It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Review
Shortly after Seinfeld ended its nine-season run on May 14, 1998, the media industry began lamenting the demise of television comedies. Entertainment Weekly, for instance, first reported on the “Death of the Sitcom” in its April 16, 1999, issue, writing that “the current generation of sitcoms has two fundamental problems: the situation, which is mind-numbingly familiar from one show to the next; and the comedy, which not only is a threat to national intelligence but often carries the unfortunate burden of not being funny.” The magazine ran a follow-up cover story on April 2, 2004, entitled “Are Sitcoms Dead?” and yet another article on October 6, 2006, this time asking the question “Where have all the sitcoms gone?” while suggesting that “TV comedy is broken.”
Although NBC eventually put together a Thursday night lineup consisting of 30 Rock and The Office and CBS found success with The Big Bang Theory, comments made by former Murphy Brown writer Diane English in 2004 still resonate today: “There are (network) executives who value mediocrity because it feels safe, middle-of-the-road. They value that sort of broad sweep of ‘we’re not going to offend too much.’ They eliminate the highs, the lows. The risk-takers suffer and have to fight to keep their unique voice.”
In August 2005, however—almost exactly in the middle of the “Are Sitcoms Dead?” and “TV Comedy Is Broken” headlines of Entertainment Weekly—cable channel FX premiered a new series, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which began life as a camcorder pilot filmed for under two-hundred dollars. The series follows a group of immature, self-centered, back-stabbing and politically incorrect individuals who live up to the show’s tag-line of “Seinfeld on acid.” The gang operates an unsuccessful bar called Paddy’s Pub and get into both cringe-worthy and hysterical situations that test society’s tolerance and ethical mores. In short, the show is the antithesis of those valued by the network executives described by Diane English.
The characters on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia reflect this difference, as they are neither safe nor inoffensive. Mac (series creator Rob McElhenney) is arguably the most obnoxious and prides himself on his physical capabilities even though it is apparent that he is lacking in this area. Dennis (Glenn Howerton), on the other hand, is the vain one. “It’s like flipping through a stack of photographs,” he explains to sister Dee in regards to his indifference towards her discussion about dreams. “If I’m not in any of them and nobody’s having sex, I don’t care.” And when Paddy’s inadvertently becomes a successful gay bar, his acceptance is based more on being referred to as “the cute one,” despite his heterosexuality, than any financial windfalls.
Charlie (Charlie Day), meanwhile, is the least psychologically stable of the group. “Charlie’s using you to prove he’s not racist and then he asked me out on a date,” the Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) that Charlie has a perpetual crush on correctly tells a young African American girl. In the episode “Charlie Has Cancer,” meanwhile, Charlie fakes having the illness in an elaborate scheme to use Dennis to convince the Waitress to go out with him. Dee (Kaitlin Olson), while being a little more grounded, is equally superficial. When told that Charlie has cancer, her initial reaction is to worry about him losing his hair during chemotherapy. “That is so sad,” she states. “He’s going to look so bad without that hair.” And although she wants to visit her grandfather in a nursing home, she asks Charlie accompany her. “I have a little bit of a problem with old people,” she explains as to why she can’t go alone. “It sounds a little mean, but I find them kind of creepy. Scary. And gross, I think they’re gross. It’s their hands mostly, you know how you can see right through them, all their inside business.”
In the show’s second season, veteran actor Danny DeVito joined the cast as Dennis and Dee’s father, Frank Reynolds. As lowlife as the other characters are in terms of their humanity, Frank is even lower. A successful—albeit shady—businessman, Frank’s arrival coincides with a midlife crisis which he resolves through a night of drinking with the gang. “I used to live like this, in squalor and filth,” he tells Charlie. “Always trying to get over on people, scamming my way through situations. I want to live like you again, Charlie. I want to be pathetic and desperate and ugly and helpless. This is the change I’ve been looking for.”
A slew of politically-incorrect topics populate the episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, from racism and sexism, to abortion and welfare. But although this may sound as if the series is intentionally trying to be outrageous, it actually comes across as a more subtle exploration of the inherent humor in society itself. “What we are doing is presenting both sides of the argument and poking fun and poking holes in all of them,” creator McElhenney explained to Entertainment Weekly in March 2008. “(We) take on the abortion issue or the gun control issue—we hope it’s a comedic take, ultimately, but that it (also) has some kind of social relevance.”
Ira Ungerleider, who was both a writer and producer on Friends, also spoke to Entertainment Weekly in 2004, offering that “you can go wrong trying to come up with a formula or trying to calculate what the audience wants. I understand there’s a lot of money at stake. But there are those moments when people say, ‘You know what? I’m going to just go with my gut on this one.’ Those moments turn into greater things, like Seinfeld.”
Unfortunately, it is the cable channel executives as opposed to the network suits who understand that philosophy these days, as the best comedies on television seem to belong to HBO, Showtime and FX. In that sense, maybe the sitcom never died after all, but simply moved to the greener pastures of cable—and Philadelphia—instead.
Anthony Letizia (March 17, 2008)
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