Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Frank Marries a Corpse" | Season 18, Episode 1

Welcome back to Episodic Medium's coverage of the long-running It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which continues its march to TV's history books with its 18th season. As always, this first review is free for all, but subsequent reviews will be exclusively for paid subscribers. Support our writers and join the conversation on all of our reviews.

Are we clapping? No, not for that.

Nobody in Philadelphia can stay happy for long. At least It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Philly.

And that’s as it should be. Sunny has refined the archetype of the irredeemable scoundrel to a dangerously hilarious edge over its previous 17 seasons, and we derive our pleasure from the inescapable comeuppance awaiting the five worst people in the world each week. For Dee, Dennis, Mac, Charlie, and Frank failure is as inevitable as death and taxes (despite none of the five likely paying those). Triumphs come at great, humiliating cost, usually to some subset of the Gang, sometimes to them all. (And woe to anyone who stumbles in from outside of the Gang’s fetid bubble.)

And yet, there are the barest glimpses of light from a world not bound by Paddy’s Pub and the codependent madnesses of five parasitic monsters. Just the most fleeting glimmer of possibility. Of escape. Flashes of unwanted enlightenment when the scaliest of scales fall from one member of the Gang’s eyes and they recognize—if only for a single scene—that they don’t have to live this way.

Dennis fled to South Dakota with the family he never knew he had. A session of much-needed therapy saw Mac briefly recognize the harmful incestuousness of the Gang’s dynamic, while a momentous later episode buried a decade of “Mac is gay” jokes with still-astonishing grace (for Mac and Frank). Charlie railed in anguish to the torrenting heavens and the dead father who left him to wallow in a world of cruelty and neglect. And at the end of last season, Frank finally met someone (Carol Kane’s Sam) who could, as he put it in baffled astonishment, see him for who and what he is—and love him.

It’s to Always Sunny’s credit that all these potentially show-killing breaks from the audience approved formula were walked back in ways that felt less perfunctory than inevitable. Okay, sure—there’s no Sunny if Dennis, Mac, Charlie, or Frank suddenly become even remotely well-adjusted. (Sweet Dee’s lack of her own epiphany may be a meta-joke about the Gang’s lone woman being forever slighted, but Kaitlin Olson deserves a showcase, too.) But the series’ purgatorial Philly is inescapable not because the show must go on—the Gang’s intertwined damnation persists because they need it to.

Sunny’s five protagonists (using that word by default) might be the worst of us (of America, of humanity, of white people), but they are recognizably us. Viewers laugh at their scabrous antics with the unease of recognition. If the Gang take turns embodying the Seven Deadly Sins (or a toxic stew thereof) from episode to episode, theirs are still sins we can relate to, whether we admit it or not. If the Gang can transcend then so can we—and as the show contends through all the knockabout shenanigans, we emphatically cannot.

And so Sam’s head falls off at the altar.

It was inevitable that Kane would beam back to the Enterprise, just as it was that— despite Carol Kane being the only guest star I could imagine slotting permanently into the Gang’s maniac dysfunction—Frank could never keep his soulmate. Apart from Kane and Danny DeVito being old Taxi pals, and Kane matching the Gang’s every hideously bananas move with a foul-mouthed topper of her own, pairing up any main character with a like-minded partner is antithetical to It’s Always Sunny’s established reality. Even if said partner is more than happy to rut messily in a stagnant pond in full view of a Starbucks on her wedding night, there can be no new blood introduced into the Gang’s gene pool if the show’s ecosystem is to survive.

And it’s not like “Frank Marries a Corpse” was subtle about what was coming. I mean, there’s the title. And Sam’s first entrance to Dee’s surprise engagement party (meant, naturally, to scuttle a marriage Dee’s convinced is a scam to take Frank’s money) sees her complain about a pain in her neck. Artemis (one of the poisoned bridesmaid team assembled alongside The Waitress and Gail the Snail) drops a warning about never having sex in standing water. Plus Frank, being kitted out in his tux by the guys, is quickly losing all warmth and feeling in his extremities. (His fear of wedding day “cold feet” turning gradually life-threatening.)

Yes, as it turns out having sloppy muck-sex in a runoff pond near a chain coffee franchise is indeed what’s ailing the bride and groom, culminating in a signature Sunny showpiece where a half-dead Frank puppets himself down the aisle thanks to a rig connecting his outstretched arms to his shuffling feet. (“He’s doing like a Frankenstein,” Dennis vamps to the puzzled guests at Paddy’s, “You know, Frank-Frankenstein…”) And Dee goes full Weekend at Bernie’s with Sam’s dead body, ineptly attempting to pull the wedding off just long enough to obtain the billions (with a b) she and Dennis have engineered as Sam’s stepkids/inheritors.

Honestly, I’ve got no issue with Carol Kane being written off the show so grotesquely. If anything, you’ve got to admire the chutzpah in taking things even further than expected. Any old sitcom can stage a wedding to a dead lady. And maybe a few would even see their esteemed guest star gamely wobbling all over the place while a cast member plays her like a ventriloquist dummy. (Mac, acting as internet-ordained officiant, unhelpfully demands that Sam actually say “I do.”) And the presence of The Golden Bachelor’s cameras (even if last season’s concluding plot element feels tossed in for the gag) makes for a bigger payoff as the climactic clunk of Sam’s head falling from her flesh-eating bacteria-rotted neck plays out on the local news. Kane’s a singular weirdo (as well as a remarkable actress) and while she matches on-screen betrothed DeVito as well as any interloper could, she simply had to die—ideally in as over-the-top manner as possible.

I just wanted “Frank Marries a Corpse” to be funnier in getting to the telegraphed final spectacle. A case of the destination eclipsing the journey, the episode is strangely lacking in memorable moments. Mac comes off best, as the discovery of an actual ventriloquist dummy (owned by Uncle Jack) in place of Mrs. Mac’s discontinued Chinese cigarette stash sees Rob McElhenney (or, fine, Rob Mac) plumb new depths of Mac’s indefinable craziness. Mac’s immediate, unquestioning acceptance of the doll’s (named Sherman) full participation in the debate about what to do with Mrs. Mac is played with utmost sincerity, as is the way Sherman takes on belligerent sentience as soon as Mac puts his hand up the thing. Mac’s always looking to be a follower, and if this week’s chosen alpha is made of wood, so be it.

There’s a subplot about Mac diving sweatily back into the closet due to his grunting mother’s presence, and Sherman’s not having it, ultimately outing the clerical-garbed Mac at the wedding. (“No shit,” is Mrs. Mac’s one complete sentence in the episode.) Mac’s uneasy truce with both his homosexuality and his Catholic guilt is still easily shattered whenever potential conflict arises, so it’s nice to get this last(?) obstacle out of the way. And McElhenney (nope, the “Rob Mac”/”Mac” thing is too confusing) plays Mac’s slow-blinking dimness with such earnestness that it’s only natural that his buried neuroses would seek an outlet like Sherman. (Sherman—on Mac’s arm— shrieks in horror at the prospect of being returned to the creepy Uncle Jack, and Mac’s right there with him.)

Meanwhile, Dennis and Dee play the would-be voices of reason in their respective groups, as Dennis vainly tries to talk everyone out of “doing a KFC” with their intransigent wedding bow ties (and Charlie out of turning the wedding into a musical tribute to his dead mom, urn and all). Dee, scheming to disillusion Sam with three of Frank’s former lovers (and the reveal that The Waitress is still suing for that Cybertruck) likewise rides herd over a roomful of loonies squabbling over her kitchen appliances in payment for the ruse. Kaitlin Olsen and Glenn Howerton are never un-funny when Dee and Dennis desperately try to head off gathering disaster, but both plots amount to little more than noisy set-up for the big, horrifying payoff.

Still and all, It’s Always Sunny is back, and if nothing else, “Frank Marries a Corpse” comes roaring out of the gate flying the show’s freak flag with defiant bad taste, if not complete mid-season confidence.

Stray observations

• Charlie’s determination to turn Frank’s wedding into a musical tribute to the departed Bonnie mines out collective sorrow over Lynne Marie Stewart’s death for some appropriately inappropriate lyrics about there being “no flesh and no bones.” Watching Dee’s lurching piloting of Sam’s body down the aisle while Charlie obliviously croons, “Why am I the only one who can see there’s a dead woman here in this room?” is about as chaotically off the rails as things get. Until the head falls off.
• Charlie Day’s clomping, off-key keyboard stomp could be a Nightmare Before Christmas outtake song.
• Dennis’ onion makes a return appearance, as he demands credit for at least remembering to bring it to fake tears at Bonnie’s passing. Later, Dee calls him out on bringing it to the Sam’s deathbed, stating, “What are you doin’ looking for your onion? Don’t do it for me, I don’t care.”
• The murderer’s row of Snail, Waitress and Artemis all in one room (and matching dresses) filled me with horrible, horrible joy. Mary Lynn Rajskub can still bring shivers to my spine with a single, slurpy syllable.
• “What happened to you being a scorned woman?” “I still need to strain spaghetti.”
• Upon Dee figuring out Dennis’ plan to puppeteer her dead future stepmother, Kaitlin Olson’s dawning evil face work is just stellar.
• Mac, confronted with the need to tell his mother about his sexuality muses, “I have to come up with a whole new dance. I don’t even know if the choreographer is available…”
• And Mac’s moment of panic when he realizes his mother’s last cigarette almost went out is just as committed. “Guys, that was close—she almost broke the chain!”
• It turns out Sam was indeed swimming in “chicken money” thanks to her father inventing gag rubber chickens. Dee confides that she personally owns seven of them.
• And we’re back for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 18! Nice to have you all on board once more. I’m Dennis, and I’ll be your cruise director for the next 10 episodes.