It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "Pop-Pop: The Final Solution" Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow...

"You see free soup, you make a decision to eat it!"

Ugh, what were Mac and Charlie eating anyhow?  It looked like old, cold French Onion soup without the cheese.  At least that's the horrible taste I imagined when they were slurping it.

Yes, the Always Sunny gang is back for Season 8 (wow!) and kicking things off with a good old fashioned Nazi treasure hunt. Specifically, Adolph Hitler's priceless, hokey painting of a German Shepherd. A dog that Hitler must of of lost, mourned, and, according to Charlie, used an an excuse to exact vengeance upon the entire world. "Pop-Pop: The Final Solution" wasn't always killer, but it was still a decent enough way to open up the season given that we're now eight years deep into the rancid exploits of the wonderfully filthy and stupid denizens of Paddy's Pub.

The highlight of this one, for me, was Dennis and Sweet Dee discovering that they went to a racist Nazi youth camp when they were young, clearly not remembering the details of what the irate counselor was screaming at them in his speeches. But what caused them to take a trip down Aryan memory lane? Well, their dearly beloved, and currently rotting, Pop-Pop is being kept alive in a death-soaked, soup-filled hospital room by tubes and they have to decide whether or not to pull the plug on the old bastard.

Shorter cable seasons, and the ability to say just about everything except "f***" on FX, have helped preserve this show, keeping it mostly fresh a long while. But we're still years and years deep into Always Sunny and it's become harder to shock us with the gang's outrageous antics. I still expect to get two or three gems out of Season 8, like Season 7's "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore" and "Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games," but I'm afraid this premiere wasn't the treasure I was hoping for. But it did show, like the Jersey Shore episode, that there's still comedy to be mined from Dennis and Dee misremembering their clearly effed-up formative years.

While Dennis and Dee went back and forth on whether or not to kill their creepy, corpse-like Pop-Pop, who was lying in a room that felt like something out of the movie Seven, Mac and Charlie were on the hunt! In a story that's sure to be adapted later into a big-budgeted "Ryan Gosling as Indiana Jones" Da Vinci Code-style thriller. It's always fun to watch these two spiral into insanity only to revisit their entire idea at the end and discover that one of them was just lying the whole time. This time it's Charlie, who was just pretending to think the dog painting was worth millions to get Mac to help him look for his favorite painting. Except, of course, Charlie had good reason to actually believe the picture could have been worth something. He just chose not to think that.

So throw in a few tasteless jokes about gassing, dog executions and a slight nod to dental torture and you've got yourself an Always Sunny stew goin'! All so that Frank, Mac and Charlie could get their hands on an "original Hitler." "It belongs in a museum!" Mac screamed, channeling his inner-Indiana. Brian Unger appeared, once again, as the gang's beleaguered attorney, providing us with one normal "real life" character to sync up with amidst the craziness. David Hornsby was also back as Cricket, with a wicked new scar on this face and a new job cleaning up giant Mastiff diarrhea at the local pound.

Not a total riot, but when placed side-by-side next to all the new, horrible network comedies that popped up this Fall,"Pop-Pop: The Final Solution" was a masterpiece. By Always Sunny standards though, it was okay.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and on IGN at mattfowler. No other choice you will ever make will be as easy and render such a great reward.

Source : ign[dot]com