It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 16 Revamps Charlie's Apartment

The trailer for the 16th season of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" promised that the series was going to bring back some plot beats from the earliest episodes, and the premiere delivered the goods with Charlie's (Charlie Day) apartment. 

There are five doors in Charlie's apartment excluding the front door, and only one of them has been opened in the series after season 1. The earliest days of "It's Always Sunny" have plenty of moments that seem to have been retconned or ignored by the show's creators, but the extra rooms in Charlie's abode are finally getting revealed once more. The only door that's opened in the apartment since Frank (Danny DeVito) moved in during season 2 is the one to the left of the entrance, which leads to a room that Mac (Rob McElhenney) cleaned out in "Mac and Dennis Break Up" and said could possibly fit a mattress. 

In "The Gang Inflates," Frank discovers that he and Charlie's one-room apartment is actually at least a two-bedroom with a bathroom in-unit, and he's understandably perplexed at why the two of them have been peeing in cans and going down the hall to the doorless bathroom to poop when they have a perfectly decent toilet in their residence. What else is Charlie hiding behind those doors? Let's get all Pepe Silvia on this sucker and figure out what's up with Charlie's hovel. 

Frank ends up discovering that the room to the right of the TV is actually a bathroom with a toilet and what looks like a sink. There's all kinds of stuff jammed in there, as if Charlie used it as a closet and forgot about it, but Frank is more focused on the toilet. Charlie insists that it's a bad toilet because it "runs all the time," but given the whole situation they've been used to, that's a pretty ridiculous reason to not use a toilet. This sends Frank looking for more rooms, and the one behind the hot plate turns out to be a giant, empty room. It's probably the main bedroom of the apartment, and it's sitting there empty. Frank is furious once more because they could have been living in less cramped quarters, but Charlie seems to like things the way they are. 

In the end, Frank agrees to board up both doors once more in a deal with Charlie, returning things to the way they've been for 14 seasons, but the existence of the two rooms ends up creating more questions than answers. Way back in season 1, more of those doors were open, and there's some potentially conflicting information. 

In "Charlie Has Cancer," several of the doors in Charlie's apartment are either open or slightly ajar, providing insight into his apartment layout that's gone in later seasons. There's a bathroom to the left of the television, not the right, and the placement of the sink in each bathroom is reversed. If everything is held as canon, then Frank and Charlie live in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment that they've only used one-fifth of. The door to the right of the couch has yet to be opened on the show, and logically should contain a kitchen that's more than just a hot plate and a radiator. Just imagine if they had that entire apartment to work with; the Grilled Charlies would be off the charts!

Charlie is terrified of change, however, and prefers to live in one small room with Frank, sleeping butt-to-butt on their pull-out couch bed, so things go back to how they've been. Maybe they'll open the room back up if their international friends from "The Gang Gets Romantic" return to visit, but until then, it's the couch life for them. 

New episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" debut Thursdays on FXX and the next day on Hulu.