"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" The Gang Gets Racist (2005)

Director:

John Fortenberry

Writers:

Rob McElhenney (developer) and
Glenn Howerton (developer) ...

TV Series:

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (2005)

Original Air Date:

4 August 2005 (Season 1, Episode 1)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Dee introduces the guys to her friend, Terrell, from her acting class who offers to help promote their bar...

Plot Keywords:

Drunken Sex | Used Condom | Hand Job | Dreams | Hand Slap

Cast

Charlie Day	...	Charlie Kelly
Glenn Howerton	...	Dennis Reynolds
Rob McElhenney	...	Mac
Kaitlin Olson	...	Dee Reynolds
Mary Elizabeth Ellis	...	Waitress
Malcolm Barrett	...	Terrell
Telisha Shaw	...	Janell
Ian Mackinnon	...	Brett
Sheldon Candis	...	Damon
Ungenita Prevost	...	Karen
Aaron Hartzler	...	Handsome Guy
Jesse C. Boyd	...	Boy
Sydney 'Big Dawg' Colston	...	Large Man in Towel
George Weiss Vando	...	Guy
Montré Burton	...	Guy #2 (as Montre Burton)

Shaun Paul Costello

...

Dude

Runtime:

Germany:22 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Bluebush Productions

Quotes:

Dee Reynolds: I had the craziest dream last night that I was in Cleveland, Ohio - which is really weird because I've never been to Ohio. And this guy was wearing a bunny suit, and he was coming out of...
Dennis Reynolds: [interrupting her] You know what Dee, I don't want to hear about your dream, okay? I hate listening to people's dreams. It's like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I'm not in any of them, and nobody's having sex, I just... don't care.

A great first episode

Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Mac (Rob McElhenney), and Charlie (Charlie Day) are all the owners of an Irish bar in Philadelphia. Dennis' sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson) works as a bartender there, and as business is slow one evening she brings by a black friend named Terrell. Dennis, Mac and Charlie aren't expecting Dee to be romantically involved with a black guy and as a result they come across as being fairly racist.

To prove they aren't racist, they ask Terrell to help them get more people to come to the bar. They take a journey to Temple University and try to recruit some African-Americans to stop by, and Charlie ends up getting the number of a girl there.

Charlie has a crush on a white waitress at a coffee shop, who overhears him saying something that sounds racist, so the next day he brings by his black date to prove he isn't racist. Things don't go so well.

Meanwhile, Dennis and Mac realize Terrell is actually gay and has turned their Irish pub into "the hottest gay bar in Philadelphia." Dennis' vanity causes him to play to the gay men there and the end of the episode has a hilarious twist that had me in stitches.

This wasn't the first episode I had seen of this show - my first two episodes were of season two with Danny DeVito (I thought they were a bit funnier) - but this is a great way to start. To be honest I didn't expect much after seeing ads last year for this show - it looked like another lame sitcom - but after seeing a few episodes I can honestly say it's the freshest, most delightfully irreverent thing I've seen on TV in ages.

This single episode has more plot than most movies (can't you imagine the idea of a pub being turned into a gay bar run by straight men being used in an Adam Sandler movie? Yet "Sunny" only uses this as ONE of its plots in ONE episode). The cast is terrific (especially Charlie Day who I hope to see in films some day) and the writing is clever, witty and smart. There are a lot of slight references that you don't even pick up on the first time. I had to watch the episodes with DeVito at least two times each to pick up on stuff like "I'm rocking the FDR look." In this episode in particular there's a lot of racial-stereotype satire.

I highly recommend this as an entry point into the series - it's a great first episode, a great introduction to the characters and isn't - as some pilots are - all intro and no jokes. It's funny from the first five seconds onwards.