It’s been 15 years since the first episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia aired, and the show is still running. At 14 seasons, the show has not lost its binge-watching worthiness. The main reason for the show’s endless success is its despicable yet lovable characters and their hilarious dynamics. From Dennis’s psychopathic tendencies to Dee’s embarrassing impressions, audiences just can’t get enough of the gang.
The Always Sunny gang is known for their judgmental, self-centered and overall horrible behaviors. Aside from Charlie or Mac often getting called dumb, the characters are rarely looked at in terms of their intelligence. So, here we have ranked 10 main characters of Always Sunny by intelligence.
Rickety Cricket
Poor Rickety Cricket is the biggest victim of the gang’s manipulative tricks. No matter how much he suffers at the hands of the gang, he still cannot help but find his way back to them. Not only does he believe Dee every single time she tells him that she still has feelings for him – even though he should know by now that she is lying and trying to use him.
The entire reason behind his name being Rickety Cricket is because he lets the gang call him that. Unfortunately for him, Rickety Cricket will never cease to be a victim of the gang while he remains this naive, silly and unintelligent.
Mac
It’s a tough call but Mac gets the title of the dumbest gang member. During his therapy session, Mac actually thought that talking about his problems with his low weight would magically help him get bigger.
Mac also lacks something he could highly benefit from; emotional intelligence. The poor man was too blinded and oblivious to recognize his own homosexuality for years, and even when he finally did – when he found his proud and came out to the world – he was delusional enough to instead think that he had a chance with Dennis. To this day, it seems that he still has hope for something happening between him and Dennis.
Charlie’s Mom
Charlie’s mom is sweet but she can be a little bit over-the-top. She’s incredibly overprotective of Charlie, and worries constantly. She calls him too often to check up on him, and too often relies on his help when she has problems at home. Yet despite all the love she has for Charlie, she remained oblivious to the way her own son was being molested by his uncle.
She may be well-intentioned, but she often ends up doing more damage than good to Charlie – there seems to be something childish about her that keeps her from being a great mother.
Charlie
Although Charlie often gets the reputation of being the most unintelligent one in the gang, that is not exactly the case. If episodes like “Charlie Rules The World” and “Charlie Work” are anything to go by, it’s clear that Charlie can be very talented and successfully at a task when he puts his mind to it.
Charlie is dedicated and great at what he does. And although he can often be manipulated, he is also capable of some manipulating of his own. After all, he once managed to blackmail Dennis, Mac and Dee into helping him get a date with his long-time crush.
Mac’s Mom
Mac’s mom is one of the biggest mysteries of the show. She never talks, only grunts or sighs or pulls faces that only Mac can truly read. It’s a mystery how she turned out this way – we don’t even know if she has always been this quiet and isolate. Nonetheless, it’s sweet that Mac cares so much about her and defends her against his friends.
From the only few words she’s ever uttered over the season, it’s hard to determine how intelligent she actually is, but one thing is for sure: she knows how to avoid the human interactions she hates. Even when Dennis offered her sex, she knew better than to say yes and had no problem turning him down and hurting his ego.
Frank
Danny DeVito’s performance as Frank in Always Sunny is one of the most iconic TV performances of all time. He makes the character fascinating and hilarious. Despite how often his drinking makes him lose all thinking abilities, Frank can be quite intelligent.
More often than not, he is the one who takes care of the bar like a proper business. He makes smart economic decisions, he watches out for the bar’s budget and ranks the employees’ performances in a list to encourage them to work as hard as possible.
Dee
Tragically, Dee’s intelligence too often gets completely overlooked simply because she’s a woman. The show itself is based on the premise of the gang being horrible people, and it is, therefore, no surprise that the men would be sexist and incapable of recognizing Dee’s abilities and skills.
She successfully pit the gang against each other during the dance marathon at the bar without anyone even noticing. Similarly, they thought they were getting away with the plan they had devised to get out of Dee Day, and still, she outsmarted them.
Artemis
Artemis is hilarious and almost scaringly confidant with her weirdness. She is one of the only characters who is too intelligent to be manipulated or hurt by the gang, and that is saying something. She actually hangs out with Dee for fun, and without any regrets.
Even when she finds herself in bed with Frank, she is the one who has the upper hand. She knows exactly how to get her way, and she has no shame in doing so. In fact, she’s one of those rare characters that can give the gang a taste of their own medicine.
The Waitress
Despite not even having a name, the Waitress is one of the smartest characters on the show. She has outsmarted Dennis, the Golden God himself, and, most of the time, is smart enough to stay away from the gang. The Waitress would be a perfectly smart character if it weren’t for her reckless and silly behavior when it comes to Dennis.
She always appears and acts above all the crazy games and shenanigans of the gang, and she has repeatedly made it very clear that Charlie is too dumb for her, and yet she still finds herself crawling back to Dennis. Even after he has hurt her, lied and used her, she somehow can’t stay away from him.
Dennis
The only reason Dennis gets away with putting himself first and hurting other people without ever really paying the deserved price for it is that he is constantly outsmarting everyone. He manipulates random women with the D.E.N.N.I.S. system just like he manipulates his closest friends.
He knows how to pit people against each other to end up on top or distract them to get away with whatever he wants. This is how he managed to fool the gang into believing that he was the legal heir to the bar when Frank temporarily retired, and it’s also how he successfully manipulated Charlie into training for a fight that he knew he would lose.
