Season Analysis: This was the first season of Sunny that I watched, and I heard from some sources that it was not its best season, but I think that with a show as outrageous as this one, there are bound to be a few clunkers amidst the classics.

“Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games”

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feels like it is more or less made up on the spot, by insane people.  I could possibly be off a bit in this assessment, as I have only recently become a regular viewer, and there could be foundational elements from earlier seasons that would make it clear that there is in fact some planning involved in this show.  But that improvised feel does work to the benefit of an episode like “Chardee MacDennis.”  On a slow day, the gang has nothing going on, so they decide to play a game, a game that they have not played in a while, a game that they invented.  So what we have here is something that was more or less made up on the spot, by a group of insane people.  Just because Chardee MacDennis is more or less unbridled insanity in game form does not mean it is not satisfying; Charlie, Dee, Mac, and Dennis were not just insane when they created this game, they were also insanely focused.  Thanks to that focus, this episode provides memorable gags such as Frank having to eat a cake (i.e., the ingredients of a cake), Mac drunkenly attempting to lift up a board that has been nailed down despite acknowledging ahead of time how fruitless such an effort would be, and Charlie failing to answer a question that he himself had written (“Dennis is asshole.  Why Charlie hate?”), and there is even a satisfying resolution to wrap up all the chaos, which, appropriately enough, was thought up by Frank while he was imprisoned in a dog crate.