TV RECAP: ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods’

I never would have thought that I’d see Tom Sizemore make a cameo in Sunny, but he seems like a perfect fit among The Gang, playing Byron, the married trucker with a penchant for male prostitutes (“Treat me like a mailbox: Just shove anything you want in there”) who picks up Charlie and Dennis when they get titularly stranded in the woods.

That’s just one of the many highlights in an episode where The Gang heads to Atlantic City for an animal rights convention Frank endows simply so he can show up in a leather coat and tell off the activists—and so Mac can meet his idol Chase Utley (and on a lesser note for Dee to meet and seduce Ryan Howard, despite Frank’s observation that she’s “pregnant as shit”).

However, Frank doesn’t want to cough up any change for the “toll jockeys,” so he’s taking the backroads, and a chance encounter with a squirrel ends up totaling the vehicle. Frank, Mac, and Dee stay behind to scrounge up some food while Charlie and Dennis foot it for a ride, which takes us back to Tom Sizemore’s trucker.

Charlie and Dennis is one of my favorite pairings; Charlie’s bizarre host of talents and willingness to do almost anything and Dennis’ serial-killer charm make them ideal con men, and there’s a nice recognition of that dynamic when Charlie poses as Frank to deliver a speech to the animal-lovers (complete with him “making it rain” dolla bills, “FOR THE RATS!”). And Dennis takes up the role of Mac so he can drink heavily with Utley and Howard.

I enjoyed the uncharacteristically upbeat plotline with Charlie and Dennis (Charlie winning $15,000 at roulette and spending the bulk of it on a private jet for he and Dennis is a nice little reward for poor Charlie), but the best lines, as usual, belong to Frank, who goes into Elmer Fudd mode when he stalks wabbit—and then gets caught in its stare and concludes that its stolen his soul.

There isn’t too much for Dee and Mac to do, but overall the episode doesn’t have any dead spots—Utley and Howard don’t offer too much, but their nonplussed-to-creeped-out reactions to Charlie and Dennis is funny enough on its own, and Sizemore finds the right note of menace and perversity that I hope (though doubt) he’ll return.

Not the best episode, but solid all the way.