TVSquad

(S03E01) The gang at Paddy's Pub is back for another season of mayhem, and not a minute too soon. When you think about it, this show is fairly review-proof; there are no deep messages or important storylines on It's Always Sunny. It's just five people with no conscience wreaking havoc and making everyone laugh. The show is going to be uneven, often with one of the plots in an episode working better than the other. But, to me, this show is on the same level as Married... With Children was: It may not be high art, but it's so damn funny you don't care.

In the third season premiere, Mac and Dee take care of a baby the gang finds in a dumpster, Dennis becomes an environmentalist hippie (don't worry, he's still the evil yuppie he's always been... more on that later), and Frank and Charlie look for treasures in the trash.

Speaking of Frank and Charlie, that's really the only continuing storyline from last season: is Frank actually Charlie's dad? It's still under dispute, as Charlie finds out; Frank claims Charlie's "giant whore" of a mother had an abortion shortly after his encounter with her. But according to Charlie's mom, the abortion doesn't take; so not only does Charlie still think he's Frank's son, he now knows he's an "abortion survivor." By the way, that explains so many things about Charlie, doesn't it?

I liked how Charlie and Frank were so enthralled with the junk they found picking though the dump, that they took to a life of dumpster diving. How Charlie found that samurai sword is beyond me; I mean, who the hell throws out a perfectly good samurai sword? I can see how that might entice them to follow the philosophy that "one person's trash is another person's treasure" (eBay was built on it), and get to the point where the junk actually drives them out of their hovel of an apartment and into another dumpster. It was also good way to bring back The Waitress (Elizabeth Ellis), who dated Charlie, fell in love with Dennis, and had revenge sex with Frank, all in one episode last year. DB wasn't hers, but that didn't prevent Charlie from thinking that, even though she and Frank hooked up way after DB could have been conceived (did I mention that Charlie wasn't all that bright?).

Who is DB? Dumpster Baby, of course; Mac, Dennis and Dee find him outside the pub as they come back from a screening of An Inconvenient Truth. It figured that Mac would automatically become responsible for the tyke, immediately drag Dee in to help take care of him -- because she's a girl, of course -- then immediately make like Ralph Kramden and lay it all in Dee's lap. For some reason, when Mac and Dee responded "D... B!" when someone asked about the baby's name, it took me a second to realize that they just used the initials for "Dumpster Baby." Of course, if the kid ends up growing up with that name, let's hope he never finds out what it means.

Luckily, DB won't grow up with Dee and Mac as parents, though their attempt to stick him on a tanning bed in order to get him started on the road to being a baby model ("we just need a base") has probably scarred the guy for life already. That final scene, pictured at the top of this review, is the the topper; Mac and Dee shoe-polishing the kid, while Frank and Charlie fight over the samurai sword right over DB's head. Perfect.

Oh, and there's Dennis: we think for a second that Al Gore has affected him so much that he's converted to hippiedom, but we know better. This was the least funny plot of the three, but seeing Dennis infiltrate the "gang" just to get laid is enough to let that go.

A good start to the season. No real changes, just the crew picking up where they left off. FX is going to be showing the first 10 of the 15 episodes this season back-to-back, so we're not going to have to wait too long for episode two...