The Gang Dances Their Asses Off

I was not particularly impressed by season 1 of this show but did seem some potential in its roughness and dark comedy. Season 2 was a massive jump in quality and I ripped through most of it while sitting in Paris CdG airport waiting for a connection onwards. I enjoyed it a lot and was very happy to find that season 3 continues this high quality with barely a weak episode (or even significant period) in the whole season. The plots continue to be things of madness and they could easily be just silly and tiresome to watch, indeed I did keep waiting for them to have a bad idea, but they don't. Each plot allows for the same thing to happen – the group of amoral and repugnant characters to makes things worse and worse by virtue of their stupidity and inability to let anything happen unless it somehow personally benefits them (or better yet, benefits them while also hurting one of the others). In a sense it is the comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm force fed crack and left to live on the streets like Rickety Cricket.

The reason it works is because it is consistently hilarious – and I don't mean "funny", I mean hilarious. The contrived complexity of the plots is part of the joke (try explaining what has happened to someone coming into an episode after 15 minutes) and it is a show where even the delivery of episode title is a well timed and funny gag. The best episodes for me were the one where they try out for the Eagles and the one that sees them finding a baby in a dumpster. These are both hilarious and perfectly capture the selfishness and cruelty inside the seemingly "normal" characters. The rest of the episodes are not quite as good but are all very good and funny in the same ways. The only aspect that seemed new that didn't seem to work quite as well was the occasional pop culture reference (such as the gang "being" the panel from American Idol) as, while still funny, didn't seem as clever or as funny as the other material.

The cast have grown on me as well – and the fact that most of the main players are also the writers is just one of the reasons. Day's Charlie is great – his shouting and his awkward stupidity looks easy but he really delivers it with skill. McElhenney's Mac is similar but he is also very good. Howerton's Dennis lets his looks and apparent normality play in as part of the joke while Olson also does well to be the butt of jokes as the others continually see her as unattractive. DeVito continues to be a great addition to the cast and he really gets into the style of humour without any sense of it being below a Hollywood star such as him – those in doubt should witness him wallowing in a bin on an acid trip and pulling his gun with a second's provocation – he is great. Ellis, Hornsby, Stewart and a few others all give good support.

Overall, Always Sunny continues to be essential viewing for me as I order season 4. Not quite sure why something this funny hasn't made it to the FX UK yet, but it is well worth seeking out and I will look forward to season 4 with the hopes that the standards set here and in season 2 will be continued.

This is the episode that made me realize I loved this show. For the first three seasons I was watching it and enjoyed it but I wasn't rly paying attention, but this one made me sit down and focus bc it was just that funny. To be fair I went into sunny completely blind so it took me a bit to realize wtf was going on, but it was definitely worth it. The best part was rewatching bc the first few seasons are so much funnier when you know the cast.

I feel this episode is not talked about enough. It's a very fun plot and everything.

We also truly start to see Cricket's descent. His legs creaking was hilarious and the legs immediately breaking down on him was so funny.

Also a great example of how they just casually throw stuff in the middle of conversations that really show how they only care about themselves.

Like when Charlie and Mac talk about Mac's dance and Charlie casually throws in how he doesn't care and doesn't want to learn the dance. The whole cream discussions was hilarious too.

I still can't believe this episode is not talked about as much

Overall - 9.2/10.

A light-hearted way to end the season, sort of like a roll-call to shout out all the characters including the waitress and cricket.

Nothing really special and groundbreaking here, just an enjoyable and hilarious episode!

Season 3 is arguably the best season of the whole series, but I think there are too many duds and inconsistencies to take that crown. The great episodes are truly great though.

Overall S3 rating: 8/10