If you’re not yet watching FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you need to start, especially if you were a fan of shows like Seinfeld or Arrested Development.  Like those shows, It’s Always Sunny excels at creating an amoral, dysfunctional group dynamic. The gang, consisting of Charlie, Mac, siblings Dennis and Dee, and their father, Frank (played by Danny DeVito), is a collection of losers who continually get into hilarious scrapes. 

For example, last night, Dennis and Dee quit working at the gang’s bar after their father buys into it.  Instead of trying to find new jobs, they decide to try to scheme their way onto welfare: “Hello. I’m a recovering crackhead . This is my retarded sister that I take care of. I’d like some welfare, please.”  Of course, neither of them see anything wrong with this plan, and Dee even wears a pink bike helmet in order to look “retarded.”  They even go on to actually buy crack from a dealer as if they were ordering a Happy Meal at the McDonald’s drive thru: “One, please.”  This is just a taste of the wonderfully politically incorrect humor of this show, and the fact that it airs on FX allows it a lot of leeway in terms of what the characters can do and say.  However, even though the characters are all pretty horrible people, they also seem just like those people you knew from college who never quite grew up afterwards.

I tried watching a couple of episodes of the first season of this show last year, but I think I wasn’t paying proper attention because it didn’t really catch me.  But when FX started pushing this season heavily, and hilarious spots for it kept coming on during Rescue Me, I decided to give it another go and downloaded the first season (seven episodes) from iTunes.  It’s well worth catching up on the show that way.  This season is just as funny, and Danny DeVito makes a solid, if not entirely necessary, addition to the cast.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia airs at 10 PM on Thursdays on the FX network, and I’m sure this week’s episodes will repeat at some point.  Watch it now!