It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 12

Hey new season started last night.

I haven't seen it yet but I hear the first episode is something else! A musical where the gang become black people! HUH?!?! Yes. It's a bizarre premise but who could expect anything different from this crazy show that keeps topping themselves.

 

The first episode cracked me up, looking forward to the new season. Maybe not as epic as The Nightman Cometh for a musical episode but that's a high bar.

 

What network has season 12?

 

FXX

...

Wow! Just saw the first episode! Crazy epic. "What are the rules?!?!" great song. Social commentary while still being character driven and kept with continuity along with snappy songs and one of the funniest celebrity cameos I've seen featuring Scott "Blacula."

 

I used to love this show, but they lost me over the last few seasons. I'll give this season a shot. Not sure why they took it off FX. No one even watches FXX, unless they want to watch the Simpsons.

 

FXX' bandwidth is compressed to high heaven in my area with digital artifacts flying all over the place. Virtually unwatchable.

 

I lost track of "Sunny" a few seasons ago and decided last night to catch up with it with the older "Family Fight" episode. Even in the weakest episodes, I at least laugh out loud a few times and am always cracked up by Sweet Dee's zany antics! She is the best. When she screamed in the old age home I was in tears!

 

Last season was pretty spotty overall. Still it had 2 classics for sure: "The Gang Hits the Slopes" and "Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs" (the 2nd one has a character introduced who shows up in the first episode of this season).

Next week: The Gang Goes to a Water Park!

 

I'm in the minority in that Sweet Dee is my favorite of the bunch. Love them all, but SD kills me every time.

 

Kaitlin Olson is a very talented comedic actress. One of the best.

I burned out on Sunny around the fifth season. I found it funny but tired a bit of the male characters; some of their comedy seemed forced.

 

Episode 2 was awesome! So far a great start to the season.

The best plotline to me was Dennis... a person who doesn't even want to use any of the slides or get in the water. He just wants to prey on vulnerable mothers. ha. And then he meets his match. It was a totally different dynamic between Dennis and a young girl than we've seen before. I hope we see that girl again!

Charlie and Frank are as enthusiastic here as if they were playing a game of Nightcrawlers! And the ending payoff is pretty great considering how awful they've been. Although it would have been nice to get Charlie's reaction or to know if he went down too (which I could see happening).

The weakest but still funny plot was the Dee and Mac stuck in the tube line. Lots of funny bits there though. It reminded me of the Simpsons episode a little but it was it's own profane thing.

 

Didn't realize the season had started...thanks for the heads up. I hope 'the hands' make an appearance again this season.

 

Episode 3 was awesome too! Great season so far.

The episode was titled "Old Lady House: A Situation Comedy." And as confusing as that sounds... it was a perfect title. It features the mothers of Mac and Charlie who live together and is made better thanks to the evil genius of Dennis and his tools of perversion. haha. I loved this episode that I watched on demand... until it stopped playing. And then I watched a second time... and it cut off at the end. So I have no idea how the episode was resolved. But I enjoyed it as much as I could see it!

Question about Sunny in general. Are new episodes available to stream on some platform such as Hulu? I'm confused by how difficult it is to view these episodes on Verizon streaming. It seems there is a delay in offering them and they seem to drop off On Demand unusually quick. It's annoying! Especially when the stream is messed up! Luckily I got to watch all those endless commercials twice!

 

I just finished season 11 on Netflix. I hope I can watch 12 before too long.

 

I was into the show for the first few seasons but I think it jumped the shark shortly thereafter. My thoughts are confirmed every time I catch a newer episode of the show. But I'm glad a Philly show could become and remain so popular!

 

This week's Old Lady House episode was classic Dennis. I laughed through the whole thing and am glad they lampooned laugh tracks that much. No jump the shark or past its prime imho.

 

Daddy Devito saves the show IMO.
I tried watching an episode and it was terrible. It was a musical parody of Oz.

 

I was expecting to like the show more when he joined but I think it made it worse for me! Oh well, I know, I'm in the minority here!

 

Not with me you're not. I totally agree. DeVito definitely made it worse.

 

I love him on the show. He will do anything, ANYTHING. He gets alit if respect from me. He could keep doing small parts in movies. Instead, he subjects himself to all kinds of weird stuff on ASiP.
He was in all the classic episodes.

 

Of course there's no accounting for taste, but I think this show is downright ingenious. The chemistry between the cast members and their timing is incredible. Even after all these seasons, I think the show is still firing on all cylinders.

 

I agree completely with the above comments about sweet Dee, but not so much about Danny De Vito as Frank. Going all the way back to Louie De Palma in "Taxi", nobody has done hilariously despicable for as long or as consistently well as Danny DeVito (it's been nearly forty years, after all). That said, I definitely agree that "Sunny" has faded to a considerable degree since DeVito came on board, but I don't think it was because of him. I think that the consistency of the writing has declined (as it frankly, and inevitably, has always done on ALL shows running longer than about six seasons), partly because it becomes more and more difficult to come up with new ideas in keeping with the show's vibe when so many things have already been done before. The introduction of a new character may provide a temporary "second wind" in a few notable cases (e.g., Det. Buntz and Sid the Snitch on "Hill Street Blues", Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H), but rarely halts the inevitable resumption of the downhill slide. Actually, I think the "fat Mac" season was "Sunny's" shark-jumping season for me, if there was one.

Many will recall the great (though very underrated and underappreciated) show "Barney Miller", which somehow just managed to stay on the air for eight seasons with relatively modest ratings, despite juggernaut dreck like "The Jeffersons", "Three's Company" and "Alice", which always topped the ratings, even though they were virtually unwatchable to someone with an actual functioning brain. "Barney Miller" dramatically improved between the third and fourth seasons, just about the time its most popular character, Abe Vigoda as Fish, left the show for a spinoff (as was common back then for most popular supporting characters on sitcoms). But it didn't improve so dramatically because Fish was spun off. It was because the writing suddenly really caught fire about that time. To this day, I still regard the 3rd, 4th, and 5th seasons of "Barney Miller" as having the best sitcom writing from week to week that I have ever seen, before or since. And the other characters improved as well. "Wojo" in particular became more believably complex and stopped being a gum-snapping Pollack joke. New regular Steve Landesberg as the annoyingly pedantic supernerd Dietrich joined at the same time. And we began to see more of the hilarious crusty old booger Inspector Luger and internal affairs slimeball Lieutenant Scanlon. Not to mention their great little stock "repertory company" that supplied many talented players like Christopher Lloyd, Doris Roberts, Kenneth Tigar (five different characters from a werewolf to Jesus Christ) and even Danny DeVito, to portray various perps, victims and witnesses parading through the precinct. Not many realize that 9pm Eastern on Thursdays became the prime spot for top sitcom beginning in the mid-1970s with "Barney Miller". It was succeeded in that same slot by the likes of "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" through the end of the century. Eventually, all of the networks began airing their very best shows on Thursday nights. But even "Barney Miller" slowly ran out of gas by the 8th and final season. Thank goodness "Cheers" was on deck to step up just as "Barney Miller" went off the air.

Back to "Sunny", Kaitin Olson as Sweet Dee may be the most hilarious regular cast member for me, if only because she among the others should know better, but she still doesn't. So unlike man-child Charlie, who really has no clue at all, but may in the end have the purest heart of the bunch. Danny De Vito is definitely in his element on this show, but he just cannot stand out like he usually would in that regard, if only because he is surrounded by so many others, including the McPoyle clan. If the later seasons have shown some decline, keep in mind that it even happened with "Seinfeld" and all of the other great ones as well, which the networks kept on the air for years primarily because of past reputation. In this regard, see also, "M*A*S*H", "All in the Family", "Cheers" "Mary Tyler Moore", "Frazier", "Friends", etc. You name 'em.

Just enjoy the occasional great episodes, fewer in frequency though they may be. And remember that, in the end, it's all in the writing.

 

It's been years since a season has started out this strong. Episode 3 is an instant classic.

 

Ok... episodes 4, 5 and 6.

"Wolf Cola: A Public Relations Nightmare" - There were some funny bits as far as Dennis, Dee and Frank going on tv to help with their
'public relations nightmare' and the social media responses (and Dennis hating dogs). But generally speaking the episode didn't really go anywhere for me. The call back to Wolf Cola and Fight Milk just seemed kind of lazy. They've done that in episodes before where they just kind of follow the joke of another episode but come up empty to me. And this was one of those. I'd give it a C-

"Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer" - This one was more fun but kind of an oddity. The gimmick was pretty good although making it a Charlie and Mac production seemed off based on their previous adventures in video editing. Nevertheless some fun scenes. It's too bad about Maureen though as I liked her character... until she become full on cat that is. But having a woman who had some bizarre control over Dennis was cool while it lasted. B

"Hero or Hate Crime?" - The opening scene was pretty great and Frank's use of a slur was pretty funny and shocking. Actually this episode contained more out profanity than I think I've heard from an episode of this show. The arbitration scenes were cool although I kept hoping that 'the Lawyer' would show up. Anyway the big news out of this episode is Mac and apparently his change is going to be permanent. So we'll see where that goes! A-