"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:" "Cannibalism, racism ... those are decisions that are best left up to the suits in Washington"

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is such a high-energy, high-wire act that it's bound to fall sooner or later, but here we are as it's about to begin its fourth season and they're still finding new ways to shock and appall - and, oh, yeah, amuse - us.

The show features monumentally stupid and venal characters doing foolish and awful things in a manic, cartoonish fashion. It's not a show for grown-ups, though one of the funniest things about it is imagining someone tuning in because they liked that funny little Danny DeVito on "Taxi" and are expecting more of the same, only to have their head explode.

(Many episodes end with a variation on this theme.)

Tonight, two new episodes debut. In the first, Mac (series creator Rob McElhenney) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) decide to go all "Most Dangerous Game" on us and hunt their childhood enemy, the homeless priest Cricket (David Hornsby). If they catch him, they have further indignities to launch upon his person.

Cricket's unclear on the concept, so they tell him, "If I were you, I'd spend a whole lot less time asking questions and a whole lot more time running."

Meanwhile, Charlie (Charlie Day) and Dee (Kaitlin Olson), believing they've become addicted to "human meat," head to the local morgue, where the attendant, bored, tells them, "Fifty bucks gets you 10 minutes alone with one of the bodies." Let's see "'Til Death" do a cannibalism storyline!

In the following episode, Mac, Dennis and Charlie come up with a fairly hare-brained plot to profit off the oil crisis, while Frank (DeVito) waterboards Dee - his own daughter - in a particularly unsavory location.

Stumbling upon Frank's nefarious lair, Mac's less interested in Dee's distress than in asking, "Does that waterboarding thing work?"

Frank, exultant, replies, "You bet your ass - I got Dee to admit to things that she never did!"

Usually, "wrong" isn't intended as a compliment. It is here.

- "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:" 10 and 10:30 p.m. Thursday, FX.