her to showcase her terrible impressions. The rest of the gang agree, but refuse to let her perform. They tell her she has to be a judge. Quickly, they fall into the roles of the American Idol judges. Dee is a very drunk, but very sweet Paula Abdul, Frank is Randy Jackson and keeps repeating the word “dawg,” and Mac is Simon Cowell.
- This episode is the birth of the “bad-ss duster.” Mac wears it dramatically when announcing to the gang the Korean restaurant has entered the pub crawl and that they have delicious microbrews.
- Dennis and Charlie decide they’re going to muscle the Korean restaurant into dropping out of the pub crawl. Charlie wears the duster and because of his illiteracy, he thinks a door marked “PRIVATE” says “PIRATE” and kicks it in. Before getting kicked out, they try the Korean restaurant’s microbrew and it’s delicious. They know Paddy’s is in trouble for the pub crawl.
- To get the microbrew recipe, Dee tries to flirt with the owner who looks just like Kim Jong-il. Rejected, she ends up sleeping with a disgusting busboy for the recipe. She wakes up in a room of the restaurant that looks like a third world bedroom and asks “Is this America?” Spoiler: the busboy did not give her the recipe.
- Dennis and Charlie meet a Korean waitress outside who is smoking cigarettes and fighting with the owner. When Dennis and Charlie tell her she doesn’t have to put up with that kind of treatment and to come work at Paddy’s, she extends her hand in a meaningful gesture. Dennis and Charlie fight over who the look was intended for. Then the waitress shows up at Charlie’s apartment. She had followed him home.
- Charlie calls Dennis to brag that it was in fact to him the Korean waitress had made the gesture. Jealous, Dennis goes to Charlie’s wearing the duster without a shirt and discovers them sitting on the couch together discussing their similarities: they both like soup and beer and neither like mean people or kissing because “it’s gross.” Charlie and the Korean waitress get engaged.
- Later, Paddy’s is packed for the pub crawl, but the talent show is bombing. Frank goes to investigate why the Korean restaurant shut down and it’s because the owner can’t find his 14-year-old daughter. Frank knows this is because she’s Charlie’s new fiancé and rushes back to Paddy’s to save everything.
- Charlie’s fiancé is wearing a white shirt. To save the talent show, the gang decides that while she’s singing on stage, they’ll blast her with water, turning it into a wet T-shirt contest.
- Frank arrives just in time to rip his shirt open to take the water on his own chest. This of course is so gross that the whole pub crawl ends. They discover Charlie never so much as kissed his fiancé, so he’s in the clear, but they all make fun of Dee for sleeping with the busboy.
1. ‘Paddy’s Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens’
A merchandising convention comes to town and the gang decides that Paddy’s needs to cash in.
Highlights:
- Yes, this is the birth of Charlie’s “Kitten Mittens” creation.
- Dee is super-excited about the convention because her contract shows she owns all proceeds from Paddy’s merchandise. When the guys ask her to show them the contract, Mac eats it. She only had one copy. She and Charlie go to the only lawyer the gang knows, tie up his assistant and insult his wife while asking for assistance in obtaining a patent for his Kitten Mittens and advice for how to acknowledge the contract Mac ate. The lawyer kicks them out.
- With the contract dissolved, Dennis and Mac start thinking creatively about merchandise. They don’t want Frank’s involvement, so Frank goes his own separate way. Ideas from this: a Paddy’s Thong for women (but that Dennis wears), the Dick Towel, Paddy’s Egg, and a gun that shoots tequila shots. The ideas are introduced with competing “busty” models.
- Dee and Charlie stalk down the lawyer, who is sleeping at a sleazy motel. When he leaves the hotel, he finds Charlie and Dee in the car. When they try to accuse him of having an affair and threaten to use it as blackmail if he doesn’t help him, the lawyer reveals he’s going through a very messy divorce.
- Later at the lawyer’s office, Charlie and Dee try to pay the lawyer with a “busty” prostitute. Then Frank, Dennis, and Mac enter with their respective “busty” women. With the promise the gang will never again bother him, the lawyer agrees to help them.
- The gang does very well at the merchandising trade show. Kitten Mittens was purchased! Then the lawyer enters, happier than they’ve ever seen him. He tells them the contract they all signed was actually his rights to Paddy’s merchandising and a restraining order. The gang stares in awe.