It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Complete Season 5 is out on Blu-ray and God only knows how they can top this season.
If you’re not familiar with the FX series, it’s been around for a while now and the boundary of comedy on cable television (that is accessible by all you normals out there) is stretched further and further each season towards the line the FCC has drawn in the sand. I can’t recall another show with five unlovable losers leading the way; strangely, you’ll probably love every minute of it.
In this season you get a ton of nice things to look forward to, which include:
– The Gang Wrestles for the Troops: This episode is hilarious on many levels. The fact that Rowdy Roddy Piper actually agreed to play a very strung out wrestler gives some sort of credibility to the episode. This episode revolves around an Internet love affair that Dee is having with a soldier coming home from the war. Of course, when she meets him she sees he’s in a wheelchair and immediately dumps him, only to find out that he had hurt his leg (and wasn’t permanently put in a wheelchair). On top of this, the boys want to put on a wrestling event for the solder, so they arrange a tag team fight with Piper, but he gets arrested. Desperate they turn to their best device; Cricket. Yeah, imagine where that goes. Anyway, short and sweet, but hilarious nonetheless.
– The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention: When Frank turns on his ‘drink’ and invents wine in a cola can things get crazy. So crazy that Frank tries to sleep with a woman whose husband has recently died. Rejected, he takes his lack of sex out on his niece (not by blood) to try to blackmail the woman into having sex with him. On the side, the gang tries to get an intervention with Frank, which isn’t as easy (and harmless) as it sounds. I like this episode because it’s vicious and funny. Chloe O’Brain was perfect as the niece (Gail the Snail), who is just a perfect disaster and the best comedy relief in the episode.
– The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis: I can only imagine that the Gang represents the folk who buy houses to turn them upside down perfectly. When Frank purchases a foreclosed home he immediately begins to prep it for resale. The only problem? The family hasn’t moved out yet! On top of this, Frank works with Mac and Dennis (aka, Honey and Vinegear) to work around the family and prep the house while they still live in it. Oh, yeah! This episode also features Dee trying to sell her uterus for baby space. Enjoy this one.
– Paddy’s Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens (Mittons): Folks. Seriously. You need to watch this one first. Kitten Mittens (also spelled Mittons)
There are more, but out of all the episodes on this season these are probably the best. The show is based on ridiculous situations and things we, the common sense folk of the world, know to be absolutely bad ideas. Much like a train wreck we just keep watching this show. For me I know that I’m not so much interested in the comedy, as I am in how many ideas they can put together that can somehow come back together from episode to episode. For example, in the wrestling episode we get to see a reoccurring character with Rickety Cricket (played by David Hornsby). Cricket has been on the show since season one and his character keeps getting more and more ridiculous as the show moves on. Cricket has been a priest, a drug addict, a homeless person, a hunted homeless person, a Paddy Pub owner, a Paddy Pub former owner and in this particular epsidoe he’s a terrorist wrestler. He is a device in the overall scheme of the show that keeps working perfectly when they need him. He is connected with many things and works well across the life span of the show. He’s a great example of how small things connect well over time from episode to episode; which is what makes the show brilliant.
Season five does its duty with creating the same ridiculous stuff we’ve seen before. It also addresses serious issues that the world is going through, like the mortgage crisis, and makes light of it. What’s remarkable about this is that the dumb comedy does put together some good points, even if it takes 20 minutes to get to that point. I guarantee you that most people don’t actually know that it takes 90 days for a bank to kick a former house owner out of their house. Now, don’t get me wrong I fully understand that this show isn’t trying to win Emmys and change the world, but they do enough to make tough pills to swallow in life (like the mortgage crisis) go down easier.
Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed the past four seasons of this show on DVD or BD then you’ll enjoy this one. It’s more of the same, but the ‘same’ is still warped and entertaining.
Now, things you may or may not know about this show, and potentially a deal breaker when it comes to Blu-ray, is that the shows up to this point haven’t been shot in HD; rather they have been shot in SD. So, what you get on BD is just upscaled version of the video. Is it bad? Well, for the untrained eye you won’t notice at first, until you put in another Blu-ray disc and compare. I do believe that the visuals are upgraded over the DVD version, but ultimately they don’t jump that far up. Currently as I’m typing this I’m watching The Order on Blu-ray and noticing how incredibly different the two features are compared to each other. The Order (which isn’t the greatest movie in the world) looks damn good. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia looks good, but nowhere close to The Order. So, don’t expect the highest quality, but do expect some sort of upscale (to the show’s credit they have an nice one-minute segment at the beginning of the Blu-ray explaining/admitting they didn’t shoot it in HD).
There are a few things that make the BD worth the price. The amount of features you get is great. You get some fantastic commentary on selected episodes (you thought the commentary on The Simpsons was funny; all I can say is wow). You also get some great blooper reel moments. How these guys can keep a straight face for more than five minutes is nothing short of a miracle. You get a wonderfully unique endless loop of kittens in mittens and some very strange dating profiles for the gang. Finally, you also get 23,793 photos in five minutes. Don’t ask why; just know that you get it! Lord, you’ve gotten this far with the review and you’re still reading, so you have to understand there’s no good reason for this feature. Funnily enough, it fits perfectly with the show.