It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 17 Somehow Delivers The Series' Darkest Moment Ever

Hey jabronis, there are big spoilers for season 17 of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" ahead, as well as discussion of suicide. 

The long-running sitcom series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has gone to some seriously dark places over the years, with both boundary-pushing jokes and some plain old pitch-black humor. The original series pilot was based around Charlie (Charlie Day) telling Dennis (Glenn Howerton) that he had cancer and Dennis just wanting to go play basketball (elements that eventually ended up in the season 1 episode "Charlie Has Cancer"), so morbid humor has been a part of the series from the beginning. Since then, the gang have both intentionally and inadvertently caused the total destruction of several people's lives and have even probably gotten people killed, but in the season 17 episode "The Gang Goes to a Dog Track," the series goes to arguably its bleakest place yet. 

The series has made jokes surrounding suicide before, with the entirety of the season 14 episode "Paddy's Has a Jumper" centered around a suicidal man on the bar's roof and the gang's typical but horrible reactions. They also showed former high school classmate Bill Ponderosa on an intentionally self-destructive bender in "Mac Kills His Dad" and the guys fairly regularly joke about Dee (Kaitlin Olson) being suicidal after they bully her too hard, but season 17 takes the jokes a step further for two of their darkest punchlines yet. The gang have done some pretty awful things over the years, but it's never been presented quite like this.

In "The Gang Goes To A Dog Track," Dennis and Dee get addicted to gambling through Frank (Danny DeVito) increasingly upping the ante. He tells the gang that he wanted to go to the West Virginia track because he owned part of the stud rights to a dog named "Pennies From Heaven" and had business to work out before the track was closed down. While he gets Dennis and Dee to do increasingly degrading things in order to try and win back money they've lost to him, eventually culminating in Dennis collecting a semen sample from said dog by hand, Mac (Rob Mac) and Charlie go on their own adventure, trying to "raw dog" their trip and get back to basics. They end up meeting a man named Sparky (Grayson Berry), who walks around the filthy track areas barefoot and seems completely at peace with his no-frills existence. 

Sparky reveals that he's the dogs' caretaker and invites the guys back to his trailer out in the parking lot, because one of the dogs is being retired and he's going to adopt him. Charlie and Mac are impressed by Sparky's attitude, but then they let slip that the track is closing and he goes into the back of the trailer. We hear a gunshot and Mac and Charlie think that maybe he "euthanized" the dog, but then the dog slinks out of the back room and they realize the horrible truth. In typical "Always Sunny" fashion they immediately shirk responsibility and ask each other if they should burn down the trailer. There's an awkward pause and then we're back to the Dennis and Dee depravity, which is pretty grim on its own — but there's a disturbing denouement at the very end. 

In an ending that sort of mirrors the end of "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore" from season 7, the gang looks a little shell-shocked while returning home from their vacation, though this time Charlie and Mac look as traumatized as Dennis and Dee. The entire thing was a set-up contrived by Frank because he had a bet with his friends (the other people in the "owner's box") on whether or not he could get Dennis to do what he did. That means all of Dennis and Dee's debauched behavior was technically pointless, and worse, it's possible that the dog track isn't even closing down and that was just part of Frank's cover story. If Sparky had never met Charlie and Mac, he might have kept on keeping on for quite a while longer. And it gets even worse: the final shot of the episode is his flaming trailer, with the credits playing over it. Oof.

Compared to some of the other gang-influenced deaths on the series, like Dax Shepard's character Jojo lighting himself on fire as part of a cult ritual in the show's spoof on "The Master," Sparky's death is really brutal. The final shot of Jojo's episode at least shows him riding a turtle in outer space (a callback the dream turtle to "Charlie Rules the World"), which seems a whole lot more wholesome than watching a trailer burn. Depending on your sense of humor, the whole thing is either brilliant dark comedy or one bridge too far, but it's definitely a joke for only the most diehard "Sunny" sickos. 

New episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" premiere Wednesdays on FXX and the next day on Hulu. 

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