{"id":83600,"date":"2025-07-22T16:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T16:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/83600\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T16:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T16:14:11","slug":"its-always-sunny-goes-full-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/83600\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Always Sunny” goes full “Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the seventeenth season of \u201cIt\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/a>,\u201d the gang is back and more gourmet than ever. Frank fakes a coma using a hyper-realistic cake of his own body \u2014 fondant wrinkles, glossy marzipan hair, the works. Charlie opens a ghost kitchen and insists on being called \u201cchef,\u201d<\/a> his apron knotted tight like he\u2019s about to sear duck breast <\/a>instead of, say, boil milksteak. Dee joins Postmates. Mac and Dennis attempt to franchise Paddy\u2019s Pub into the Starbucks <\/a>of dive bars.<\/p>\n

It feels unmistakably now: a season saturated in food references, culinary hustle and edible aspiration.<\/p>\n

After all, we live in a world where food isn\u2019t just sustenance, it\u2019s narrative. \u201cThe Bear\u201d<\/a> is prestige drama. The Food Network just turned 30<\/a>, like a millennial clinging to relevance. And ever since Yelp put star ratings in our pockets, everyone\u2019s been performing as a food critic, one pistachio <\/a>croissant at a time. TikTok serves up step-by-step mise en place with soft jazz and fingernail clacks; mukbang creators rake in millions by eating crab legs in front of a ring light. The Cheesecake Factory\u2019s<\/a> spiral-bound novella of a menu feels less like dinner and more like a psychedelic thesis on American appetite. We don\u2019t just eat\u2014we curate, caption, collapse from pleasure. We cosplay as chefs. Or restaurateurs. Or simply as someone who can pronounce burrata correctly.<\/p>\n

In this season of \u201cIt\u2019s Always Sunny,\u201d that performance reaches its absurd, overcooked peak \u2014 though food has always been part of the performance.<\/p>\n

More often than not, the things the gang cooks, markets or consumes are totems of their most earnest, if wildly misdirected, ambitions. This comes into sharpest focus when you examine their crash-and-burn business ventures \u2014 each one a Hail Mary pass toward self-respect, status, or at least passive income. (As the writers themselves put it in this season\u2019s teaser, \u201cThey don\u2019t want to spend the rest of their lives working like dogs.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, Frank\u2019s Fluids, LLC \u2014 a shell corporation initially conceived as a tax scam. Frank, sensing opportunity, expanded the operation to include tangible products, one of which was Wolf Cola. Unbeknownst to Frank (Danny DeVito), it became the official drink of Boko Haram. What followed was a full-episode damage-control tour de force, with Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) attempting to spin the PR nightmare while Charlie (Charlie Day) and Mac (Rob Mac) diverted their energy into a newer, more absurd venture: Fight Milk.<\/p>\n

Fight Milk, which Charlie pitched as a way to rescue Frank\u2019s other \u201clegitimate\u201d business, Atwater Capital, was billed as \u201cthe first alcoholic, dairy-based protein<\/a> drink for bodyguards by bodyguards.\u201d The recipe? Vodka, milk and raw crow eggs \u2014 a chalky, frothing elixir high in what they proudly dubbed crowtein.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an unhinged drink for an unhinged dream, and that\u2019s precisely the point. Here, food is rarely appetizing, but it is always expressive, a kind of edible theater for the gang\u2019s obsessions, failures and pathological self-regard.<\/p>\n

That dynamic is hilariously distilled in the episode \u201cMac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs.\u201d After torching their rent-controlled apartment in one of their more disastrous schemes, Mac and Dennis are forced to relocate, landing in a cookie-cutter home an hour outside of Philadelphia. Over a dinner of \u201cMac\u2019s Famous Mac and Cheese,\u201d a gloopy, highlighter-yellow bowl of boxed pasta, they raise their forks in agreement: suburbia will be a breeze.<\/p>\n

But then the mac keeps coming. Night after night, the same steaming pile appears, Mac proudly announcing it like a cafeteria worker with a head injury. The twist, of course, is that it\u2019s not homemade, not even special. It\u2019s boxed, bulk-bought and hoarded by the crate. When Dennis finally snaps after being served a version disturbingly flecked with meat, his spiral is operatic. The mac becomes symbolic, not just of their isolation, but of the fantasy itself: comforting on the surface, quietly grotesque beneath.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Patrick McElhenney\/FX) Charlie Day as Charlie, Danny DeVito as Frank.<\/p>\n

If Dennis\u2019s breakdown is about the soul-deadening repetition of meals, Frank\u2019s appetites are something else entirely\u2014unfiltered, unchecked, and often criminally libidinal. Food, in his hands, is a conduit for power, pleasure, chaos. Sometimes all three at once.<\/p>\n

Rum Ham, perhaps the show\u2019s most iconic food object, is less of a recipe and more of a deranged ritual. Born in a Season 7 trip to the Jersey Shore, the ham is soaked in bottom-shelf rum and consumed on a raft at sea\u2014a floating bender that\u2019s somehow both deeply American and faintly pagan. Online, fans have painstakingly recreated it, treating its absurdist origins with dead-serious reverence. The canonical recipe (which includes a handgun, a hunting knife, and a warning about \u201cham pirates\u201d) reads like it was transcribed from a fever dream inside a Bass Pro Shops.<\/p>\n

Frank\u2019s erotic relationship with food is similarly unhinged. He puts bacon bits in his lover Artemis\u2019s hair so they\u2019ll rain down on him during sex. He\u2019s had what can only be described as condiment-assisted dumpster hook-up behind a Wendy\u2019s. In a show where food often symbolizes survival or delusion, Frank\u2019s meals are something closer to kink.<\/p>\n

Charlie\u2019s, by contrast, are primal. Almost childlike. A little gross, but somehow guileless. His signature dish, \u201cmilksteak,\u201d is exactly what it sounds like: a slab of beef boiled in milk, served \u201cover hard\u201d with a side of raw jelly beans. First introduced as his go-to meal in an online dating profile, milksteak has since become canon\u2014a culinary abomination that nonetheless feels utterly sincere. Charlie doesn\u2019t cook to impress or seduce; he cooks because his body demands sustenance, and this is what makes sense to him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not his only eccentricity. Charlie famously eats spaghetti out of a plastic sandwich bag. He snacks on dry cat food to help him sleep. He is, by any metric, deeply unhygienic \u2014 but also, endearingly devoted. He\u2019s the one doing the janitorial work. He shows up. He believes in the power of \u201cbrown foods\u201d to help the Eagles win.<\/p>\n

Of all the gang, he is somehow both the most unrefined and the most pure. Someone for whom food isn\u2019t aesthetic, symbolic or kinky. It\u2019s just fuel, delivered with enthusiasm and the occasional side of jelly beans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Patrick McElhenney\/FX) Charlie Day as Charlie.<\/p>\n

One of Charlie\u2019s most frequent culinary co-conspirators is Dee. Occasionally, they even cook together, though \u201ccook\u201d might be too precise a term for what they do. One of their more unforgettable food-based endeavors involved an unsettling, slow-blooming belief that they had accidentally become cannibals. It begins innocently enough: the two sit down to steaks at Paddy\u2019s, luxuriating in the rare act of sharing a proper meal. Frank storms in and yells at them for eating the venison he hunted. And because Frank is Frank, he eventually convinces them that its actually human.<\/p>\n

The next morning, they show up at each other\u2019s doors with a look in their eyes \u2014 feral, anxious, twitchy. They don\u2019t believe they ate a person. But they also don\u2019t not believe. They\u2019re chasing a taste. Together, they head to a butcher in Chinatown and order the most exotic meats on offer. Monkey, maybe; something sinewy and possibly illegal. They cook it all up in Charlie\u2019s dim, sticky apartment and eat their way through it like detectives hunting for a match. Nothing satisfies. They decide, nervously, that they might need to try human meat again to know for sure. They pack a hot plate and beers and set off for the morgue. Things, of course, don\u2019t go to plan.<\/p>\n

And maybe that\u2019s part of what makes their ghost kitchen in the new season feel so strangely poignant: for once, they\u2019re trying \u2014 however misguidedly \u2014 to do something normal. Feed people. Be liked. Turn hunger into belonging.<\/p>\n

But, of course, it also doesn\u2019t go to plan. And of course, that\u2019s the point. Their cravings are always misdirected, their schemes both too big and too dumb to succeed. That\u2019s the tragedy of the gang: they\u2019ll never find love, or stability or even a three-star Yelp review.<\/p>\n

But they will, somehow, always find each other. And if not that, at least there\u2019s still Rum Ham.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about this topic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the seventeenth season of \u201cIt\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,\u201d the gang is back and more gourmet than…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":83601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-83600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114897778329129038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}