Appalling made appealing

Technical difficulties: This review of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" didn't make it into the paper, so we present it here.

The grubby denizens of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia� makes the monumentally self-absorbed characters of “Seinfeld� and “Curb Your Enthusiasm� seem like Peace Corps volunteers.

Creator/star Rob McElhenney’s sitcom blows the doors off political correctness so thoroughly as to leave a viewer amazed that such a concept ever held sway. McElhenney stars as Mac, who, with his stupid pals – Charlie (Charlie Day), Glenn (Glenn Howerton) and his sister, Dee (Kaitlin Olson) – run a dump of a bar and spend most of their time trying to figure out how to get over on the others. Danny De Vito joins the cast this season as Frank, Glenn and Dee’s father, who’s using the occasion of his divorce to indulge his inner dirtbag, and clings to the foursome to help him along. “I want to be pathetic and desperate and hopeless, just like you!� Frank tells Charlie.

Tonight, the gang of four – well, five, now – pretend to be handicapped in an attempt to secure pity sex. In future episodes, they try to intimidate a Jewish neighbor who’s bickering with them over a zoning ordinance by taping a terrorist video (while getting in endless, clueless debates over what constitutes anti-Semitism) and annoy one another by trying to sleep with one another’s mothers. (Honestly, don’t ask. It’s best just to let such brazenly pussilanimous behavior just wash over you.)

Clearly, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia� isn’t for the easily offended, or even for those offended with some difficulty. But its dryly deadpan bad taste – and, oddly enough, its moral rigidity (these cheaters never prosper) – is fresh and almost punishingly funny.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:" 10 p.m. Thursdays on FX