Mikey Likes TV

14 episodes can stretch out over a loooong period of time. Bravo, for example, can take a half hour of security footage from a designer pet supplies store, dilute it with reruns, reunion specials and third party commentary and get almost a year’s worth of TV. Other networks may not have their skill at making things last, or their strangely specified tastes in programming, but new episodes are new episodes. So in these days of such uncertainty, on the heel of a couple months of impending uncertainty, why did FX feel the need to throw the third season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia at us like angry monkeys would a piles of feces?

The first eight episodes of this past Sunny season were all doubled-up on their Thursday night timeslot. For those of you suffering from a severe math handicap, that’s four hour-long episodes in the beginning, brining the season finale (which took place last week) four weeks early. This stinks on so many levels. Sunny is one of the funniest shows on television. It’s third season was a blessing, and a long overdue one at that, but it came and went to fast it didn’t get anything close to the slow burn it deserved. Amidst new series, and the eternally frustrating first few months of new TV, it was almost completely lost in the hubbub. It’s comedy also doesn’t lend very well to the hour long format – much like The Office – so parts of the season felt a bit more like chores than the tasty TV morsels they would have been standing on their own. If FX is to kindly grant us more Sunny (which seems like an advantageous choice given this season’s ratings), I hope they’ll let us savor it a little more next time around. But I’ll take whatever I can get.

Last week’s episode, “The Gang Dances Their Asses Off,” was as dependably awesome as the rest of this season, but it hardly reached the offensive heights of past season finales (then again, there’ll never be any beating “Charlie Gets Molested”). Charlie signs the bar over to a radio station, so they can give it away to the winner of a dance marathon. The winner of the marathon turns out to be a homeless man who may or may not be returning the bar to Frank, but given Sunny’s disregard for linear storytelling, it will probably never be mentioned again. It should be noted that this, like so many things, was all a result of Charlie’s illiteracy. It also serves as a nice segue into my favorite clip of the season. From “Sweet Dee’s Dating a Retarded Person,” here is Charlie’s performance of “Night Man.” May similar laughs be on the horizon…

Tonight’s double season opener of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia begins with the greatest episode title you’re likely to find of any show this season: “The Gang finds a Dumpster Baby”. If you’re not familiar with Sunny, you should be made aware that this won’t be a metaphor dumpster baby, so consider yourself warned. Not only does the gang find a baby in a dumpster (relax, it’s still alive), they try to make money off of it by painting it with shoe polish to look like “a Mexican.” I don’t want to give away too much, but hijinks do ensue.

The second episode marks the first of three odd directorial cameos by former child star Fred Savage. You may have caught him in one of Sunny‘s recent, more obscene, viral promos. Fortunately, the Savage doesn’t make an actual appearance on camera tonight; that honor is left to The Cosby Show’s Elvin (Geoffrey Owens), who, in the greatest role of his illustrious career, plays himself playing a Donovan McNabb impersonator. You can’t make this shit up, but apparently the Sunny writing staff can.

Though not as good as Dumpster Baby, it’s a pretty stand-up episode – as are the first few of the third season. Sunny really shows no sign of slowing or ever failing to make me feel accepted for my inappropriate sense of humor. Check out my full review of the new season over at Metromix.

Season Three of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia premieres Tonight at 10pm on FX

I’d like to take a moment to get personal. Since its launch at the beginning of the year, comedic coverage here at Mikey Likes TV has been limited almost exclusively to How I Met Your Mother and a handful of exceptional premium cable series. And while I do adore Neil Patrick Harris’ implementation of the word “bro” and Bret and Jemaine singing about the similiarites between people and paper dolls (they’re a similar shape), my heart belongs to another.

For the past two years, the brief, sporadic seasons of FX’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia have provided me with more pee-your-pants and milk-through-your-nose amusement than anything I’ve ever seen on television. So you can imagine my excitement at this morning’s news that MySpace is hosting a web-exclusive episode to promote Sunny‘s September 13th return to prime time. The episode itself isn’t exceptional, but it does whet the appetite for the 10 glorious half-hours of unabashed obscenity that will soon follow.

Sunny‘s reliance on offensive subject matters is so near and dear to my heart, it’s as if they snuck into my mind and catered each episode to my sick sense of humor. This season’s storylines include babies in dumpsters, sweatshops and promises of love in exchange for drugs – not to mention old standbys like racism and homosexual incest. To make the wait more tolerable, watch the MySpace episode that dissects the anatomy of a serial killer and even boasts a scene of pimp-speak. If that’s still not enough for you, Ducky Does TV has been kind enough to collect all of Sunny’s Apple-inspired advertisements that have been running on FX. September 13th cannot possibly come soon enough.