DVD Review: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Season 4

As is custom in the television industry, just in time for the start of Season 5 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, FX unleashed the DVD set of Season 4. The season’s home video release is the lightest for the series yet, with only 13 episodes (two comprising an extended episode – “Mac & Charlie Die”) and minimal special features, but fans of the Seinfeld-like misadventures of Philadelphia’s biggest assholes will be too busy laughing at the show’s infamous politically incorrect humor to care.

For those not quite up to speed, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows the dimwitted ideas – that often turn into even worse situations – of a gang of horrible (and horribly funny) “friends” – Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day), Mac (Rob McElhenney), Sweet Dee Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson), her brother Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and their equally deranged father Frank (Danny Devito) – who own and operate a crappy little bar called Paddy’s Pub with few customers in the City of Brotherly Love.

The season starts strong in “Manhunters,” when Mac and Dennis become headhunters and stalk the unfortunate Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby), while Dee and Charlie crave human flesh after Frank convinces them they have already eaten some. In the second episode, the gang stays topical in an attempt to “solve the gas crisis.”

Highlights of the season include “Mac’s Banging the Waitress,” “The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition” and “The Nightman Cometh.” The first of the three features sexual shenanigans after Charlie believes Mac and Dennis have slept with his beloved Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), all for a great payoff at the end of the episode. In “Home Makeover,” the gang brutally destroys a poor family’s home. “The Nightman Cometh” finishes the season big with a musical written by the illiterate Charlie, with another great payoff, though he swears there is no “mark” for the play.

While it may not have been the strongest season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with the gang clearly working a bit harder than usual to draw out the laughs, Season 4 was far from a “bad” season of comedy television. Other notable episodes saw the gang flashing back through time to crack the Liberty Bell and unfurling the mystery of who pooped the bed.

The DVD extras are a bit of a disappointment. The biggest feature is “The Nightman Cometh…Live Performance!” which documents one of the two shows the gang performed live at the Troubadour in Hollywood, Calif. Though the episode is solid, and a nice addition for anyone who did not score a ticket to the sold out event, it varies little on stage from the episode, and does little more to provide any extra laughs.

The set also collects a “Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life” featurette, which isn’t very funny, and a blooper reel. The biggest disappointment is that there are zero commentaries. Collectors concerned about packaging and how a set looks on the shelf will want to know that for Season 4, FX decided to forgo the thin plastic boxes inside of a cardboard sleeve in favor of a traditional hard plastic case with hinges and double-sided disc trays.

The lack of substantial features is a bit of a disappointment, but the reality is most fans of the series are buying It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 4 to watch those 13 episodes over and over again. And with Season 4 being another solid collection of the risky FX comedy, it is a DVD set that practically sells itself.

About the Writer:
Bill Jones is editor-in-chief of padsandpanels.com, a site dedicated to coverage of comics and games.