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The year was 2005 and comedy television was entering a shiny new era. Cultural giants like Friends and Sex and the City might have concluded a year earlier but glossy upstarts – The Office and How I Met Your Mother, heard of them? – were ready to fill their monolithic shoes. Into their midst came a scrappy new series: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The success of It’s Always Sunny was never guaranteed. It was born only a few months after YouTube, shot on a handheld camera, had a budget of practically nothing and featured a motley crew of out-of-work actors. The show was built on a simple premise; to highlight the exploits of an idiotic, narcissistic group of friends running an Irish dive bar in South Philly who scheme, betray and trick each other – or unfortunate strangers – at every turn.
Described as “Seinfeld on crack” during its early years, the series was created by and stars Rob McElhenney (AKA Rob Mac) as delusional “badass” Mac, alongside Charlie Day as the illiterate and substance-abusing Charlie, Glenn Howerton as the sociopathic Dennis and Kaitlin Olson as his sister – “Sweet Dee” – who, despite starting as the sole voice of reason, later devolves into an equally manipulative member of the gang.
Danny DeVito also joins in season two as Dennis and Dee’s multimillionaire and inexplicably feral father, whose eccentric presence would help elevate the show from an underground classic into a bona fide hit. You need only watch the timeless clip of a naked, oiled-up DeVito crawling out of a leather couch to understand how.
On paper, It’s Always Sunny’s lasting appeal doesn’t make sense. An edgy show about awful people feels as though it should be confined to the 2000s alongside bygone hits like Jackass or Entourage – not to mention the politically incorrect content of its earlier seasons, shocking even for its time. The title of the series’ first episode – The Gang Gets Racist – is a particularly hard sell for newcomers; other episodes have been removed from streaming.
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But the show isn’t just crudeness for crudeness’ sake. It’s Always Sunny works because it allows the audience to laugh at each character’s unique depravity and relish in their inevitable comeuppance by each episode’s end. Living in a world where it feels as though the real-life bad guys are continually winning, it’s cathartic to watch this group of degenerates get what’s coming to them, time and time again.
In many ways, It’s Always Sunny is the definitive anti-sitcom sitcom. A sexist comment from Dennis, for example, could easily belong in the universe of something like How I Met Your Mother – but here it’s not the smug misogyny that gets a laugh; it’s the blatant sociopathy and narcissistic delusion in thinking that this is an acceptable way to behave. The season-nine episode The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award addresses their underdog placement within the polished pantheon of network television, concluding with a song sung by an unhinged Charlie: “I don’t need your trophies or your gold, I just want to tell you all, go fuck yourselves.”
Twenty years since the show premiered, It’s Always Sunny has become the longest-running live-action sitcom without ever sacrificing its signature blend of stupid and absurd.
There’s no guarantee that the show will continue for 20 more years – DeVito is almost 80, after all. But as his character says: “I don’t know how many years I got left on this Earth. I’m gonna get real weird with it.”
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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is available to stream on Disney+ in Australia, Netflix in the UK and Hulu in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
