It's Always Sunny...

What is comedy? What makes people laugh? Comedy, especially in television, is an extremely hard concept to master. Everybody has a different sense of humor so finding an audience can be very difficult. The show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a special sort of comedy. Being one of the top rated shows on the cable network FX, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (or “It’s always Sunny” for short) branches out to all different types of audiences with it’s offensive, narcissistic sense of humor. By taking on controversial subjects like abortion and gay marriage throughout the series along with just straight-up twisted plot lines, the show finds its unique and bizarre style and takes it to new lengths that satisfy all audience members.

The show is about five characters: Mac, Dennis, Charlie, Sweet Dee, and Frank who all own a subpar bar in Philadelphia. The show consists of these characters trying to one-up each other, take advantage of each other, and screw each other over in any way they find suitable to benefit themselves. Watching these delusional characters work off of each other in the cruelest of ways adds to the laughs - but it’s only half of the fun. Then they bring in serious topics to focus on. For example, the episode shown in class demonstrations how these characters pretend to be handicapped to get girls (or in Sweet Dee’s case, to get guys). This is where the other half of the laughs comes from. All of the characters are so over-the-top offensive that nobody can believe that they exist, which is why they can get away with bringing up edgy topics like disabled people. But the dialogue is so natural and conventional (due to the half-improvisation/half-scripted style of the show) that the viewers can believe that these characters actually do exist. This contradiction explains why the show is so popular today.  People are able to relate to the real life emotions that these characters portray but when people watch these characters act upon these emotions in the most illogical and offensive ways possible, it creates the rambunctious fun that the show is known for.

The story telling and characters are great in the show, but not many people notice the brilliantly simple camera shots and stage lighting that the show offers. As you watch It’s Always Sunny, you can clearly see how there are no use of special camera angles and no use of special lighting. The directors and producers do this purposely. They want the viewers to feel as if they are hanging out with the gang at the bar and going on an absurd adventure with them. This personal aesthetic adds to the comedy to the show and here’s why: Let’s say I told you a story that I thought was hilarious. But after you’ve heard my story, you don’t share the same enthusiasm that I do. My response would probably be, “Oh, you just had to be there to think it was funny.” The producers use this technique in It’s Always Sunny with the personal and natural camera shots and lighting, where it seems as if you’re in the show experiencing everything that these characters are experiencing.

There are many elements to this show that make it a successful comedy. But the reason why I like this show so much is the fact that the actors just have fun with it. The actors on the show, who also write and produce the show, are all friends behind the scenes and share a similar sense of humor. When they are on screen, the viewers can obviously tell that the actors are having fun and not taking their characters too seriously.  This authentic atmosphere that the actors create on the show is unlike any other television show and if they continue to bring forth this energy, they will continue to be successful.

New Comedy

Writing comedy for today's youth has become more of an art than a science. Some genres of television can be written by following a basic template and will not stray much from the norm, but comedy can't. Successful comedies like Workaholics and It's Always Sunny... have found success in chaos. These shows are unpredictable and sometimes incoherent. They will tae the smallest comedic idea or story and build an entire episode around it. This episode to Workaholics shows this perfectly.

In this episode the take the one prank of wrapping a dollar in poop and leaving on the street for bystanders to grab and draw it out into a whole episode. This in-cohesive and random seeming writing style is the new type of comedy. It takes less formal skill to write and allows many actor and actresses to break into the business by writing and starring in these types of shows and sketches.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Disgusting and Depraved or Ingenious and Hilarious?

     I'll save you some time, this show is one of the best modern comedies. I hesitate to say this, but it is almost like "Seinfeld" in the sense that it is a show about nothing. The series follows "The Gang" four friends (five once season two starts). The Members are Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Mac (Rob McElhenney), Charlie  (Charlie Day), Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Frank (Danny DeVito). Almost every episode can be watches as a standalone without ever seeing the episodes before it. The characters in the show, like "Seinfeld" solve the problems of that episode and move on in the next episode. However unlike "Seinfeld" where the problem is simply not wanting to wear a "puffy shirt" "It's Always Sunny" crosses the line and makes their issues a much more controversial. For example the episode entitled "Mac Fights Gay Marriage" is all about one of the main Characters, Mac (Rob McElhenney), discovers that his one time transgender girlfriend has gotten a sex change operation and is now married to a man. This results in Mac trying to win her back by trying to ruin their marriage because he claims it is a same sex marriage. 

     Although the show is morally inappropriate the jokes that are made and the events of each episode are mostly satirical and hides actual political issues and gives the points for the proponents and the opposition of these issues. For example the second episode of the series "Charlie Wants an Abortion". The members of "The Gang" flip flop their stance on abortion to better suit their needs, but deep down the actual issue is there and discussed.

     If you find your self watching this show just remember to check your moral compass at the door sit back and try not to be offended and you should have an excellent time.

It's Always Interesting in Philadelphia

Having just watched my 100th episode of the strange, hilarious, and disgusting "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," I thought that I'd write a post about it while things were still fresh in my mind. If you've seen It's Always Sunny, you probably know that it is almost exclusively nothing but terrible people doing terrible things; the tagline used to be "it's Seinfeld on crack." If you haven't seen it, here's all you need to know: a group of five people (the "gang") own a bar called Paddy's Pub, which is basically their home base for coming up with awful ideas and just generally being shitty people. I've seen every episode of the show, and I'm proud of it.

Which brings me to tonight. Normally, Sunny has no particular artistic value; the shots aren't interesting or well thought out, character development is basically nonexistent, and the show's main laughs mostly come in the form of shock value or the sheer stupidity/horribleness of the characters. Tonight's episode, however, was a little different. By celebrating their 100th episode in a way that only the cast of Sunny could, each member of the gang was posed with the question of what they would do while in a convenience store that was being robbed.

The episode is split up into five parts; one for the daydream of each character. It's really interesting to dive into the psyche of characters that can tend to seem so one dimensional, and while the episode had plenty of laughs, it was also somewhat thought provoking. Mac's dream is first, and in typical Mac fashion, it involves him karate chopping away at not only the robber, but also an army of ninjas that come out of nowhere. Interestingly enough, he dies in his own dream and eventually rises into Heaven, where he takes the right hand seat next to a very shirtless and very buff God, which is a weird way of reaffirming how twistedlly religious (and possibly gay) Mac really is.

Dennis and Dee, the two siblings on the show, each had two equally elaborate and weird daydreams. In Dee's, she befriends the gun man (who is actually a woman), shoots every single member of the gang, and then goes into the witness protection program. She eventually fulfills her life goal of becoming an actress and ends up marrying Brad Pitt, showing how even in the most dire moments, Dee is thinking of nobody but herself. Dennis, in his own dream, is shot in the head. He survives (seemingly due to his own extreme ego and creepy self confidence) and is nursed back to life by an extremely busty nurse. It's twisted, but you see some of Dennis' rationale behind why he's a bit of a pervert (to put it lightly).

Skipping over Frank's dream - he runs off and eats all the hot dogs in the store while the cops catch the thief - we get to Charlie's. I knew that Sunny would save the best dream for last, and I was not disappointed whatsoever. Charlie Kelly is the oddest member of the gang, and it only makes sense for his to dream to be a cartoon. It was perfect. Charlie saves the Waitress (his longtime crush) and then ends up running off with her and starting a dream life. In a very Pixar-esque (like, very Pixar-esque) sequence of events, the two get married, have kids, and live out their lives. I kept thinking that the whole thing would end with a deranged twist, some sort of horrible turn of events, but I was wrong. The two grow old together, and eventually the waitress dies. All of this was absolutely beautifully sentimental, showing a Charlie that we rarely see; one who, at his most innocent, wants this girl to fall and love with him.  It almost made me rethink his entire character.

Of course, the episode actually ends with everyone grabbing an armful of marshmallows and running out of the store, but for one shining moment, Sunny proved that it could do more than be the show that's consistently getting snubbed for Emmy's. This show has been around for 100 episodes, and while it may be crass and extremely rude, it knows it's characters as well as any other show (in part because the show's creators and writers, Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerston, play Mac and Dennis, respectfully). That was an eye opener for me, and I believe that this episode will earn some of the attention that It's Always Sunny really deserves.