It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ... Nothing sexual, underlined

The FX comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia focuses on four friends who, in season one, owned Paddy's Pub, a dive bar with no customers. In the second season, Danny DeVito joined the cast as Dennis and Dee's father, Frank, buying Paddy's Pub in order to force his kids to spend time with him. In most episodes, the characters come up with some sort of selfish, self-centered scheme that ends up foiled by their own flaws.

In last week's episode, "Dennis and Dee's Mom is Dead," Dennis inherits his mother's mansion as Dee and Frank are left with nothing. The remainder of her estate is given to Bruce, a philanthropist who, it turns out, is Dennis and Dee's biological father.

Eager to enjoy his inheritance, Dennis starts to plan a party in his new mansion, only to realize that he and pals Mac and Charlie have alienated all their friends. To remedy the situation, they decide to create a flier seeking new friends. The flier they create ends up sounding more like a personals ad, due to their demands on what kind of guys they befriend. When they go to a sporting goods store to pass out the flier Dennis and Mac accidentally hit on several guys, including one guy who won't break a cruise-y look at Mac.

Like many a comedy that seeks to offend, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has to strike a balance between edgy, misanthropic humor and coming off as clueless as the Paddy's Pub gang. While the homoerotic flier could have generated some gay panic-themed comedy, the joke stays on the guys' cluelessness and lack of self-awareness which is also how they alienated all their friends. We're laughing at Dennis, Mac and Charlie and not at any gay men who might be intrigued by their flier.

In a first season episode, the show used homophobic humor to signal the gang's unlikablity (one of many signs). While there's sometimes a risk that a portion of the audience won't understand the joke and think it's okay to repeat the bigoted humor (as Dave Chapelle experienced), that risk is lessened by giving the line to DeVito, who rarely plays characters anyone would want to emulate and certainly doesn't play an admirable character here.