The Lawyer From ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Describes How the Duel With Charlie Would Have Gone Down

Bird law expert Charlie Kelly never shied away from a battle of legal wits, but after Charlie ducked their high-noon appointment, The Lawyer is itching for his legally entitled satisfaction.

In last night’s new episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs,” The Lawyer, played by longtime Always Sunny fan-favorite Brian Unger, made his long-awaited return to the series after a nearly nine-year absence. Unfortunately for The Lawyer, the downtrodden, one-eyed, Harvard-Law-graduating antagonist to the Gang once again failed to bring down his arch-rival Frank in the court of law, instead picking up some new physical deformations and a 30-day prison sentence.

Shortly before his Always Sunny homecoming, Unger sat down with Cracked and talked about his long relationship both with series creator Rob Mac and the entire Always Sunny operation. Unger answered canon questions and offered his own theory on how his character’s 16-year-overdue duel would have gone down. Here’s a hint: imagine that Charlie is JFK and The Lawyer is Lee Harvey Oswald — or, maybe, the second shooter.

In the Always Sunny Season Five episode “The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis,” The Lawyer represents a family behind on their mortgage payments whom Frank and the Gang attempt to evict via force. After The Lawyer embarrasses Charlie and his lack of legal knowledge in front of the group, Charlie, wearing a pair of reading glasses that he definitely found in the sewer, goes digging through an “old book” until he finds an illustration of an old-timey duel, declaring himself “besmirched” and demanding satisfaction. Charlie then barges into The Lawyer’s office and challenges his legal rival to a duel, only to be shocked when The Lawyer accepts.

As for how the clash of the lawyers would have gone down if his character did decide to track down Charlie at high noon, Unger didn’t mince words. “Charlie would be dead before he knew it,” the actor reported. “And it would probably be because of the superb technology that I’m using in my weaponry. And, of course, I would have already gone to the range and I would have practiced with an expert.” 

But, more than that, Unger believes that The Lawyer would come out victorious because his opponent would be as bad with a duelling pistol as he is at defining the word “filibuster,” saying, “Charlie would probably shoot himself in the foot before he had it out of a holster, or the gun would be improperly loaded. But without a doubt, I would shoot him between the teeth, and it would pop out the back of his head.”

“We had a blast shooting that,” Unger recalls of the iconic scene, revealing that the specificity of his threat was an improvisation based on his own historical research. “The night before we shot that episode, I was watching an A&E documentary about the assassination of JFK, and they were talking about the magic bullet theory and how it entered Kennedy’s head and how it popped out the back of his head.”

Unger continued, “When we were shooting the scene the next day, I just spit that out when I told Charlie, ‘I’m going to put one right through your teeth, and it’s just going to pop out the back of your head.’”

Jokes on him — knocking out Charlie’s teeth would be a waste of a bullet. They come out all on their own.