Let’s start by praising the show…
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been airing for more than a decade, 12 years to be exact. It’s one of the rare shows that even after 130 episodes is still as good as it was when it began. One could argue it’s better than it was during the early days. In this article, I’m going to be that one. My biggest argument is character development. But a bit later on that. First, let’s admire this show a bit.
If you don’t like circlejerks skip this part. I found out about this show 4 years ago, but until I caught up to it it was already in its 10th season. Looking back at my experience from this standpoint, my love for the show grew after every passing episode. If I was good with math, I would express my love of it with a tangent.
Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney created, what I like to think of as, an anti-sitcom. Instead of people you adore and love, you get maniacs, assholes, idiots, and genuinely bad people… AS MAIN CHARACTERS. You grow to like them, but that’s just because you know they are not real. They’re still bad people. I bet if someone tried a D.E.N.N.I.S. system on you, or basically made your daughter touch your asshole just so you hit a new rock bottom, you wouldn’t be laughing.
Continuing with the circlejerk, acting in this show is phenomenal, but I will say this, it’s due to perfect casting. After 12 seasons you just can’t imagine anyone else playing any of these characters and if one left, the overall quality would plummet right away. That’s why I’m of the opinion that if Danny DeVito didn’t join the cast, the show would be done a long time ago. Danny was planned to guest star but the gang loved him so much and probably noticed the chemistry, they asked him to stay.
Charlie Day is starting to develop his movie career, and we’re all happy for him, but I think even he understand he’ll be Charlie Kelly to the majority of his followership. As for the rest of the main cast, all of them have yet to do something bigger than Always Sunny. Latest to try was Kaitlin Olson who got her own FOX show, The Mick. It got renewed for a 2nd season but critics agree it’s subpar.
As an actor, being a part of a show with such a cult following like this one can be both a blessing and a curse. It depends on how the actor is looking at it. It seems like the cast is pretty down-to-earth, unlike their characters, and that could be the reason why they’re still going strong in season 12, and are renewed for season 13 and 14.
Writing and character development
Now, to the main task at hand, writing. The show is mostly written by Glenn, Rob, and Charlie. But they hosted a number of writers, most popular of them David Benioff and D.B. Weiss of Game of Thrones. Another interesting “guest” writer, about whom I didn’t know until I did this research, is David Hornsby A.K.A Rickety Cricket. Our favorite ex-priest junkie helped write 28 episodes. Biggest number, after the trio mentioned above.
Rickety Cricket actually is my first example of a perfect, slow character development. The picture above shows the physical changes he’s gone through just by knowing with the gang. Just like in real life, every scar tells a story. For every scar, you can find out how he got it, which is a great attention to detail. But that’s just how the writers write for this show, one of the things that make it unique.
I don’t think we need to talk about his emotional changes a lot. I’m sure some psychologist could explain it a lot better than I would. But I think everyone knows someone for whom people say, “He/she was a good, smart guy/gal until *add someone who replaces the gang* destroyed him/her.” That’s what we see happening in front of our eyes over the length of this show.
But he’s just one of the obvious examples. What’s amazing is that he appeared in only 16 episodes (not counting this season). The waitress was in only 25 episodes and I could have sworn she was in half of them. But all of their stories have been enriched since their first appearance on the show. Because of that fans have created a Wiki page for Always Sunny which is regularly kept up to date. (Link)
Main cast
It’s really impressive what they did with the side-characters but that would be unimportant if they had boring main characters. Let’s compare some of the characters before and now. And bear with me, I may forget something, don’t be mad.
Charlie — Charlie didn’t change that much during the course of the show, at least not in the foreground. When we dive a bit deeper into his psyche we notice the gang did a softer ‘Rickety Cricket’ on our favorite manchild. Killing rats regularly can really get to you, and with an already troubled past, you may even get addicted to certain types of narcotics in the meantime.
Frank — Frank was a sleazy diabolical asshole from the beginning of the show. And that didn’t change during the show. However, he used to live a normal life until his ex-wife Barbara divorced him. We could say that he was a good, smart guy until Barbara destroyed him. (See what I did there?) Until we find out that he opened a sweatshop in Vietnam in 1993, while he was ‘normal’, which is not that good.
Dee — Dee is the walking impersonation of inferiority complex. No one respects her in the gang, not even Charlie. Her motivations are usually driven by the pursuit of gaining gang’s respect. Since she is the only girl in the group it’s her job to prove that women are equal to men, which the rest of the gang obviously disagrees with. She usually fails at proving her points, her self-esteem falling lower and lower. It’s not surprising that she has a maniacal moment from time to time, and is starting to show that she also, like her twin brother Dennis, is not mentally alright.
Dennis & Mac — Dennis and Mac are definitely the best, most realistic, characters written in a live-action comedy show ever. It’s scary when you think of people like that, particularly Dennis, being real, but let’s not joke ourselves, there are people like them. They are, of course, completely different characters but during these 12 seasons their shaping was so slow and perfect, I would dare to compare it to Breaking Bad’s Walter White character progression. A huge compliment considering comedies usually focus on jokes, not on psychological character carving.
When it began, Dennis seemed to be the anchor for the gang. Self-centered, but smart and normal compared to the likes of Charlie or Frank. Well, during the seasons we found out he’s smarter than we thought but, oh, were we wrong about him being normal. ‘The Implication’ and D.E.N.N.I.S system usually come to mind to show how crazy Dennis actually is. It looks like they are making him show his chaotic side more and more, by the end of the show he may completely break and I can’t wait for it to happen.
Mac finally came out. Everyone knew it from a long time ago. But at the beginning of the show, not a lot of people noticed the writers playing with the idea that Mac is gay. It was later seasons when we actually realized he’s a deeply closeted homosexual, that’s when his obsession with muscles and buff guys started making sense.
They already flirted with the idea of him coming out in “The Gang Goes to Hell” where after they survived he immediately denied everything he said and went back to the closet. This season it finally happened and they did it in such a nonchalant way only Always Sunny could do. The interesting thing about him coming out is his internal conflict, being gay is against his religion and it took a lot of time for him to finally go against it and admit he’s gay. We didn’t see that conflict on screen, we could just compare his character to people in real life struggling with the same thing. Good writing.
Final note
Dramas are known to create enticing but one-note looking characters, and then flesh them out during the show. Comedy shows are not. Unfortunately, a lot of comedies create a small world in which you have few main characters that are interesting, and then a bunch of one-note side characters from which you always know what to expect.
All of these characters, main and side ones, could probably be diagnosed psychologically. Some of them already were (Dennis). Almost all of them have troubled past which made them this way. They didn’t just appear to be like this for the sake of the show. Incredibly realistic for a comedy show.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia created not only fully fleshed out main characters, but every side-character has a story of their own. That’s the reason why the show has such a big cult following, it’s filled with inside jokes, no fan can remember all of them. That’s why we, fans, gather together online and remind ourselves of different jokes some of us forgot. Another definition of a cult following I guess.
That’s one of the reasons why Always Sunny will continue to be rewatched years after the final season airs. After every rewatched episode you will remember a joke you totally forgot about. All of that wouldn’t be possible without perfect writing, and perfectly written characters.
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