The New Episode of ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Turns the Last One’s Best Joke Into A Running Gag

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 17 is shaping up to be the year when the show’s writers put extra emphasis on both continuity and confectioneries.

Last week, the second half of the Always Sunny Season 17 premiere, “Frank Is in a Coma,” featured one of the most emotionally devastating and brutally hilarious plot twists in the sitcom’s long and storied history. Spoilers ahead for any Always Sunny fans who aren’t up-to-date on what may be remembered as the most serialized season thus far. But those of us who have experienced the sublime, fucked-up hilarity of “Frank Is in a Coma” will recall the closing joke of the episode which revealed Frank’s all-time most sadistic prank on Sweet Dee, in which he faked his own death by replacing his body with a lifelike cake just to prove to his not-daughter that Is It Cake? isn’t a stupid show.

This week, in the hotly anticipated new Always Sunny episode “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs,” Frank hasn’t forgotten about the precedent he set for pastry-themed pranks, and he's weary for any kind of red-velvet retaliation. When Frank goes to visit one of Paddy’s barflies in the hospital after poisoning him with a hot pepper, he pokes the poor drinker with a plastic fork, just in case it was time to get his nosh on.

Without spoiling too much of what Rob Mac, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia writing staff have in store for the rest of Season 17, this callback to one of the show’s all-time greatest gags isn’t the last time we will see the Gang reference events in past Season 17 episodes. This is also not the first time that Frank has had a food fixation that messed with everyone’s heads. Who could ever forget his and Artemis’ food-play phase? Certainly not the Emmy — erm, “Best Bar Award” voters — who walked in on his on-again-off-again lover shoving a champagne bottle up his ass.

Hopefully, the dead body cake swap becomes one of those Always Sunny jokes that sticks around for multiple seasons, and every time the Gang encounters either a corpse or an incapacitated person, they respond to the serious situation by immediately performing a taste test.