Schadenfreude for Awful Characters
An Enigmatic Love for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia debuted on FX in 2005. The sitcom is a black comedy centering on a group of friends turned proprietors of Paddy’s Pub, a dilapidating dive bar in South Philly. Charlie, Mac, Dee, and Dennis have been friends since childhood, but they actually do not like each other at all. Instead of longstanding camaraderie, familiar laziness bonds them together in a seemingly inescapable loop of lechery. Dennis and Dee’s father, Frank (portrayed by Danny DeVito), manages the bar and contributes to the gang’s constant hi-jinks. Now on FXX, It’s Always Sunny finished its twelfth season in 2017 and has been renewed to continue through its fourteenth, distinguishing it as one of the two longest-running sitcoms in the history of American TV.
But how has It’s Always Sunny endured so long? Admittedly, the American TV viewers’ taste for ‘long-running situational comedy centered around a bar’ has been sated before. Cheers (1982–93) still remains one of the most popular TV series of all time. Yet Cheers is quite a different program from a different time and perspective. Rather than depicting a ‘wholesome’ environment for light social discussion and slow-building love plots, It’s Always Sunny depicts episodes of shameless depravity and unrequited heartbreak. While similar in setting, It’s Always Sunny and Cheers couldn’t be further apart in terms of the values its characters represent. Additionally, It’s Always Sunny’s gallows humor implores a more nuanced interpretation than what is necessary for traditional sitcoms. This is fitting, however, because modern audiences appear to favor more complex storytelling in TV shows than ever before.
From a moral standpoint, the gang often gets what’s coming to them. Because no matter how horrible Charlie, Mac, Dee, Dennis, and Frank reveal themselves to be, a constant remains: their schemes always fail, they never excel at anything, and by the end of each story, everyone is back at the bar feeling sorry for themselves, nursing a beer, and coming up with a scheme for their next harebrained adventure.
I love watching It’s Always Sunny in part because I love watching people do shocking, even reprehensible things, but what I find even more entertaining is watching these same people fall flat on their faces as a result of their horrendous actions.
This perverse pleasure correlates with the notion of schadenfreude, which literally translates from the German to mean “harm-joy.” Specifically, this is the pleasure one derives from witnessing the pain of another person. It may sound sadistic, but everyone has experienced this sensation to varying degrees. Some examples can be mild. For instance, schadenfreude is the basis for slapstick (or physical) comedy. Such acts include The Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin, and The Mighty Boosh. Much of the humor of slapstick lies in the hysterical ways characters injure themselves and/or the hilarity of the situation presented. Slapstick comedy, mild in the schadenfreude it evokes, is typically light hearted or silly despite apparent physical injury. For example, a viewer has no reason to dwell on Donald Duck’s pain or embarrassment when he slips on a banana peel. It’s just amusing to watch his fall.
This is where the notion of schadenfreude diverges in IASIP. Instead of just farcical, it’s deep-seated and personal. When bad things happen to reprehensible characters, it’s especially satisfying because it feels justified.
Consider the scene in the GIF above from season 7, episode 13. The gang arrives at their high school reunion determined to prove to their classmates that they have changed and are now cool and successful. Instead, they end up revealing to everyone that they are the same narcissistic losers they were in high school. By the end of the dance, humiliated and blinded with
ill-conceived determination, the gang dances in front of their entire class. After the ‘cool kids’ laugh at them, one of them throws an after party and invites everyone except Charlie, Mac, Dee, and Dennis.
If this happened to Daffy Duck, the viewer likely would not laugh. The viewer might instead feel empathy for the character. After all, even a buffoon does not deserve to be humiliated. Yet when such horrendous disasters befalls the gang in IASIP, it’s hilarious. It tastes like revenge.
