It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Season 6

I thought next week was going to be the Sunny season finale, but as it turns out they're just airing the Christmas episode they put out on DVD last year. I think it's pretty shady to tell people they can only watch an episode if they pay for it and then air it anyway a year later, but what can you do? At least they're showing it, and it is a pretty darn funny episode. And the twelve new episodes that made up this season were pretty consistently funny as well. There were a couple that clunked a bit, which is prone to happen once in a while with this show, but for the most part I was laughing as much as always. I don't think it quite matched season 5, but it still had a lot of good stuff. Dennis continued to be a highlight week to week, and bits like the gang's interpretation of what a fifth Lethal Weapon movie would be like were great ways to branch out the comedy a bit while still being Sunny.

The biggest thread running through the season was Sweet Dee's pregnancy, mirroring actress Kaitlin Olson's in real life. They were writing around it for a few episodes where she was obviously showing with loose outfits, but it became part of the show in the brilliant Halloween episode where the gang realizes she's pregnant and try to combine their hazy memories in a series of Rashomon-stlye conflicting flashbacks to a drunken party months earlier. The reveal of the real father was a sly callback to a couple of other stories the show's done, and I like how they had a moment of sentiment around the birth in an episode where they reveal that Dee has been berating and nagging all of her old boyfriends into having sex with her for a long time. The show had some good low-profile guests on this season like Jason Sudeikis, Dave Foley, Chad Coleman, and a couple of two-part stories that were integrated a bit more naturally, basically playing as mini-arcs of things like Dennis rushing into and out of marriage and Charlie temporarily taking his custodial talents elsewhere. I always like when a show as goofy as this one at least throws a few bones to the idea of the characters living in a world with continuity and character development, even if at the end of the day they're all the same idiots they were before. There's at least one more season coming, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it.