It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

2005 - Present

Follows a weird group of friends who run a bar in Philadelphia and get into crazy adventures. As of 2025, it's now the longest-running live action sitcom in television history.

Stars: Rob McElhenny, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olson, Danny DeVito, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, David Hornsby
Created by: Rob McElhenny
Tags: friend group, quirky

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Episode Tropes

Season 1

You are Not the Father: Episode 2, "Charlie Wants an Abortion" (2005). A woman approaches Charlie on a basketball court and tells him he's the father of her son. Charlie starts spending time with the boy, and his mother, feeling guilty, confesses that he's not Charlie's son, but Charlie still wants to take him out so he can convince the Waitress that he's in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
Big Brothers Big Sisters: Episode 2, "Charlie Wants an Abortion" (2005). While at the mall with Charlie's possible son, Charlie and Sweet Dee run into the Waitress, who's there with her "little sister." She tells them she's part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and since Charlie doesn't want her to know he might have a kid, Dee tells the Waitress that Charlie is in the program too, and his potential son is his "little brother."
Past Due Prom: Episode 3, "Underage Drinking: A National Concern" (2005). A bunch of high school students start coming into the bar, and three of them get flirty with Charlie, Dennis, and Sweet Dee, which leads to all three of them getting asked to the prom, and of course, Mac tags along.
We Were Robbed: Episode 4, "Gun Fever" (2005). The gang comes to work to find that the bar has been robbed and their safe is missing, and the police aren't doing anything about it, so Mac and Dennis decide to conduct their own investigation, but they go after the wrong guy, and Charlie confesses that he was the one who robbed the bar as part of an ill-conceived insurance fraud scheme to help him pay his rent.
Giving Up the Gun: Episode 4, "Gun Fever" (2005). After the bar gets robbed, Mac and Dennis buy a gun and set up a sting operation so they can shoot the burglar, but they end up accidentally grazing Charlie's head. When they visit Charlie in his hospital bed, Mac and Dennis tell Charlie and Sweet Dee that they're getting rid of the gun, but when Dee leaves the room, they tell Charlie they were lying and they're keeping it.

Season 2

ToupÃ©e or Not ToupÃ©e: Episode 4, "Mac Bangs Dennis's Mom" (2006). Frank sends Mac to his ex-wife's house to get his toupÃ©e so he can wear it on a date with an old girlfriend named Angie, who isn't quite as wild as she used to be, so later he drags Mac to a club so he can try out his toupÃ©e on some younger ladies.
Raging Bull&@!: Episode 5, "Hundred Dollar Baby" (2006). After the guys abandon Sweet Dee in an alley with a mugger, Frank insists on training her in boxing. At the gym, Frank's old opponent and his daughter trash talk them, so Dee challenges the daughter to a fight, but after a strange woman sells her some "performance enhancing supplements," Dee gets overly aggressive, and when Charlie takes some of her pills, she challenges him to a fight, and both of them get arrested, so Frank decides to fight his old buddy, and he and knocks out both him and his daughter with one punch.
Coach from Hell: Episode 6, "The Gang Gives Back" (2006). The gang has to do community service, and Dennis, Mac, and Sweet Dee are assigned to coach opposing basketball teams. Frank executes a hostile takeover of Dennis's team and bribes the star player on to stay home to fix the game and rob his Vietnamese gambling buddies. Meanwhile, Dennis and Mac coach their respective teams to play dirty, and when the big game starts, it quickly descends into complete chaos.
Miracle Image: Episode 7, "The Gang Exploits a Miracle" (2006). Mac tells the rest of the gang that he sees the Virgin Mary in a stain on a wall in the bar, and Frank instantly decides to exploit it for money. People pour into the bar, paying to see the stain, but when Frank brings in an elderly priest to bless it, the priest instead pees on it, obscuring the stain and exposing the gang as false prophets.
Election: Episode 8, "The Gang Runs for Office" (2006). Frank tells the gang some story about how people who run for office just do it so they can get bribed to drop out, so they decide to nominate Dennis for "zone 3 comptroller." After lots of backstabbing, shaky alliances, and shady deals, Dennis loses interest and drops out of the race, leaving Mac to collect a bribe from a union, but the union turns him into the police, and he has to pay off two cops to avoid going to jail.

Season 3

Take Good Care of My Baby: Episode 1, "The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby" (2007). The gang finds a baby in the dumpster outside the bar, and they don't know what to do with him, while Mac and Sweet Dee try to exploit him for money by making him a child actor, Charlie thinks the baby is the lovechild of Frank and the waitress (he's not), so he rants at the waitress, and she calls CPS just in time.
Gender Bender: Episode 2, "The Gang Gets Invincible" (2007). When Sweet Dee hears that Mac and Dennis are going to an open tryout for the Eagles, she wants to try out too, but the guys tell her she can't because she's a woman. To spite them, Dee pretends to be a man named "Cole Armstrong" and tries out for the team, but she breaks her foot the first time she kicks a football.
Dear Diary: Episode 3, "Dennis and Dee's Mom is Dead" (2007). Dennis and Sweet Dee's mom dies and leaves Dennis her huge house, where Charlie discovers Dee's old diary and asks a guy named Ernesto to read it to him for a laugh, but Ernesto doesn't find it funny. He feels badly for the pathetic Dee, who was known in high school as "The Aluminum Monster" due to her metal back brace. Impressionable Charlie starts to get upset too, and soon he and Ernesto are both sobbing as they read the rest of the diary.
Hostage Situation: Episode 4, "The Gang Gets Held Hostage" (2007). The McPoyles invade Paddy's Pub and hold the gang hostage just to torment them because they hate them, but after several hours, the gang realize the McPoyles' gun wasn't even real, and they could have left at any time.
Ashes to Ashes: Episode 7, "The Gang Sells Out" (2007). Frank gets his old '50s biker gang/doo-wop group back together, and one of them passes away. They hold a funeral where they pour his ashes (from a cardboard box) into a flaming trashcan, sending them flying into the air and making them all cough.
America's Most Wanted: Episode 10, "Mac is a Serial Killer" (2007). There's a serial killer going around murdering young, blonde women, and Mac has been acting very strangely, staying out all night, and coming back with scratches on his neck, so Frank believes Mac is the serial killer, he and Charlie follow Mac around, search his room, and interview his mom for evidence. Meanwhile, Mac's actual secret is that he's in a relationship with a transgender woman, and he doesn't want the rest of the gang to know.
World Record: Episode 11, "Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender" (2007). Charlie tries to break the world record for holding his breath, but he quits just a few seconds before the record.
American Gigolo: Episodes 12-13, "The Gang Gets Whacked" (2007). Frank comes up with a money-making plan to make Dennis an escort. He takes Dennis to a country club and pimps him out to rich old ladies.
Horsing Around: Episode 13, "The Gang Gets Whacked: Part 2" (2007). Charlie makes friends with some jockeys and starts planning to buy a horse with the money he and Sweet Dee will get from selling some cocaine they found, but they start getting high on their own supply and get hooked on it. When they realize they have no cocaine left, they plan to run, and Charlie reveals his friend, Peter Nincompoop, who is a horse he's keeping in the alley.
Neighborhood Watch: Episode 14, "Bums: Making a Mess All Over the City" (2007). After they catch a homeless man masturbating outside the bar, the gang decides to take action. Mac and Sweet Dee join the neighborhood watch, but they're not happy just watching, so they go rogue, don uniforms based on the "Guardian Angels," and roam the city with a baseball bat.
Performance Evaluations: Episode 15, "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off" (2007). Frank decides to do some employee evaluations. He hands the rest of the gang long packets to fill out, and tells them he's ranked all of them, and not filling out the packets will affect their ranks At first the gang is annoyed, but when they hear about the ranking system, they're all in.
Dance Contest: Episode 15, "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off" (2007). Charlie signs Paddy's Pub up for a dance competition and accidentally puts the bar down as the prize, so the gang has to dance their asses off to keep someone else from winning it.

Season 4

Grave Mistake: Episodes 5-6, "Mac & Charlie Die" (2008). To avoid getting killed by Mac's ex-con dad, Mac and Charlie fake a suicide pact by making a video suicide note and crashing Sweet Dee's car, and the police report them to Dee as dead, so the gang holds a funeral in the bar while Mac and Charlie camp out on the roof. While Dee is riding the bus because her car was totalled, she sees Mac and Charlie through the window and realizes they're alive.
No Joke: Episode 9, "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life" (2008). To give Charlie a glimpse of what it's like to be her, Sweet Dee takes him to a night club open mic night, where she tries to do standup every night. She gets up on stage and quickly bombs while dry-heaving from nerves.
Make-a-wish: Episode 9, "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life" (2008). To help Dennis spice up his memoirs, Frank and Mac are on a mission to meet Bon Jovi. When they find out he owns the Philadelphia Soul, they visit the team's office, where Mac dons a bald cap and claims he's dying of cancer, and it's his last wish to have Bon Jovi play a personal concert for him.
We'll Put on a Musical: Episode 13, "The Nightman Cometh" (2008). Charlie announces that he has written a musical called "The Nightman Cometh" about his mysterious Nightman character he often talks about, and the rest of the gang happily agrees to perform it with Charlie directing and Artemis assisting.

Season 5

Intervention: Episode 4, "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" (2009). Frank's wild, drunken behavior is getting out of hand, so the gang decides to give him an intervention. They bring a therapist to the bar to lead it, and as with most things they do, it devolves into chaos.
See You in Court: Episode 6, "The World Series Defense" (2009). Dennis racks up a "massive amount of parking tickets," and the whole gang goes to court to contest it by telling a story about when the Phillies won the World Series.
Trapped: Episode 6, "The World Series Defense" (2009). While trying to sneak into Citizens Bank Park to see the World Series, the gang wanders into a linen closet below a hotel and gets locked inside for six days.

Season 6

Home Sweet Office: Episode 6, "Dennis Gets Divorced" (2010). Dennis gets married on a whim and throws Mac out of his apartment. With nowhere else to go Mac starts sleeping at the bar.
Two Sides of the Story: Episode 7, "Who Got Dee Pregnant?" (2010). Sweet Dee announces that she's pregnant, and that one of the gang knocked her up during the Halloween party, but the whole gang was drunk that night, so they try to figure out what happened by sharing their respective versions of the story, which are all drastically different, so they visit the McPoyles, who drank nothing but milk the whole night (as usual), for an unbiased version.
Time Capsule: Episode 8, "Who Got Dee Pregnant?" (2010). The gang opens a time capsule they buried 10 years ago and find a photo of Schmitty, who was part of the original gang long before Frank came along, and Mac and Dennis have fond memories of him, so they decide to invite Schmitty back into the gang.
Stranded: Episode 11, "The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods" (2010). While on the way to an animal rights fundraiser, Frank takes a "shortcut" through the woods to avoid tolls, and Mac yanks the steering wheel to keep Frank from hitting a squirrel, causing the car to crash and leaving them stranded in the woods.
Who Brings a Dog to a Leg Funeral?: Episode 11, "The Gang Gets Stranded in the Woods" (2010). While stranded in the woods, Frank, Mac, and Sweet Dee find a dead crow, bury it, and have a funeral for it.
A Christmas Carol: Episode 13, "A Very Sunny Christmas" (2010). To get back at Frank for always buying the presents they wanted for himself, Dennis and Sweet Dee track down Frank's old business partner, who Frank thinks is dead, and convince him to help them stage A Christmas Carol.

Season 7

Pretty Woman: Episode 1, "Frank's Pretty Woman" (2011). Frank announces that he's getting married to a crack addict hooker named Roxy, and Sweet Dee decides to re-enact Pretty Woman with her. She takes Roxy to a designer store, and she causes a scene with a $500 jacket. The salesman is convinced Roxy can't afford the jacket, but Roxy takes out a huge wad of cash and gets him in trouble with his boss.
Tax Audit: Episode 4, "Sweet Dee Gets Audited" (2011). After Sweet Dee acts a surrogate for Carmen and her husband and makes $30,000, and when she tries to claim the baby on her taxes, she gets audited by the IRS and has to scramble to find a baby by 3pm.
Sneaking Around: Episode 9, "The Gang Gets Trapped" (2011). The gang misunderstands a newspaper article, and Dennis, Sweet Dee, and Frank sneak into a house to steal an antique vase, but the home owners come home early, trapping them in a closet.
School Reunion: Episodes 12-13, "The High School Reunion" (2011). The gang attends their high school reunion. Frank tries to join them, but he's stopped at the door for obvious reasons, so he takes a nickname that says "Nikki," and they each find ways to embarrass themselves.

Character Tropes

Idiot Savant: Charlie Kelly - Played by Charlie Day.
Mommie Dearest: Barbara Reynolds - Played by Anne Archer.