Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie or TV show coming out that week. This week: In honor of the Olympics, and the Olympic-themed episode of NBC’s Superstore, we’re revisiting our favorite episodes about intra-office competition.
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, “Chardee MacDennis: The Game Of Games” (season seven, episode seven; originally aired 10/27/2011) and “Chardee MacDennis 2: Electric Boogaloo” (season 11, episode one; originally aired 1/6/2016)
As destructive as It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s five main characters can be when they’re making their scabrous ways around the City Of Brotherly Love, The Gang is most dangerous when left to their own devices. Sunny thrives on barely constrained chaos, The Gang’s five-headed madness only not doing greater damage to the rest of the world because of their collective incompetence and self-obsessed stupidity. But it’s when these five people—who only stick together because nobody else will have them—turn inward on each other that the knives come out, sometimes literally. In their home base of Paddy’s Pub—helpfully and understandably bereft of customers most of the time—Sweet Dee, Dennis, Charlie, Mac, and Frank have no one to torment but each other, resulting in, among other things, the game of Olympic-level cruelty, Chardee MacDennis.
Christened “The Game Of Games” (Frank’s later attempt to add “Electric Boogaloo” is not considered canon), Dennis explains that this combination drinking game, gauntlet of physical and emotional abuse, and regulatory chaos came about when, bored out of their minds, The Gang “took aspects of a whole bunch of our favorite games and mashed ’em all together.” Charlie explains mournfully (and more succinctly), “It’s a war.” It’s also the basis for two of the series’ most hilariously concentrated examinations of how The Gang’s insanity can spiral to new depths. In both episodes, the competitive aspect of Chardee MacDennis essentially sees the five worst people in the world challenging each other, not just for Chardee MacDennis dominance, but for title of the worst of the worst.