AVClub: For a show made up of seemingly random acts of stupidity and cruelty, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is deceptively rigorous in construction. It’s easy enough to craft a series around five crude dimwits who—to pick just a few examples—poop the bed, eat cat food, abuse the welfare system, endanger an infant with a scimitar, binge drink, sexually manipulate, and burn down the occasional building, all while berating each other non-stop. It can be done, but whatever shock value it generates is going to fade fast without a plan. Sunny, now into its eleventh season, has always operated under the guiding principle that the broadest, most potentially offensive comedy has to be handled with a paradoxically delicate touch. Rooted in its five main characters’ snarled web of interconnected prejudices and neuroses (if not outright psychoses), the series has consistently created a comedy world where awful behavior emerges as something horrifyingly universal. The Gang may be the worst people in the world, but they are still us.
