It’s Always Sunny: “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” To Dire Results

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” goes about as well as you’d expect. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia has run for fourteen seasons and counting and follows the Paddy’s Pub gang and their comically inept schemes. In stark contrast to most feel-good sitcoms like Friends, this gang is a vile collection of losers with little in the way of redeeming qualities. The show itself is never afraid to touch on dark topics, and it gets away with some decidedly non-PC humor due to the nastiness of the characters delivering it and the fact they’re all idiots.

For a show that came real close to being cancelled at the end of its first season, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia somehow survived to become one of the longest-running, live-action sitcoms in TV history. To put that in perspective, it beat shows like Cheers and The Big Bang Theory, and while another season has yet to be confirmed, it likely happen due to its enduring popularity.

On the surface, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” is about another madcap scheme. A garbage men strike in Philadelphia prompts Paddy’s Pub to cook up a plan to collect trash for money. Mac, Charlie, and Dennis are in charge of this part, but instead of listening to Frank’s straightforward plan, they hire tuxedos and a white limo to go trash collecting, while Frank and Dee try to win the city contract away from the union. That’s the plot in a nutshell, but the episode itself is intensely meta.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” is essentially a clip show, compiling a selection of storylines, quotes, and ideas from the show’s past. The plot is inspired by season 4’s “The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis” where they concoct a similar scheme, while “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” also ends with the Ghostbusters theme playing. The episode opens with numerous callbacks to the point Dee is constantly pointing out the deja vu, while her horrible racist caricature Martina Martinez also returns briefly; hell, even the title itself is a meta gag.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s “The Gang Tries Desperately To Win An Award” from season 9 went for a similar tone. That episode poked fun at the show’s own lack of award recognition when compared to more user-friendly sitcoms, as the gang tries – and fails – to tone down their edginess to become mainstream. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s “The Gang Recycles Their Trash” is an odd experiment but it works because it gamely commits to the idea, and fans will have a field day spotting every easter egg. Needless to say, the scheme backfires and despite an attempt to learn from their mistakes, they soon move on to the next ridiculous, doomed idea.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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