An ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Fan Realized That Dee Has Been Living in the McPoyles’ Pad for 15 Seasons

Apparently, when the McPoyle brothers gave Sweet Dee Stockholm syndrome in the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode “The Gang Gets Held Hostage,” they also gave her the key to their apartment.

Up until a couple of hours ago, I had always thought that, out of five members of the Paddy’s Pub crew, Sweet Dee had the least insane living situation by a wide margin. Charlie and Frank’s situation demands no lengthy explanation for why the piles of garbage, cans of urine and knives of toe make their apartment an absurdist hellhole. However, Dennis and Mac’s flat may have been even more nightmarish than Charlie and Frank’s place, even before it caught on fire, considering the traps Dennis has installed for his targets. But Dee’s place, where Mac and Dennis crashed for a couple of seasons while their own abode was out of commission and where cat food is eaten exclusively by cats, had always been the most normal home in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia — that is, before we learned about its previous tenants. 

In the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia subreddit, a fan recently pointed out that the apartment where Charlie visits the McPoyles in the Season One episode “Charlie Gets Molested” is the same flat where Dee is shown to live starting in Season Three. She really is a trashbag.

In terms of the “lore” implications of Dee living in the McPoyles’ apartment, we could reasonably assume that, after the McPoyle brothers faced legal trouble from Charlie ratting them out at the end of “Charlie Gets Molested,” they lose their apartment, allowing Dee to fill the vacancy. Dee is first seen living in the apartment in the Season Three opener “The Gang Finds A Dumpster Baby” when Mac temporarily moves in with her while they take care of the baby, so it’s unlikely that she was drawn to the place due to any latent Stockholm symptoms seeing as the McPoyles wouldn’t take the gang hostage for another three episodes.

In practicality, the production of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia has had to operate on a limited budget, especially in the early seasons, and reusing certain sets or locations made sense in a time when every individual frame of the show wasn’t obsessively analyzed by a massive online fanbase. However, it’s more fun to assume that Dee snagged Liam and Ryan’s place when they went to prison — it’s still better than taking an eye.