Eighteen seasons into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there probably aren’t many television shows that could title a season premiere “Frank Marries a Corpse” and still somehow make the episode itself more ridiculous than the title suggests.
Then again, there aren’t many shows that have spent more than two decades perfecting the art of turning terrible people making terrible decisions into something this consistently funny.
Season 18 picks up directly from last season’s Golden Bachelor storyline, with Danny DeVito’s Frank Reynolds preparing to marry Sam, played by Carol Kane. Written by Charlie Day, “Frank Marries a Corpse” takes what should be an absurdly simple wedding and turns it into exactly what you would expect whenever the Gang gets involved: selfish motives, questionable advice, increasingly horrible behavior and, eventually, a bride who isn’t technically alive anymore.
It is a remarkably Sunny way to begin another season.
Frank Gets Cold Feet — And Dee Smells an Opportunity
Frank’s impending marriage immediately divides the Gang into familiar camps.
Mac, Dennis and Charlie attempt to help Frank deal with his cold feet, while Dee takes a considerably different approach. She recruits three women who know exactly what it means to spend time around these people — The Waitress, Artemis and Gail the Snail — hoping their stories will convince Sam that marrying Frank is an extraordinarily bad idea.
On paper, bringing back familiar supporting characters could easily feel like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Instead, their appearances work because Always Sunny understands how to use its enormous bench of recurring characters. They aren’t there simply so viewers can recognize them. They’re there because putting The Waitress, Artemis and Gail together in the same orbit as Dee is almost guaranteed to make an already unstable situation worse.
And that’s exactly what happens.
Meanwhile, Frank’s hesitation about marriage gives Danny DeVito another opportunity to play the strange combination of confidence, panic and complete moral flexibility that has made Frank such an essential part of the series.
Frank may supposedly be worried about getting married, but nobody surrounding him is particularly interested in what would actually make Frank happy. They’re interested in what Frank’s marriage means for them.
Which, of course, is the Gang in a nutshell.
Carol Kane Fits Almost Too Well Into This World
Bringing Carol Kane into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was inspired casting from the beginning.
Sam doesn’t feel like a celebrity guest star temporarily visiting Paddy’s Pub. Kane’s wonderfully eccentric energy makes her seem like someone who could have wandered into this universe years ago and simply never left.
That makes what happens to Sam considerably funnier — and darker.
Dennis and Dee discover that Sam is willing to secretly share her fortune with them as long as the wedding actually happens. Suddenly, making sure Frank gets married isn’t about romance. It’s a financial transaction.
Then Sam contracts flesh-eating bacteria and dies.
For normal human beings, that would end the wedding.
These are not normal human beings.
Dennis and Dee need the marriage to happen if they want their piece of Sam’s money, so death becomes less of a tragedy than an inconvenient logistical problem. Their solution is to prop up Sam’s body long enough for Frank to unknowingly marry her anyway.
It’s essentially Weekend at Bernie’s filtered through the moral universe of Always Sunny, where manipulating a corpse isn’t even necessarily the worst thing somebody will suggest before the credits roll.
The Episode Knows Exactly What Show This Is
There’s something reassuring about how little It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feels the need to reinvent itself in its 18th season.
Television shows that survive this long often become increasingly sentimental about their characters and their history. The temptation is understandable. After spending decades with the same people, eventually everyone wants to start talking about how much they’ve grown.
The Gang hasn’t grown.
Thank God.
“Frank Marries a Corpse” works because everyone remains fundamentally awful.
Dee’s intervention isn’t really altruistic. Dennis and Dee’s concern disappears the moment money enters the equation. Frank’s wedding becomes another opportunity for everyone around him to pursue their own interests. Even death isn’t enough to force these people into behaving like functioning adults.
That’s not creative stagnation. It’s the fundamental comic promise of Always Sunny.
The characters can age. The world around Paddy’s Pub can change. The targets of the show’s satire can evolve.
The Gang cannot.
Give them enough time and they’ll inevitably choose the most selfish, destructive and usually stupid solution available.
Season 18 understands that immediately.
“Frank Marries a Corpse” Is Vintage Sunny
The premiere also benefits from keeping its story relatively contained.
There isn’t an elaborate high-concept experiment required to get Season 18 moving. Frank is getting married. Everyone has an opinion about it. Money becomes involved. Somebody dies. The Gang makes everything dramatically worse.
That’s enough.
Charlie Day, who wrote the episode, builds the story around the character dynamics that have sustained the series for so long rather than trying to prove that Always Sunny can still shock us.
The funny thing is that it still can.
Not necessarily because marrying a corpse is inherently shocking — longtime viewers have watched these characters do far worse — but because the show remains remarkably skilled at escalating from something merely inappropriate to something completely deranged while allowing the Gang to behave as though every new decision is perfectly reasonable.
By the time Dennis and Dee are effectively trying to turn Sam’s corpse into a legal financial instrument, the episode has reached the kind of moral insanity that Always Sunny makes look effortless.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 18 Episode 1 Ending Explained
The title isn't a metaphor.
Frank really does marry a corpse.
After Sam and Frank’s pre-wedding night in a bacteria-contaminated creek leaves them both sick, Sam’s infection takes a gruesome turn and kills her before the ceremony. But Dennis and Dee refuse to let something as inconvenient as death interfere with their potential payday. With Sam having signed paperwork promising Dee a share of her fortune, they still need the marriage to happen — dead bride or not.
So Dee gets Sam’s body down the aisle and the ceremony continues. The full extent of what happened to Sam isn't revealed until Frank goes to kiss his new bride — and her head falls off, turning an already grotesque scheme into the episode's biggest gross-out punchline.
Frank has unknowingly married a dead woman.
It's grotesque, absurd and completely appropriate for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
More importantly, Sam's death doesn't necessarily end the story. Her money — and the Gang's belief that they might somehow get their hands on it — creates a natural bridge into what comes next.
Because if there's one thing more dangerous than giving the Gang money, it's convincing them that money they don't have yet already belongs to them.
Final Thoughts
“Frank Marries a Corpse” isn't trying to announce a dramatically new era of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
That's precisely why it works.
Season 18 begins by putting the Gang into a simple situation and allowing decades of selfishness, greed and terrible judgment to do the rest. Danny DeVito remains endlessly funny as Frank, Carol Kane once again proves to be a natural fit for this bizarre universe, and the return of The Waitress, Artemis and Gail gives the premiere another welcome connection to the show's enormous history.
After 18 seasons, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia doesn't need to prove it can become something different.
It just needs to keep finding new ways for the same five terrible people to make everything worse.
Having Frank unknowingly marry a dead woman is a pretty good start.
Tune In / Where to Watch
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 18 premiered Monday, August 17 on FXX and FX, episodes are also available to stream on Hulu.
Thomas Miller is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Seat42F, covering television, movies and streaming entertainment. He launched Seat42F in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades covering the entertainment industry.
