Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Goes to the Ren Faire"| Season 18, Episode 5

"This day we’ll speak of, I can assure you."

Yanking The Gang completely out of their Paddy's environment is a delicate operation. While they'll dart out into the wider world in pursuance of some scheme, lust, or whim, like a malignant growth, their intrusion will, by episode's end, be rejected and ejected back to Paddy's, where their co-mingled toxicity provides their only livable atmosphere. The Gang is by this point fully aware that they simply can't exist for long out there.

And neither can It's Always Sunny, really. Episodes centered on Dennis, Dee, Frank, Charlie, and Mac concentrating all their variously malign energies in one alien setting for a whole show necessitates a steady hand whose grasp of the series' still-unrivaled tonal comedic powder keg displays a poise and control Sunny itself reliably displays, despite surface appearances. Sunny's tone—built as it is on five idiots doing and saying the worst possible things in every situation—can curdle in an instant to boorish, braying ugliness. That that's only happened a handful of times in 183 episodes is beyond impressive. So "The Gang Goes to the Ren Faire" being one of those unfortunate few isn't so much a cause for ongoing concern as it is just something of a shrill bummer.