Review: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Overage Drinking: A National Concern" | Season 17, Episode 6

See, we want a rising tension to make the comedy—or tragedy—feel more satisfying in the end.

Revisiting beloved old adventures is a decidedly dicey proposition on any series, but Sunny dodges the been-there, seen-that of it all in “Overage Drinking: A National Concern” with some surprising cameos and a bit of meta-textual sleuthing.

There are in fact a handful of cameos here, with both Cricket and Uncle Jack joining episode 2’s appearance from The Lawyer in filling out the Season 17 old favorites bingo card. But the main story hinges on a couple of characters we haven’t seen for fully 20 years. That’s Tammy and Trey, the now-married high school manipulators from the third-ever episode of It’s Always Sunny, “Underage Drinking: A National Concern,” spotted by an initially puzzled Gang (minus Frank) at Paddy’s after their teen son Trey Jr gets caught taking advantage of Paddy’s very lax ID-ing policies.

“Wait a second, didn’t we just deal with something like this?,” Char…