Who's the most pathetic character on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia?

Let's attempt the impossible and count down the long-running sitcom's most wretched personalities

By Jenna Scherer | June 29, 2023 | 2:30am

TV Features Charlie Kelly

Who's the most pathetic character on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia?

Glenn Howerton as Dennis, Kaitlin Olson as Sweet Dee, David Hornsby as Cricket, Charlie Day as Charlie, Danny DeVito as Frank (Photo: Patrick McElhenney/FX) Graphic: Karl Gustafson

You’d think that after 18 years, TV’s longest-running sitcom would have jumped the shark more than once. But over its run, Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton’s filthy comedy has never so much as strapped on a pair of water skis.

Now in its 16th season, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is still firing on all cylinders, following the misadventures of four sociopaths and an idiot who are firing on no cylinders. (Yes, that’s a terrible car metaphor. Just go with it.) What makes the show’s staying power even more remarkable is that Mac (McElhenney), Dennis (Howerton), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), Frank (Danny DeVito), and Charlie (Charlie Day) have barely evolved as people over the years. It should get old, yeah, but it never does.

A huge part of Always Sunny’s appeal is that the Paddy’s Pub crew and the people around them are the most pathetic lot you’ll ever meet. But without an ounce of self-awareness between them, they don’t have the foggiest idea how awful their lives are. With that in mind, here’s our rundown of how the characters we love to hate—and hate to love—have fared over the past couple of seasons, ranked from least to most wretched.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia | Season 16 Official Trailer | FX

10. Mrs. Mac (Least Pathetic)

Sandy Martin - Stop Talking To Me Like I’m An Asshole!

Listen, Mac’s mom (Sandy Martin) is so cool that I want to be her. While her son and his friends lose their shit around her, she’s the calm eye of the storm—a monolith of a woman who sits around chain-smoking like a queen on her throne, only speaking up to deliver the most devastating takedowns this side of the Eastern Seaboard. She earns gratis smokes (a steal!) when she agrees to tell Mac that his father was secretly Dutch so that he’ll shut up about his proud Irish heritage. That said, the reveal that she used to punish her son as a child by putting out cigarettes on his skin? Not great! But if we’re grading on an Always Sunny curve, she’s positively thriving.

9. The Monkey Bartender

Dee Is Replaced by a Monkey | It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia - Season 15 Ep.4 | FXX

The only fully CGI character in Always Sunny history is also the best bartender Paddy’s Pub has ever seen—depending on your definition of “best.” Assuming that Dee is going through menopause (though she was actually, of course, Method acting), the boys decide to cut her out of the business, joking that they could get a monkey to do her job. Frank, of course, takes this literally and shows up with a trained primate who proceeds to pour them the most delicious beers they’ve ever tasted. After a night of blackout drinking, Charlie, Mac, Dennis, and Frank wake up to find that the monkey has vanished and—there’s no way to soft-pedal this—attacked them and ejaculated into their mouths. Sure, they found his rotting body under the bar a few episodes later. But for 24 hours, that monkey was the smartest guy in the room.

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8. Shelley Kelly

Perhaps it’s thanks to its nonstop nihilism that, when this show decides to toss in some sentiment, it feels deeply earned. That’s the case when, while the gang is on vacation in Ireland, Charlie goes on a quest to find his old pen pal—who turns out to be the father he’s never met. As played by Irish acting stalwart Colm Meaney, Shelley is a (mostly) lovely man who’s a cheese monger—or, as translated in Charlie’s brain, a “cheese mongrel”—in an idyllic coastal town. He welcomes his idiot son with open arms, and Charlie finds a dad who’s ten thousand times better than his fake dad, Frank. Father and son share some beautiful bonding moments, even as Shelley reveals himself to be an old-school misogynist who believes all women are banshees. But it all comes crashing down when he suddenly dies from COVID, which he caught from Frank, who caught it from Dennis. Being around anyone with the last name Reynolds is, it turns out, extremely bad for your health.

7. Charlie Kelly

Of the Paddy’s Pub crew, Charlie is the closest thing to a good person. Not that we come to Always Sunny for good people; but how can you not root for this little dummy with his puppy-dog eyes and his inability to understand that states can have more than one city in them? Charlie’s wins always turn into losses in the end, but he has a few: He spends quality time with his long-lost father; gets the gang to fund his investment in the world’s last box of vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja pies; and proves that, in fact, he can read—but only Gaelic. Yes, his sisters deny him his family inheritance (a jar of teeth) and he makes himself ill from drinking a horrendous concoction called Nickelschläger. But when the rest of the gang agrees to help Charlie carry Shelley’s corpse up a mountain and throw it into the sea, it’s the closest any of them come to admitting that they have the capacity to love.

6. Bryan Cranston

Always Sunny gets in on the famous-actors-playing-themselves game in “Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab” (out June 28), in which Cranston and Aaron Paul come to Philly to promote their custom mezcal brand. Naturally, Dennis and Mac want to get in on the ground floor; so they furiously pitch the pair—who, they point out, are most famous for Malcolm In The Middle, in which Paul starred as Malcolm and Cranston played “Mr. Middle.” When the time the gang lures the two onto Frank’s private jet, we find out the truth: Paul has seized control of Cranston’s life after he blew all his money thanks to a gambling addiction. Now, the latter has been forced into his former costar’s moneymaking scheme and is forbidden from shaking strangers’ hands. All that’s left for Cranston is reminiscing about his days treading the boards on Broadway and hotboxing the stench of Charlie’s vomit. How the mighty have fallen.

5. Mac McDonald

Everyone has their own way of coping with the terrible economy; Mac’s is to invest in inflatable furniture and save money by subsisting solely on a bulk supply of “fancy” nuts. An untreated allergy to the latter brings him to the brink of death before his friends finally take him to the hospital. Mac also continues to suffer in the dating realm thanks to his low standards: He’s in love with a guy named Johnny he’s never even spoken with who keeps ghosting him but does “communicate” via remote-controlled anal beads. That “Johnny” was secretly Dennis all along only makes matters worse. Mac’s biggest crisis, however, is learning that he’s not actually Irish—one of the core tenets of his identity, along with being gay and being “a badass.” After a disastrous flirtation with the Catholic priesthood, he learns that he is Irish after all; the whole thing was a ruse to get him to shut up about how Irish he is. But listen, the man has a shamrock tattoo! There’s nothing more legit than that.

4. Rickety Cricket

Though we haven’t seen a ton of our ol’ pal Cricket (David Hornsby) recently, he makes a memorable appearance in this season’s “The Gang Gets Cursed,” when he, yes, lays a curse on Mac for going back on a business deal and calling him “street trash.” (He can speak fluent Latin, though! Thanks, priesthood.) Still, he agrees to go on a stakeout with Mac for the low, low price of a six pack. Well, actually … a four pack, because Mac drank two of the beers. Well, actually … two beers and two bottles of piss, because Mac drank four of them. But Cricket’s cool with it (“I’m glad just to have a beverage”); he even lifts the curse. It’s not all bad for our resident tweaker, however: He’s become a businessman, by which I mean a pimp. (It’s a step up from getting sexually assaulted by feral dogs, at least?) After Dennis explains away the gang’s bad fortune, Cricket asks how he can make his own abysmal luck turn around. “You got a dark cloud following you around. That’s all there is to it,” Frank tells him, as they walk off to abandon Cricket in a pet cemetery. Better luck next time, bud.

3. Dennis Reynolds

No characters on television are more myopic than the Always Sunny gang (with the possible exception of ). But when it comes to self-delusion, Dennis (Glenn Howerton) blows everyone out of the water—or, as the case may be, out of the COVID-induced lung fluid. Assiduously denying the very obvious fact that he has the ’rona until he winds up in the hospital is just the tip of the pathetic iceberg for Dennis. He goes full Jack Torrance while staying at a sketchy Irish castle with Dee, convinced that vengeful ghosts are telling him to ax-murder his sister; is so desperate for Frank’s approval that he helps him shred documents linking him to Jeffrey Epstein; and, as ever, is so convinced he’s the most charismatic guy in the room that he torpedoes every scheme he hatches with his atrocious people skills. But the saddest part is his origin story: In last season’s “The Gang Buys A Roller Rink,” we learn that what turned Dennis from a bright-eyed young college student to the monster he is today was watching his father go to bonetown with a sex worker. I’d say, “Poor guy,” but he’s a total piece of shit—so bring on the pain!

2. Dee Reynolds

Oh, Sweet Dee, You cannot catch a break. Lately, she’s gotten temporary facial paralysis from inhaling dangerous levels of mold at Paddy’s and has been hit by a car twice in as many days, once by her own brother. Said brother also chased her through a haunted castle with an ax while delirious from untreated COVID and poured hot oil over her would-be date—a date she missed because she nearly drowned in a peat bog while the Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) watched on in vengeful glee. Dee’s one bit of good fortune—landing a role on a TV show filming in Ireland—was thwarted by her friends, who drugged her twice (once to steal her first-class plane ticket and turn it into five coach seats and once to drag her out into the Irish countryside so that she missed her chance at stardom altogether). But hey, at least she made some green by swindling unwitting students in a fake acting class. We’d say you deserved everything you got for being a monstrous person, Dee, but the fact is that no one deserves a brother like Dennis or a dad like Frank. And speaking of which …

1. Frank Reynolds (Most Pathetic)

The Reynolds kids are complete bastards, but with Frank for a father, you can’t say they didn’t come by it honestly. The man’s scheming continues to know no bounds, and it lands him in hot water with the GOP—he was the one responsible for Rudy Giuliani’s infamous leaky dye job—and the CIA. Trouble with the latter happens because his shell corporation, Frank’s Fluids, supplied beverages to the pedophiliac monsters on Epstein’s private island. (“Yes, I was on the sex island, but only for snorkeling!” he insists.) Frank’s also atrocious at gun safety; he uses a loaded pistol as everything from a can opener to a toothpick, waving it around so much that he winds up shooting everyone in the gang—including himself. When Dennis and Dee try to trick him into surrendering the gun, he assumes they’re gearing up to execute him, which he believes he deserves. Maybe you should examine your life choices before you opt for suicide-by-proxy, pal. Frank would be the last one to admit he’s pathetic, which makes this seagull-murdering creep who shares a fold-out bed with Charlie and routinely abuses his adult children all the more so.