It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Seasons 1 & 2

I don’t often write about individual season for TV shows, but recently it’s gotten a bit easier to make myself write about things, so why the hell not? I’ve been meaning to start watching this for a while now and thankfully a friend had all the DVDs available for lending, so I didn’t have to pollute my Netflix queue. Now that I’ve gotten through the first two seasons, I have thoughts; not many mind you, but more than usual.

The first season is only seven 22-minute episodes, and I got through them very quickly, but this is because I was watching them with my friends while playing board games, so my attention wasn’t that dedicated to it. Still, I could tell it was very funny and got the gist of the plots. It centers around three guys and a girl who own a bar somehow. All four of them seem to be self-serving morons of some degree. I don’t always like asshole characters, but they’re done right here, and I’ve fallen in love with all of them. Each episode is pretty much self-contained and involves some idiotic caper that starts perhaps somewhat innocently and gets blown completely out of proportion by “The Gang’s” propensity to do everything completely wrong in order to gain something from it. I’m pretty sure they never really learn anything from their mishaps.

The second season is basically the same, except it’s ten episodes and Danny DeVito’s in them. According one of the extras on the third DVD, DeVito was only available for 20 days of filming, so all his parts were done first; this meant that all 10 episodes had to be written before principal photography. Considering the actors are the writers, this is a huge deal. I have massive respect for these guys, especially in light of the genius that is Season 2. I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first. DeVito’s ridiculousness fits in perfectly with the rest of the cast’s antics. Every episode seems to get consistently funnier.

One of the coolest things is that the show looks like it’s almost entirely adlibbed, but it’s not. Sure there’s a fair amount of improv but for the most part everybody follows the script while making it all feel perfectly natural, which makes it even easier to laugh at these people who are pretending to be idiots. Good show. Not sure I’ll be able to catch up with it before the Season 6 premiere next week, but it’s good enough to maybe get me there in time.