TV Daily

Prime Pick

Photo: FX

For those who love to chuckle along with a laugh track at unfunny clichés, there's plenty of predictable fare headed your way this fall. For the rest of us, there's the third season of FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (premieres 10 p.m. EDT), a thoroughly un-p.c. wormhole of restless, bug-eyed mania. Although the show can feel a little too hyper and over the top on the first sitting, it nudges past the herd of improv comedies with occasional moments of brilliance. Whether the members of "the gang" (three guys, a girl and Danny DeVito) are trying to profit from a baby they found in a dumpster or handing out fliers that look like penises ("It's a bicep!") so they can meet good-looking guys to drink with ("Nothing sexual!"), the ridiculous situations somehow sidestep the typical realm of empty sitcom high jinks. Maybe it's just that the show is punch-drunk with its own severely juvenile, absurd, nasty charms -- and that feeling is contagious.

-- H.H.

Also…

TiVo alert! Also airing at 10 p.m. EDT: AMC's delicious "Mad Men" (in this week's episode, a rival ad agency tries to lure Don away from Sterling Cooper) and the third fashionable installment of Bravo's "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style."

On the talk shows

Contributors: Megan Doll, Matthew Fishbane, Heather Havrilesky, Eryn Loeb, Amy Reiter

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