Always Sunny in Philadelphia ‘Concepts’ – The Top 5

I think the funniest thing about Always Sunny in Philadelphia (best current comedy show, for those not in the know) is what I call their ‘concepts’. Any time any character either comes up with a term for an action or thing, or describes something in a weird way, that is a concept. Every episode is packed with these concepts, and I’ve picked my top 5.

#1 – The PG Insults – I can imagine Always Sunny as a show has enough problems with censors without the large amount of swearing the gang always seems to be spouting, so some of it is replaced by juvenile insults and name calling, especially from Mac and Dee. And this only makes the insults more hilarious and mocking. I mean, face it, would you rather be called fuckhead, or a bozo? Bozo, jabroni and peon, because of their seeming innocuousness, are far more insulting than any generic swearword. It’s like being called ‘champ’; it’s just degrading. Bonus points to Dee for being ‘like a giant bird’ and for insults based around any number of combinations to do with words ‘dick’ and ‘bag’.

#2 – Frank and Charlie’s weird games – The two main ones are ‘Nightcrawlers’ and ‘Sewer’. ‘Nightcrawlers’ involves something to do with crawling around in bed like a worm, potentially with blankets as either the ground, or a roaming base. It is entirely imagination based. ‘Sewer’ involves taking off your clothes and heading down into, no surprise, the sewer, in search of ‘all sorts of cool stuff’. The idea that two men, aged thirty and sixty respectively, actually do this is stunningly funny.

#3 – Dicktowel! Dot com! – Kitten Mittens was a brilliant segment, made funnier by the fact that some people actually would buy them, but ‘dicktowel.com’ is actually a real site that sells towels with dicks on them that change size depending on how they are folded. That is awesome.

Complete with white, black and asian dicktowels. Seriously.

#4 – Popping off shirts – Apparently I fell asleep for a long while, and woke up in a time when there was no other way to take off a shirt except for ‘popping it off’. The best way to put on a clinic of glamour muscles is to pop that bad boy off, and blast those nips. That barely makes sense, but still, no article of clothing can come off in the Always Sunny without being popped off.

#5 – Browning Out – It was a choice between this and ‘milk steak’, and this gets in by virtue of being a truly revolting sounding name for something everyone has been through (getting drunk and remembering random bits of the night). It just sounds far more scatological to me. And I can never get my milk steak to cook right, boiled over hard, with a side of jellybeans…

So, that’s it, I’ll probably think of more great ones at some point (‘Jams’? ‘Shooshers’? ‘THUNDERGUN’?), but I’ll stick with this for now. And if I have to hear about ‘rum ham’ again….