Every ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Main Character’s Least-Terrible Moment

Even with rage untethered, the Golden God is not without mercy.

In the city of Philadelphia, the most selfish, sociopathic and all-around awful alcoholics all hang out in Paddy’s Pub where they devise new schemes to be even more destructive to their surroundings. In every successive season on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee and Frank find new lows to which they collectively sink as they steal, cheat and kidnap their way through each episode. But, on the rarest of occasions, each member of the gang has shown an ability to be altruistic in spite of themselves. 

It’s easy to list all of the most horrible things that the main cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has done throughout the show’s 16 seasons and counting. It’s also very fun, and it makes for a proper “best of” compilation that exemplifies the show’s wonderfully dark sense of humor. However, today, we’re going to examine the other side of that coin and determine the moments that best brought out what little humanity the Paddy’s Pub crew has left.

If we had to pick Frank’s most noble quality, it would have to be how he definitely does not diddle kids — sometimes, he even doesn’t diddle them in a song. Like most of the “selfless” acts on this list, Frank jumping in front of the hose to protect the daughter of the owner of Paddy’s Pub’s biggest rival from exposure in “The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation” wasn’t completely altruistic, as I can’t imagine the bar would have stayed on the official pub crawl list if they found out that the Paddy’s Pub wet T-shirt contest featured contestants who could have been one of Frank Reynolds’ Little Beauties.

First, the obligatory caveats — yes, Dee only did her surrogacy scheme to make money. And, yes, she probably lied to Carmen and Nick about her experiences with drug addiction as well as her generally checkered health history like she lied to her first marks with their impeccable pool. But, at the end of the day, Dee managed to carry a healthy baby to full term so that a transgender woman and her comfortably heterosexual partner could become parents, and that’s a more beautiful act than anything she’s done since. And, the episode “Dee Gives Birth” created the opportunity for another act of “selflessness”…

In every other episode of It’s Always Sunny, Dennis treats his oft-abused sister like he wouldn’t care if she were set on fire in front of him. But, for one brief moment, the Golden God channeled his rage into abusing a woman other than Dee who, in his mind, stood between his sister and the working TV necessary to make Dee's birth plan complete. 

A runner-up for the typically predatory leader of the gang is the surprise party that he and Mac organized for Charlie in “Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats,” but I couldn’t attribute that one solely to Dennis seeing as Mac had an equal part in the planning and none of it would have happened if Frank didn’t try to trick them into throwing him a birthday party.

Now, of course, it barely took a day for Mac and Dee to slather D.B. in shoe polish to appeal to casting directors who wanted a more diverse baby, and the Child Protective Services caseworker rightfully took D.B. out of Mac’s care. And, even when he was D.B.’s adopted father, Mac didn’t do much heavy lifting in the child care department. But, for one brief moment, Mac stepped up to give a home to an unwanted child, and, without his scheme to turn D.B. into a star, that baby may not have been taken in by the professionals who actually know how to take care of parentless children. 

While there’s certainly an argument to be made that Frank initiated the life-saving with his hate speech, it was Charlie who put his own life at risk in order to save Mac from an early, Looney Tunes-esque demise in “Hero or Hate Crime?” And, of all the “altruistic” acts on this list, this one comes closer to being truly selfless than most, seeing as Charlie couldn’t have known that Mac was holding a $10,000 scratch-off lottery ticket when he launched into the flying kick that saved his sometimes-closeted friend. Ironically, this is also the only time in Mac’s life that karate actually helped him out of a jam.