Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Gets Tested"| Season 18, Episode 3
The Gang goes back to school—and back to some old tricks.
The first two episodes of Season 18 of It's Always Sunny functioned to remind the Gang, and us, that there is no escape from Philly—except maybe an especially undignified death. Even when last season's finale dangled the tantalizing possibility of Frank finding a true (let's call it) soulmate in Carol Kane's Sam. And especially when that episode ended with one of those tone-tipping Sunny moments that appear ready to topple the show's resolute dedication to unsentimental futility and pain, since experienced Sunny viewers were just waiting for the penny to drop.
And it did, with Sam not only dying on her wedding day, but the flesh-eating bacteria she contracted while having scum pond-sex with Frank gnawing her head clean off her body. Oh, and then Frank's elaborate tribute to his late beloved blasting her corpse into the Philly waterways, her tenuously reattached skull once more flying off as a final, incontrovertible adios. Toss in the tandem goodbye to the show's longtime favorite Bonnie Kelly after Lynne Marie Stewart's real-life passing, and the beginning of Season 18 got dark. The sort of definitive dark designed to snuff out whatever hope the Gang (and stubbornly sentimental Sunny fans) might have for any meaningful change.
And so perhaps "The Gang Gets Tested" was slotted in as something of a palate-cleanser, a very funny, largely disposable lark where the Gang's schemes and scams result merely in comic chaos—and, okay, one potentially destroyed innocent life as collateral damage. There are two episodes that come immediately to mind while watching "The Gang Gets Tested," Season 9's "Flowers for Charlie" and Season 11's "The Gang Hits the Slopes." The former provides the idea of the Gang's multifarious madness invading the staid halls of academia (where Charlie's unique dysfunction is pinned under a microscope), while the latter is a nostalgic goof where rambunctious 1980's pop culture touchstones provide ample playground for some forgettably funny shenanigans.
