'Sunny' delights in bad behavior
FX's ``It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is politically incorrect, but in TV comedy, that phrase is almost pointless . These days, nearly every sitcom -- network or cable -- thrives on the very topics once deemed too touchy to touch. In fact, political correctness may have made sexism, terrorism, retardation, religion, and poverty seem that much funnier, since it upped their risque factor. As with Mary Tyler Moore at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown, the more you're not supposed to laugh, the more you want to.
Even so, ``It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," which returns for its second season tonight at 10, is really politically incorrect. It lives to transgress. It does a nutty dance all over the danger zones, such as in tonight's opener, in which the characters fake handicaps to milk sympathy and get sex. We see that kind of situation on ``Curb Your Enthusiasm" and we saw it on ``Seinfeld," when George pretended to be disabled for the perks. But on ``Sunny," the morality-impaired characters deliver the disability jokes with particularly gleeful abandon. These are the same guys who, last season, served booze to kids for money and worked an abortion rally for dates.
If you're prudish or just polite, in other words, you'll be turned off by all the happy offensiveness. If you're not turned off, though, you may be entertained, as I am. The show is the quintessential slacker comedy. Unlike network sitcoms that have marketed themselves as such -- think ``Friends" or ``Four Kings" -- ``Sunny" is the real deal.
The trio of lead guys, Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), and Charlie (Charlie Day), have no money, no consciences, no dreams. They have bad apartments. When they're not operating their dive bar, which is not glamorized by set design, they're just living in the moment, getting into and out of ugly predicaments. They met in high school, and, psychologically, they're still there.
This being a comedy, these three stooges are lovable no matter how selfish and sloppy they are. Howerton, Day, and McElhenney, the show's creator, have a great chemistry that allows them to talk over one another naturally, and their tones seem to rise and fall simultaneously during arguments. They have a sweet comfort underneath all their bickering. Day has an especially good time pushing Charlie's voice into its upper registers at moments of intensity. The gang also includes Dennis's sister, Dee (Kaitlin Olson ), although the boys haven't made her an official member of their club. Like the guys, Dee is an adult with a 16-year-old mentality.
Danny DeVito is on board this season, as Dennis and Dee's father, Frank. He's just left their snotty mother (Anne Archer), which he explains to his kids by saying, ``I hate the kind of person your whore mother turned me into." In the throes of a mid-life crisis, Frank begins acting like a kid, and therefore desperately wants to be part of his son's posse. DeVito, brought in to call attention to the series, mixes well with the lightly sociopathic atmosphere of ``Sunny." He ( and, in one scene, his toupee ) blend right in with the jerkiness.
Frank arrives just in time for a crisis in tonight's second episode, at 10:30, in which a new Israeli neighbor announces to the boys, ``Your bar is on my land." These three know nothing about the politics of the Middle East , but to save their business they embark on a campaign that involves the creation of a terrorist video. They also debate the connotations of calling someone ``a Jew" rather than ``Jewish."
You have to be there to follow their bumbling logic. And FX, which has done so well with drama and so poorly with comedy, surely hopes you will.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. 
