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I think the first of Thursday’s IASIP double-feature was the episode I had been waiting for all season, and again I think we can thank “the waitress” for making this happen. After three weeks (and six episodes) of good, but certainly not great, comedy from television’s most self-obsessed foursome, we were finally delivered the goods. What starts out as the gang trying to get a large sum of money to sell their bar eventually turns into everyone working at an T.G.I.Appleli’s and exploiting the kindness of that poor waitress, whose curious fascination with Denis has gotten her nothing but trouble. More after the jump…

The waitress, who doesn’t even have a character name, has always brought out the best (or rather, the absolute worst) in these characters (with the possible exception of Charlie, who often turns into a decent — if sweaty and clueless — person around her). She was at the center of things the first season in “Charlie Get’s Cancer” (my personal fav.), and it was the waitress who upped the stakes and played the pawn in the brilliantly twisty “Mac Bang’s Denis’ Mom.” Perhaps it’s the fact that she’s the one character to which we, the viewers, can actually relate, or maybe it’s because she constantly makes horrible decisions when it comes to the gang and horrible decisions thrive on IASIP. Either way, I’m glad she isn’t in every episode because I’d hate to see her impact get diluted with repetition. In fact, I don’t even mind the previous half-dozen episodes being kind of ‘meh’ so long as we’re delivered a gem of this caliber once or twice a season.

The second episode, though not as strong as the first, still delivered for the most part. It had laughs pretty consistently throughout (most notably Charlie’s flashlight/tapeless camcorder, which added a whole other level of absurdity. I absolutely love the idea of Frank, Mac and Charlie trying to shoot news stories with no way of actually recording the video. It suddenly becomes this odd, performance art piece that they didn’t realize they were taking part in). Still, the episode’s highlights came at very the beginning and at the end. First, the title card reading “Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire” coming right after Frank says, “No one is going to get hurt” was yet another classic cold-open — perhaps the most consistently funny parts of the episodes. At the end we were treated to the awfully bizarre yet laugh-worthy sight of Mac, Charlie and Frank producing a conveyor belt with which to “chop cats” thus making the phrase “Let’s chop cats” the surrealist phrase of the week.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 6:29 pm and is filed under FX, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.