I’m coming late to this game. I tried to watch a couple of episodes when they aired but never got hooked. So finally I got the episodes on Netflix, seven seasons I think.
This has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable wastes of time I’ve experienced. It’s sort of like Cheers with even dumber characters. There’s a lot of quality satire and parody buried in the show, but it has the hallmark of a top quality comedy in having the laughs always come first. There’s not much continuity, or any sense at all to the plots, it’s just comedy for comedy’s sake.
Charlie Day, who plays Charlie, is the real star of the show. He’s funny just standing around doing nothing, but the rest of the cast does a decent job. I love the way they just tag other characters instead of naming them, like ‘the waitress’, ‘the lawyer’, and ‘the tranny’.
I think they lost the spark in the last season, they’re having a hard time pushing the envelope any further, nothing they do is surprising anymore.
I love this show. The early few seasons are the best, as usual with most things, but I actually thought the most recent season (or whichever one had Fat Mac) was pretty decent too.
“Now I’m going to want the milksteak, boiled over hard, and a side of your *finest *jelly beans… raw…”
Yeah, I would definitely say seasons 2 through about 5 are the sweet spot for me. I still watch it whenever there’s an episode, but it hasn’t had that constantly funny spark it did in the beginning. The last “great” episode for me was the Jersey Shore one, Season 7, Ep 2.
I agree with you that Charlie is the standout on this show.
And I hadn’t noticed the tags on other characters other than “The Waitress”. I loved it when she would actually complain to the other main characters that she had a “real” name. That and her complete revulsion of Charlie was even more enjoyable to watch when I found out that they were married IRL.
Charlie is married to the waitress as well. The character of Dennis is partly based on a friend of mine who grew up with Rob McElhenney, the creator of the show. They still get together pretty frequently.
We also don’t know Mac’s full name, do we? He’s just “Mac”.
“Sweet Dee’s Dating a Retarded Person” is my all-time favorite episode, and included The Nightman. That and “The Waitress is Getting Married” which spawned the milk steak quote I posted above.
Another Sunny-lover here. In particular, I laugh waaaay more than I probably should at their musical efforts, where Charlie’s hilarious brilliance shines through. I dunno how they would come across to people unfamiliar with the show, but I’d be curious to hear any such reactions to:
Nightman Cometh (payoff) Keep watching all the way through to also see “Day Man” and it’s origins… the chronology is a bit off in this order, but whatever.
Sunny is one of my favorite shows. I missed the first three seasons because I thought it was a lame sitcom just based on the title. Then a friend showed me an episode and I immediatley went out and bought the dvds that were out. If there’s nothing on tv and I don’t feel like doing anything else I’ll pull up random episodes on Netflix to watch.
One of my favorite bits. Is you’re cat an in-between?
Nightman is awesome. I almost got to see them when they did a tour of it.
You gotta pay the trolls toll to get into this boys hole.
Yeah, I kind of fell away from it the last season or two. I’ll watch it if I catch it but I don’t make any effort to catch it.
A year or two ago I was reading a story about FX’s comedy line-ups (which centered around Always Sunny) and the approach FX took with them. Which boiled down to “We’re not going to give you a lot of money but you’re free to do whatever you want. If people tune in to see it, next season we’ll pay you more.” The slant being that this was a lot different from the heavy oversight shows received on network TV and how this approach seemed to be working out well for FX with some very eccentric, and funny, comedies to show for it.
There are a ton of things on this show that made me laugh hysterically.
When Dennis shot Charlie in the head and in the hospital room Dennis and Mac tell Dee they got rid of the gun, then Charlie sends Dee out on some phony errand and says “You didn’t really get rid of that sweet gun did you?!”.
Every encounter between Charlie and the waitress, the McPoyles, the way they’ll all run off and leave each other when the shit hits the fan, it’s all great stuff.
I rewatched the one where they think Mac is a serial killer last night and Charlie was using all his TV lawyer skills, simply brilliant. I have to give Dee credit, she takes it on the chin in this series, not many actresses would be willing to get torn apart like she does.
