9:14 a.m.

On a Wednesday

Philadelphia, P.A.

The latest episode about our favorite lazy bar owners in Philadelphia begins with Mac humorously comparing himself to Die Hard’s John McClane, suggesting that neither of them needed to go to college to succeed (he is of course ignoring the fact that John McClane is a fictional character played by Bruce Willis, who has three years of college under his belt). Nevertheless, this episode is all about Charlie.

Remember that story that you had to read in middle school called “Flowers for Algernon?” Yes? Good! No? If you haven’t seen this week’s episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia called “Flowers for Charlie”, go to your local library, get the book, and read it before watching (it goes really fast. I promise). While this is a laugh-out-loud episode for all Sunny fans, it is downright hilarious for anyone who has read the 1959 short story this episode so strongly references.

This week, the famously illiterate and dimwitted Paddy’s Pub janitor, Charlie, gets the intelligence boost he needs from a brain experiment (one of the scientists involved is played by Charlie Day’s Pacific Rim co-star Burn Gorman). With it he attains a sense of snootiness he has never known before, now placing himself above the rest of the gang and no longer being interested in the same things. He also now spouts out “intelligent” quips like “Stephen Hawking is much more of a Lady Gaga than a Johann Sebastian Bach. He’s a pop culture figure, like the Kardashians.”

The most astonishing part by far is the new way in which he sees the longtime object of his affection, the Waitress. To him, she becomes nothing more than a bore who says “like” a lot and can hold a decent conversation. Gasp! What has Charlie become?

Thanks to Charlie’s new IQ, and his newfound snobbery, Dee, Dennis and Mac find themselves relegated to doing “Charlie work” around the bar. This includes attempting to kill a bar rat and giving up on it all to go get high on paint and glue (as we’ve seen Charlie do so many times. Seriously, it’s a wonder that guy was still well enough to recover from a brain experiment in the first place). Dee also gets her hand glued in a hole in the wall, which, well, you just have to see to understand how that happens.

And yet the funniest part of this episode by far is its ending. As in “Algernon”, our hero’s heightened intelligence doesn’t last forever, or as Mac creatively puts it, “Stupid science bitches couldn’t even make my friend more smarter.”