Philly Low Down

Low rent, scabrous, wildly uneven, brazenly overindulgent, in-yer-face, ridiculous, and more often than not, downright laugh-out-loud hilarious, it’s somehow taken me until now, four seasons in, to discover the raw gem sit-com knock-off called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Unarguably for certain tastes only, this barebones half hour depicts the antics of four slackers (three guys, one girl-Kaitlin Olsen-who is a sister to one of the three) and a highly recognizable curmudgeon/geezer (Danny DeVito) who run a bar that seems to do little-to-no business smack in the heart of a vibrantly dumpy Philly. Each of the buds is wholly self-involved and without fear or care about how their antics effect each other, essentially recreating Larry David’s Seinfeld Principle, yet scraping it down to unadulterated artifice and near idiocy. The main men –Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and creator Rob McElhenney, who all wear multiple hats as the dumb-as-a-rock principles, producers and writers—are truly mad (as in funny) men.