It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (TV Series) The High School Reunion Part 2: The Gang's Revenge (2011) User Reviews

Hilarious Finale

[anselmdaniel · 9/10 · 30 July 2023]

This review contains spoilers.

The finale of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's seventh season is entitled "The High School Reunion Part 2: The Gang's Revenge". The episode continues from the first part and centers on the high school reunion. The Gang are trying to win over the high school but fail miserably. The Gang try one more desperate act in order to win their classmates' affection.

This finale encompasses aspects that fans of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will find endearing. Much of these aspects come through in all of the characters and reflect the stage of comedy in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This is not a show for the audience to see the characters getting better. Instead this episode shows how the characters have failed to grow. This is played for comedic effect as the Gang still try to impress their high school classmates. This episode capstones the two part finale with a hilarious dance number.

I would recommend "The High School Reunion Part 2: The Gang's Revenge".

Grade: A

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season Seven

The seventh season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a solid entry. This season has many great episodes where the Gang are put into fresh situations that many other comedies in its seventh season would struggle. The season has many highlight episodes such as: "Frank's Pretty Woman", "The Gang Goes to Jersey Shore", "Chardee MacDennis: The Game of Games", "The Gang Gets Trapped", "Thunder Gun Express", and the wonderful two-part finale "The High School Reunion".

The season will not change any preexisting stance against the show. However any fan of the show will find much enjoyment from the seventh season.

I highly recommend the seventh season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Grade: A.

Season 7: Still funny but mostly in the excess, and it still lacks the amoral drollness that the show had at its height

[bob the moo · 12 July 2012]

The seventh season of Sunny pretty much picks up where the sixth left off - not so much in terms of plot, but certainly in terms of approach and tone. In some ways this is a good thing because I did enjoy the previous season, but in other regards there is a slight air of disappointment that comes with it. As I have said before, the second season of this show was where I really got hooked because it got the mix of exaggerated comedy and amoral characters just right and it kept it consistently right for several seasons. In the sixth and seventh season the focus has shifted a little bit though and instead it is the imaginative excess that seems to be the root of the majority of the laughs.

The writing is a bit better than the previous season because this time the scenarios are not quite as forced as in the sixth, when scenarios were fired off like they had been bullet-points on a list and the characters just sort of existed within them. The seventh season has an element of this but it is a little better because it does allow several scenarios to be driven by the characters rather than just the other way around. It still doesn't quite get the same level of sharpness as it did at its best; I rarely found myself laughing at how morally awful these characters are but more at how exaggeratedly awful they are - but I guess the key thing is that I'm still laughing. And I am, perhaps not as much or in the way I once did but the exaggerated comedy still gets me, whether it is the familiar actions of the characters or simply the sight of Danny De Vito with wild hair throwing up into a bin.

Indeed I have yet to tire of the fact that Hollywood star De Vito is in this show and seems to lack any ego when it comes to portraying his character. He is wonderfully random and disgusting and it works so well because he totally sells it in his delivery. The rest of the cast are equally as consistent though. I'm starting to like Olson more and more now and she is very good in this season. As usual Day, Howerton and McElhenney are all good value but I'm not entirely sure what McElhenney's fat suit adds apart from it being a thing to dig at him about and the plot of one episode.

Season 7 may not return the show to its best seasons, but it is still funny and wonderfully exaggerated. The characters are all well established and they keep doing what they do within mostly decent plots. Not at its best but it is still frequently laugh-out-loud funny and that is the main thing.