The Best Season Of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, According To IMDb

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been on the air for a record-setting number of seasons, but one of its earliest seasons is still a favorite among fans.

The long-running FX series — which started on a shoestring budget and eventually became the longest-running live action comedy in television history — has, as of this writing, aired fourteen seasons and has been renewed through its 18th season, officially smashing the longevity record previously held by The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Naturally, throughout those seasons, the series has seen some ups and downs in quality, but it's still remained as fresh and as funny as ever throughout its tenure on television. With that said, there's one season that fans still think rises to the top of the pack.

The fourth season of Always Sunny — which, as with the rest, chronicle the adventures of low life bar owners Charlie (Charlie Day), Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Dee (Kaitlin Olson), and Frank (Danny DeVito) — aired from September until November 2008, and according to IMDb, fans consistently rank it as the best season of them all. Here's why the fourth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a fan favorite.

Season 4 of Always Sunny opens with "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters," a completely depraved episode where Mac and Dennis decide to hunt the most dangerous game — man — while Dee and Charlie steal some of Frank's secret meat stash, only to suspect that they might have accidentally become cannibals. From there, the gang only gets weirder, trying to exploit the gas crisis, holding a deranged and corrupt competition to find a billboard model, solving the mystery of "who pooped the bed" at Frank and Charlie's shared apartment, and a two-part series where Mac and Charlie fake their deaths to avoid Mac's father, who has just been let out of prison.

Other highlights include "Paddy's Pub: The Worst Bar in America," where the gang kidnaps a critic who gives them a bad review; "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life," where Dennis lands in a mental institution alongside Sinbad; "Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack," which introduced Charlie's obsession with Pepe Silvia to the world; and "The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition," where the gang destroys a terrified family's home for no reason. However, the clear standout is the season four finale, "The Nightman Cometh," where Charlie writes and stages a bizarre and twisted musical to impress the Waitress (Day's real-life wife Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and which has become one of the series' most beloved installments (to the point where the cast has performed it, live, multiple times).

There's a ton of great episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but the ones in season four definitely take the cake. You can stream the fourth season of Always Sunny, as well as the rest of the series, on Hulu now.