It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 10 Trailer: The Gang Goes To Space

For the second time in its existence, FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is making audiences wait more than a full year in between seasons. But fans know that it’ll be worth the time, and the first Season 10 trailer below is a superb and elaborately constructed middle finger to the series’ central fivesome.

Like the clever art-house parodies from Season 9, this teaser isn’t a preview of the episodes themselves but is a rather spectacular standalone adventure, and one in which everyone but the Gang wins. (Kind of a rarity.) Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Mac (Rob McElhenney), Charlie (Charlie Day), Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Frank (Danny DeVito) all appear as if they’re about to make history as the only crew of Philly bartenders to go into space. Their pride is at an all-time high and they’re looking super fly in those collared yellow jumpsuits. Might have to change my Halloween costume this year.

There’s just one problem here. None of them notice that the only people that appear to be in this crowd are characters who hate some or all of their guts. (Along with a giant inflated Green Man, which is a solid touch.) Mac and Charlie’s moms are there, along with Charlie’s lifelong crush The Waitress, Dee’s regret-filled fling Bill Ponderosa (Lance Barber), the unibrowed and deaf-mute Margaret McPoyle (Thesy Surface), the constantly harassed and injured Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby) and The Lawyer (Brian Unger). There are probably more that I didn’t notice immediately. There are a LOT of people who hate Mac, Charlie, Dennis, Dee and Frank. Hell, they kind of all hate each other in every third episode or so.

They’re not going into space inside of a rocket ship at all, but are instead being blasted out of a cannon. It’s a great gag, and I have to wonder how big of a budget this thing had. Plus, it’s technically the follow-up to the temporarily well-intentioned Season 9 finale “The Gang Squashes Their Beefs,” which is kind of fitting. The whole thing felt like the Seinfeld finale, when all of that group’s sporadic antagonists all came together to serve as negative character witnesses. When It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia started, it was called “Seinfeld on crack,” but Season 10 will mean it has outlasted the New York-based critical darling. (Not in episode numbers, mind you, but seasons.)

I cannot wait to see how many depraved and morally bankrupt situations the Gang gets into when It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia returns for Season 10 in January 2015.