It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 5 [Blu-ray]

Nitwit comedy par excellence, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Complete Season 5 hits Blu-ray with the show’s typical combination of idiot hijinks, fun mean-spiritedness, and jovial profanity. With the cast members of the long-running FX series firmly in place and spreading their own brand of demented glee through twelve ludicrously silly episodes, season five is laugh-out-loud funny for much of its length. And what doesn’t work isn’t prolonged enough to matter. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia combines some of the physical wackiness of The Three Stooges comedies with the verbal madness of the Marx Brothers. It may be a cable comedy series, but these lovable losers pack a lot of funny into a typical 21-minute episode. Every line in every episode may not make everyone laugh, but those viewers with even the slightest sense of humor should find some parts of it hysterical.

Siblings Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Dee (Kaitlin Olson), their father Frank (Danny DeVito), and buddies Charlie (Charlie Day) and Mac (Rob McElhenney) are off on another season of wacky adventures, everything from taking a road trip to the Grand Canyon (of course, they never get out of Philly) to deciding to stage a wrestling show for the troops and engaging a washed-up wrestler (guest star Roddy Piper) to assist them. There are also episodes that revolve around Dee wanting to take on surrogacy to earn big bucks as well as a beautifully staged courtroom appearance as the guys defend overdue parking tickets collected during the World Series. Along the way, additional guest stars like Patricia Belcher as the impatient judge in the court case and Mary Lynn Rajskub as the girl with the hots for Dennis add merriment to the proceedings.

The four young members of the cast plus veteran Danny DeVito are so experienced with their roles now that playing these child-adults one step above morons is effortless, and their ensemble camaraderie, essential for the comedy to work when the jokes are lame, is exemplary. True, a little of Danny DeVito can go a long way, but it’s all in the service of laughter, and the result is hilarity, robust and continual.

Here are the twelve episodes contained on two discs in this fifth season Blu-ray set. The names is parentheses are the participants on that episode’s audio commentary:

1 – The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis

2 – The Gang Hits the Road (Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Danny DeVito)

3 – The Great Recession

4 – The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention (Danny DeVito, Dr. Drew)

5 – The Waitress Is Getting Married (Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olson, Glenn Howerton)

6 – World Series Defense

7 – The Gang Wrestles for the Troops (Danny DeVito, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson)

8 – Paddy’s Pub: Home of the Original Kitten Mittens

9 – Mac and Dennis Break Up (Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, Dr. Drew)

10 – The D.E.N.N.I.S. System

11 – Mac and Dennis Write a Movie

12 – The Gang Reignites the Rivalry (Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton)

Video Quality

The special is framed at 1.78:1 and is presented in 1080p using the AVC codec. An introductory segment stresses that the image is upconverted standard definition photography, and that short sequence does look very terrible indeed with a soft, fuzzy picture and loads of video artifacts. The episodes themselves are fairly sharp and clear and nicely saturated. True, the Philadelphia inserts between scenes are horrible looking with smeared color and lots of compression artifacts and softness, but the rest of the disc looks as good as it can look under the low budget circumstances of the recording and the upconversion. Each episode has been divided into 5 chapters.

Audio Quality

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is mostly talk sent to the center channel and appropriate music cues which land in the fronts and rears and are almost the only immersive elements of the soundtrack. There is some use of the rears during the wrestling match as the crowd cheers on their favorites, but elsewhere, no effort has been made to add any ambient sound in any of the surround channels, and the subwoofer might as well stay off. Still, the recording is solid and all the dialogue is easily discernible.

Special Features

The introductory standard definition alert vignette runs for 1 ¼ minutes and is in 480i.

The pilot episode of Archer is presented in 1080p and runs 21 ½ minutes.

There are audio commentaries for half of the season’s episodes, none of which are groundbreaking moments offering vital information. The participants mainly watch and laugh along with their show while tossing out occasional comments.

The season’s blooper reel runs 7 ¾ minutes in 480i.

There are ten extended scenes which combined run a total of 19 ¾ minutes. They’re in 480i.

The “Kitten Mittons Endless Loop” shows a succession of images of various cats wearing Charlie’s bright red idea for a money raiser. It’s in 480i.

“The Gang’s Dating Profiles” features various regular and recurring cast members in character ad-libbing responses to an on-line dating service questionnaire. It’s in 480i and runs 4 ½ minutes.

“Schwep’s Dream Sequence” is a 5-minute montage of behind-the-scenes viewing of the cast and crew during production of the series. It’s in 480i.

In Conclusion

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Complete Season 5 finds the lovable loonies of Paddy’s Irish Pub in rare form for their fifth season on the air. The video and audio is of decent quality, the extras are not overly generous but nevertheless fun, and they do give a little idea of the closeness of the cast as they work on this low budget project. Recommended!

Matt Hough

Charlotte, NC