The Gang Goes to Ireland

Seasons 1 through 12 are, for me personally, the best comedy series in the history of television. Season 13 and 14 have seen a massive increase in lazy scripts, cartoonish and one-sided political jokes and the "current thing" moments which sell well during social media promotion but absolutely murder any rewatchability of the show. Furthermore, the actors/writers seemed to have long forgotten or just stopped caring about what their characters used to be, as they've turned them into 2D models which can fill in a corporate quota.

Season 15 shows it best and "The Gang Goes to Ireland" is the end of the line for me even though I'll gladly rewatch the old seasons in the future. This episode is the perfect highlight of all the problems IASIP has been dealing with: unfunny and uncreative writing which feels like it's generated by artificial intelligence on the basis of what would sell best on Twitter at the moment of production (the vaccination "joke" as heard in November 2022 is probably the "best" highlight), lifeless acting that's complete opposite of the passion which the original cast had for their jobs and the passion that managed to bring DeVito on board of a small amateur project, and horrifying character-signaling every 30 seconds.

• "Hey, viewer, I'm Dennis, the serial killer and my obviously deranged comments are always ignored by my colleagues";
• "Me Charlie and stupid but become very smart when other character butt of joke";
• "I'm Frank and I've been entangled in every political drama since the 1960s".

Dee has also become a character which does nothing but scream, be obnoxiously mean to everybody and has no life outside of failing to become an actress (even if Olson still tries, as difficult as it is with the new, plastic face, and contrary to the rest of the cast), and Mac is just "gay and insecure", with nothing else to offer to the story, while Rob McElhenney can't seem to match even the neutral face he brandishes in the promotional materials for his football club. The location change which was abundantly commented on as "oh so genius" is also an absolute joke because the plot does nothing with it other than mechanically repeating the joke about left-sided traffic.

Goodbye Always Sunny, you've become the very thing you swore to parody.

We are on the floor here from this ep, this and the monkey ep feel pretty special to me idk why. Another funny episode that I will continue to binge for years.

Okay I get that Dee is the butt of the joke but this is just too much. The drugging and the car incident just didn't work and it wasn't funny. We get it, you guys hate Dee. Felt very "jump the shark" to me. This whole thing they're doing with Dee this season just feels so forced.

Those of us who have been to Ireland knew it was fake. Kind of sad to get me excited that you're at my favorite bar in Dublin, O'Neill's just to be At some other location with microbrews. I though maybe they renovated but it didn't make any sense. I love the episode and the comedy is great but that's a let down.

This is the episode that convinced me that this show is truly dead. The last four episodes were already pretty terrible and that monkey one last week got me close to switching off but now, I'm just done. This used to be a series that had me dying with laughter and now I don't feel anything. Everything either feels too overdone or like the cast are stepping on eggshells. Kaitlin Olson has been carrying this season so far but her schtick as finally run dry. The rest of them just feel tired. Howerton is completely neutered, his character just does not work in "current year" and the same goes for Devito, who's only contributions are solely for obvious gross-out and hit-you-over-the-head political jokes. Charlie Day has had nothing to work with all season, he just repeats whatever everybody else said like a guy on his first day of improv. Finally there's Rob McElhenney, who...I have nothing nice to say about, so I won't say it. The show is dead and I have no intention of ever watching another episode. Good day.