Seasons 1 through 12 are, for me personally, the best comedy series in the history of television. Season 13 and 14 have seen a massive increase in lazy scripts, cartoonish and one-sided political jokes and the "current thing" moments which sell well during social media promotion but absolutely murder any rewatchability of the show. Furthermore, the actors/writers seemed to have long forgotten or just stopped caring about what their characters used to be, as they've turned them into 2D models which can fill in a corporate quota.
Season 15 shows it best and "The Gang Goes to Ireland" is the end of the line for me even though I'll gladly rewatch the old seasons in the future. This episode is the perfect highlight of all the problems IASIP has been dealing with: unfunny and uncreative writing which feels like it's generated by artificial intelligence on the basis of what would sell best on Twitter at the moment of production (the vaccination "joke" as heard in November 2022 is probably the "best" highlight), lifeless acting that's complete opposite of the passion which the original cast had for their jobs and the passion that managed to bring DeVito on board of a small amateur project, and horrifying character-signaling every 30 seconds.
- "Hey, viewer, I'm Dennis, the serial killer and my obviously deranged comments are always ignored by my colleagues";
- "Me Charlie and stupid but become very smart when other character butt of joke";
- "I'm Frank and I've been entangled in every political drama since the 1960s".
Dee has also become a character which does nothing but scream, be obnoxiously mean to everybody and has no life outside of failing to become an actress (even if Olson still tries, as difficult as it is with the new, plastic face, and contrary to the rest of the cast), and Mac is just "gay and insecure", with nothing else to offer to the story, while Rob McElhenney can't seem to match even the neutral face he brandishes in the promotional materials for his football club. The location change which was abundantly commented on as "oh so genius" is also an absolute joke because the plot does nothing with it other than mechanically repeating the joke about left-sided traffic.
Goodbye Always Sunny, you've become the very thing you swore to parody.