Holy shit. What an excellent season of television this was. It was so great, in fact, that it deserves an episode-by-episode breakdown, a format I've never yet used when posting about a season of television on this blog. I'll point out the plot and some highlights from each episode and then rate it out of five stars. Anyway, there were twelve wonderful episodes of Always Sunny that aired on FX in the autumn of 2009. And here they are, in order. In "The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis," Frank and the boys decide to flip a house they've purchased at a foreclosure auction. The issue - there's always an issue with this crew - is that the original family still lives there and has ninety days to move out. Meanwhile, Dee attempts to become a surrogate mother for twenty-thousand dollars. Dennis and Mac's Honey and Vinegar routine was unforgettable, but the single scene that stole the episode for me was Dee's jack knife bellyflop. Four out of five stars. In "The Gang Hits the Road," the boys decide to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Charlie has never been outside of Philadelphia (or eaten a pear). Mac has a jar of urine dumped on him. Dennis and Charlie try to grill hot dogs over a bonfire in an enclosed trailer. Dee drunkenly serenades a teenage boy with Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train." There simply wasn't a dull moment in this episode. Five out of five. "The Great Recession" used the economic crash of '09 as a plot point as Frank lost all of his savings. Mac and Dennis fire everyone from Paddy's while giving free drinks to a slew of homeless people in a misguided attempt to boost the Paddy's economy. I liked the shoe-slicing knife bit and Charlie's crab people idea, but Frank absolutely steals the show in this one when the thickness of his neck thwarts an attempt to hang himself. Twice. Five stars. "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" was an average-at-best episode, which means it was one of the worst of this excellent season. Frank goes off the deep end and attempts to be as deranged and disgusting as possible, which leads to a fair share of laughs on behalf of concepts like wine in a soda can, making someone feel trapped at an intervention, and uncle-niece relationships. Here's something of note: out of almost seventy episodes, this is the only one I can remember in which the gang actually feels bad about the way they've treated another human being; after all the terrible things they've done, it's "salting the snail" that evokes sympathy. Three stars. "The Waitress Is Getting Married" played off of Dee's numerous insecurities and there was a great line about Artemis putting bacon bits in her hair so as to feel like a Cobb salad during sex, but this was absolutely a Charlie episode. Whether he was getting stung while trying to retrieve honey from a hornet's nest, eating whole blocks of cheese, ordering "milksteak" at a restaurant, or declaring his hobbies and interests to be "magnets" and "ghouls" respectively, Charlie was making me laugh throughout the other-wise iffy episode. Four stars. "The World Series Defense" featured a humorous subplot for each character, and that made it a great episode. Frank returned to a fumigated apartment building using a rubber hose as a breathing device, Mac wrote a love letter to Chase Utley, Charlie pushed Dennis in front of a car and got into a mascot fight (as Green Man) with the Philly Fanatic, Dee tried to decide which Phillies player she was going to charge the field and kiss, and Dennis tried unsuccessfully to explain the whole thing to a judge. Four stars. Roddy Piper makes an excellent guest star appearance in "The Gang Wrestles For the Troops," an episode which also introduced us to Ben the temporarily wheelchair-bound soldier. The boys' inability to impress anyone with their chicken-like eagle costumes and song and dance was fantastic, as was Cricket's turn as a dirty-fighting over-the-top Muslim extremist heel. And who could forget Frank as the Trash Man or Dee as Desert Rose? Nearly lost amid all that was happening was Frank's awkward gift of jean shorts for Ben, followed by a salute, all while Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" played in the background. Five stars. The cold open for "Paddy's Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens" was my favorite one in the show's history, in which Charlie simply shows a speechless gang his horribly tacky commercial for what are essentially nothing more than cat socks. The merchandising bug kicks in for the boys, however, and before long the episode is full of nudie pens, dick towels, guns that shoot out hard alcohol, and green eggs, which Frank considers a "jumping off point" but never really gets away from. Charlie's utter lack of a grasp on basic legal procedure comes into play yet again and Mac's attempts to void a few contracts end up with him simply eating them. Four out of five stars. "Mac and Dennis Break Up" was a rare miss in which Mac and Dennis, well, break up. It felt boring and predictable, unlike every other episode this season, but was saved by the secondary plot in which Charlie and Frank try to help Dee get her cat out of her wall. Three stars. "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System" was an interestingly formatted episode in which Dennis explains his foolproof system for seducing women to the rest of the gang. The latter half of the episode deals with their various inabilities to succeed with the plan. The episode was solid enough, but the lack of memorable lines and moments render it another three. The same could be said of "Mac and Charlie Write a Movie," in which Mac and Charlie... write a movie. Yeah, I guess I don't need to keep summarizing episodes with self-explanatory titles. Anyway, there just wasn't a lot going on here aside from Mac and Charlie pitching a terrible action movie and Dee struggling to portray a lifeless corpse as an extra in an M. Night Shyamalan movie. This was yet another three, and barely. Fortunately, the season ended on a high note with "The Gang Reignites the Rivalry," an episode about a flip cup tournament the gang has been banned from for ten years. Highlights included Frank's skinny jeans, Charlie trying to Good Will Hunting some frat kids, Dennis and Frank trashing the home of their former flip cup rival, and poisoned beer. This one was right on the fence between being a four and a five, but fuck it, I'll just give it the five. So to recap, this twelve-episode run of Always Sunny came out of the gate firing, maintained consistency in the middle episodes, and faded down the stretch but still ended with a bang. It contained four average Sunny episodes, four pretty good ones, and four amazing ones. And not a single stinker in the bunch! Unfortunately the sixth season of Always Sunny hasn't been nearly as strong so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to recapping that at a much later date. Like, October 2011, let's say.
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