{"id":1569,"date":"2014-11-14T14:46:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T19:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2014-11-14T14:46:24","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T19:46:24","slug":"its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-outshining-the-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-outshining-the-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Outshining the Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Channel Chaser! As I was looking back in my massive catalogue of watched TV shows for a review to do this week, I happened to notice in my daily Netflix surfing that the most recent season of the FX series It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/em> has finally been uploaded. I was at first very happy, and then immediately flabbergasted about how I could have overlooked on of my very favorite shows in this column for so long.<\/p>\n

\"AlwaysSunny\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To start with, the background: It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/em>\u2013or It\u2019s Always Sunny<\/em> or just Sunny<\/em> for short among diehard fans\u2013is a sitcom-style show that follows the lives of \u201cThe Gang\u201d, a group of five adults who run a perpetually unprofitable dive bar called Paddy\u2019s Pub off of South Street in Philadelphia. True to the name, almost all of the episodes take place either in the pub or in different areas around the city. This may not mean much to most people, but as a longtime resident of Philly, the familiar setting really helps to ground the stories for me in very believable terms, especially when the characters reference places, events, and sports teams in the area.<\/p>\n

I said Sunny<\/em> was a sitcom, and it basically is, although perhaps \u201cblack comedy\u201d would be a more accurate description. The show shares a lot of qualities with Seinfeld<\/em>, possibly the forerunner of all modern sitcoms, in that it is essentially a \u201cshow about nothing\u201d: that is, it\u2019s about relatively unimportant occurrences in the humdrum, everyday lives of the characters that directly mirror things that happen to most real people every day, albeit with greatly inflated impact and consequences. Episodes frequently center on the members of The Gang discussing a controversial current topic, from guns to gay marriage to religion, and eventually getting into tremendous arguments over their vastly differing points of view.<\/p>\n

In fact, the fan-coined descriptor \u201cIt\u2019s like Seinfeld<\/em> on crack\u201d was eventually adopted by FX as the show\u2019s official tagline. And for good reason: while Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer may have been a bit odd, self-interested, and tasteless at times, the crowd of Sunny<\/em> takes these less-than-desirable qualities and ratchets them up to an eleven on the scale. The Gang consists of Dennis Reynolds, an incredibly vain and sociopathic man; his sister Dee Reynolds, who is snobby and superficial; Ronald McDonald, better known as Mac, outwardly a tough-guy \u201cman of action\u201d but inwardly a cringing, child-like coward; Charlie Kelly, a filthy, illiterate slob; and Frank Reynolds, father of Dennis and Dee (and possibly Charlie, too) and a scheming con-artist. I\u2019m honestly not sure if The Gang or the Bluth family from Arrested Development<\/em> should win the title for most dysfunctional cast.<\/p>\n

As you would expect from such a motley crew, The Gang\u2019s opinions on the various contemporary issues they are confronted with range from sadly misinformed to horrendously prejudiced. While they always claim to have a unified front, any one of them is willing at any time to stab one or more of their fellow Gang members in the back if it means they will come out on top, and they are all perfectly okay with performing degrading public acts of humiliation just to get what they want. Sunny<\/em> approaches all these topics with a no-holds-barred, profanity-charged political incorrectness that makes you gasp, laugh, and cringe all at the same time. The supporting cast compliments this idea very well, with recurring characters like Carmen the transsexual, former priest-turned-homeless-drug dealer Matthew \u201cRickety Cricket\u201d Mara, and the shockingly open actress Artemis DuBois.<\/p>\n

The humor in the show is always edgy and usually very tongue-in-cheek as well, and the style of the series chips in to support this, from the incongruously cheery background music to the incredibly blunt and uncreative episode titles such as \u201cWho Pooped the Bed?\u201d and \u201cMac Bangs Dennis\u2019s Mom\u201d. Direct contradiction between what the characters say and what they do, and frequently even between what they say at one point in an episode and another, also supplements this feeling of confusion and dysfunction.<\/p>\n

While Sunny<\/em> does almost always focus on current affairs in its choice of topics, some of my favorite episodes are ones in which The Gang members get to show off their individual talents\u2013or the lack thereof\u2013in creative endeavors mostly designed to relieve their boredom when they should be working. These include two home-made sequels to the Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon<\/em> franchise, featuring Mac in questionable blackface, an in-house drinking game involving public humiliation, emotional battery, and physical harm, and a staged musical titled \u201cThe Nightman Cometh,\u201d which may or may not be based on Charlie\u2019s repressed memories of being molested as a child.<\/p>\n

\"Nightman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that the actors involved in the show use real life situations to parallel and further relationships in the show. For example, despite their great animosity and antagonism toward each other on-screen, Kaitlin Olson (Dee) and Rob McElhenney (Mac) are actually married. So are Charlie Day (Charlie) and Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who plays the still-unnamed Waitress. In the show, Charlie is obsessively in love with the Waitress and stalks her constantly while she insists that she has no interest in him and that she will never, ever, go out with him.<\/p>\n

But the most intriguing and enticing thing about Sunny<\/em> for me is that, in spite of all of this, at the end of the day, the characters just don\u2019t care. Even though their plans almost always fail miserably and they admittedly can\u2019t stand each other most of the time, there\u2019s just something fascinating about a group of such dysfunctional people who at the end of every episode can shake it off and say, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, screw it. Let\u2019s just go get drunk.\u201d In the end, The Gang always has each other, and while nobody on the outside may understand their convoluted\u2013and probably unhealthy\u2013relationship dynamic, it\u2019s strangely and perversely uplifting to know that they\u2019ll just be back at it in the next episode like nothing has happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My Rating: 4\/5<\/h3>\n

While its subject matter can frequently be offensive and its humor is often rude and crude, the uncensored feel and pure anarchic energy of It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/em>, combined with great character performances of its all-star cast (especially Danny DeVito\u2013did I mention he\u2019s in this show?) make it one you pretty much have to try at least once. Now going on ten seasons, Sunny<\/em> is still going strong and shows no signs of slowing down. I know I speak for a lot of fans when I say that it will be a dark day in Philadelphia when no one gets the reference, \u201cHey, want to go down to Paddy\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Channel Chaser is written by Kyle Robertson. You can check out more of his work on his\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>. Check back every Friday for new articles.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Channel Chaser! As I was looking back in my massive catalogue of watched TV shows for a review to do this week, I happened to notice in my daily Netflix surfing that the most recent season of the FX series It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has finally been uploaded. I was at [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1571,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}