Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Frank vs. Russia"| Season 16, Episode 4
Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Frank vs. Russia"| Season 16, Episode 4
Sometimes, the Gang's filth just comes together in the most unexpected places
“You’re beyond help, okay. You let a stranger hack your butthole.”
If It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s 16th season has displayed an air of self-satisfied (and largely earned) ease in its first three episodes, “Frank vs. Russia” is the Sunny Gang shaking off the complacency and showboating a bit. Episode writer Megan Ganz, an invaluable major player on the series since 2017, never lets viewers catch a breath or establish their footing, putting the Gang through their frantically clever and ingeniously plotted paces right from the jump all the way through to the time-looped wrap up.
The invariably squalid events that make up the average Sunny episode all have to spring from motives that make sense for the characters. Naturally, understandable motivations require viewers to accept that Dee, Dennis, Mac, Charlie, and Frank all live in their own moral universe, one where impulses born of self-obsession and horrific parenting emerge from a tangle of constantly sparking and short-…