The Best Time Charlie Day Ever Broke Character On It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has remained one of the most enigmatic shows on television since 2005. Following a group of friends who own a the bar Paddy's Irish Pub in the titular Pennsylvania metropolis — and who are also perhaps the worst people in the world — the show has specialized in mining the kind of horrified laughter that forces viewers to reckon with their own sense of morality.
The pilot episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" was famously shot on a handheld camcorder by stars Glenn Howerton (Dennis Reynolds), Rob McElhenney (Mac), and Charlie Day (Charlie Kelly), and the show has always maintained that lo-fi sensibility. While the creators have attempted some more technical feats in later seasons, such as the magnificent one-shot comprising the third act of Season 10's powerhouse Charlie Day showcase "Charlie Work," it has always relied on its inherent shagginess to deliver non-sequitur plots that up the ante until everything collapses in the final moments.
Some of the show's most iconic absurdities are the product of Charlie Day's character Charlie Kelly, the gang's illiterate janitor with a penchant for huffing chemicals, sharing a squalid apartment (and fold-out bed) with Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), and practicing bird law. One Season 10 episode, though, contained a cut blooper that really could've stayed right where it was.
One of Charlie's best line deliveries was ruined when he couldn't help laughing
The Season 10 premiere of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" sees Mac and Dennis devise a plan to engineer a "meet-cute" for Dennis, though Dennis creepily refers to it as a "trap." Meanwhile, Charlie and Frank employ a markedly less classy scheme of their own, posting an advertisement at the bus stop in search of "exotic Europeans." To their surprise, the flyer is a success, and the Gruesome Twosome soon find themselves in the company of two young women (Cody Kennedy, Tania Fox), doing things this publication cannot describe in print.
Afterward, while the two women sleep between them, Frank and Charlie discuss the encounter, which turns out not to be what they wanted. In the version of the episode which made it to air, Charlie describes one of the women as "real aggressive with her fingers" and leaves it at that. However, in a different take shown in the Season 10 blooper reel, Charlie continues the tangent, delivering a line so funny that all four actors simultaneously break character to erupt with laughter (via FX Networks on YouTube). The line? "It's a European thing for sure, because it feels like it has the darkness of the cold war."
Commenters were distraught that such a screwball line didn't make it into the final cut, with some calling it a classic Charlie moment. User Just ME called it "maybe one of the best lines I've ever heard, period," while tori toscanini wrote, "bless those girls for trying to keep a straight face."