Before we look into gender representation, what is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? What do critics and fans think of the show?
According to Emily Nussbaum (2013), a critic and writer from the New Yorker, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is “not merely the best sitcom on television but one of the most arresting and ambitious current TV series, period”. Although the show hasn’t had any Emmys or critical acclamation of the sort, it is a show that has much depth to it in terms of its social impact that it has on the audience. This television show certainly opposes the normalities in a typical friend-based sitcom through its unapologetically offensive humor and its satirical reliance on abrasive topics such as racism, sexism, abuse, and much more.
The entire nature of this television series involves the satirical outlash on a stereotypical friend-based sitcom such as Friends or How I Met Your Mother, as Nussbaum describes (2013). A group of narcissistic friends, also known as “the gang”, owns a bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called “Paddy’s Pub”. The gang consists of goofy and gross Charlie, an egotistical and entitled Dennis, Dennis’s crass sister, Dee, rambunctious Mac, and lastly, old and gruesome Frank. Episodes of this show normally consist of an absurd “problem” that the characters have with another person or with each other. For example, in “The Anti-Social Network” in season seven, “the gang” looks for a man who “shushed” them in a hipster bar downtown. The entire episode follows the quest to find this rude man who merely says “shush” to Dennis, one of the main characters. Dennis and Charlie go so far as to get a professional suspect drawing from the police station by claiming that this “shusher” sexually assaulted the two characters. The absurdly aggressive group of friends makes for a new form of sitcom that is truly unlike any other, but still has the comradery that is commonly shown in friend sitcoms. Below is a short clip of Dennis and Charlie's attempt at retrieving a suspect drawing of their "shusher".
The entire nature of this television series involves the satirical outlash on a stereotypical friend-based sitcom such as Friends or How I Met Your Mother, as Nussbaum describes (2013). A group of narcissistic friends, also known as “the gang”, owns a bar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called “Paddy’s Pub”. The gang consists of goofy and gross Charlie, an egotistical and entitled Dennis, Dennis’s crass sister, Dee, rambunctious Mac, and lastly, old and gruesome Frank. Episodes of this show normally consist of an absurd “problem” that the characters have with another person or with each other. For example, in “The Anti-Social Network” in season seven, “the gang” looks for a man who “shushed” them in a hipster bar downtown. The entire episode follows the quest to find this rude man who merely says “shush” to Dennis, one of the main characters. Dennis and Charlie go so far as to get a professional suspect drawing from the police station by claiming that this “shusher” sexually assaulted the two characters. The absurdly aggressive group of friends makes for a new form of sitcom that is truly unlike any other, but still has the comradery that is commonly shown in friend sitcoms. Below is a short clip of Dennis and Charlie's attempt at retrieving a suspect drawing of their "shusher".
As a whole, “the gang” is extremely racist and insulting towards other, less significant characters in the show, and the members are completely oblivious to the absurdity and blasphemous nature of their actions. For example, in “Frank’s Little Beauties”, the third episode of the seventh season of It’s Always Sunny, the gang is poking fun at the issue of pedophilia. Frank decides to put on a beauty pageant, and the gang inappropriately trains the young pageant contestants in their bar, but this isn’t the most shocking aspect of the episode. Later on in the same episode, during the pageant itself, Frank says many times that he is “not attracted to [the young kids] at all” in a way that, of course, worries the parents even more. Several puns are made about the serious topic of pedophilia in a way that is unique to this particular sitcom’s crass form of humor. The contestants' performances are “upgraded” by the gang in order to make them more modern, but in actuality, the children are sexualized in a way that is yet again poking fun at pedophila. The video below is of the only male contestant in the pageant performing his “upgraded” rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” to the horror and discomfort of the parents in the audience.
Another example of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s unconventionally crude use of humor can be found in the episode titled “Sweet Dee Gets Audited”. In this episode, Dee, nicknamed as Sweet Dee, is being unexpectedly audited by the IRS, and because of this, attempts to convince the IRS agent that visits her that she not only had a baby daughter, but when she failed to find a baby to “borrow” to convince this agent, conducted an entire fake funeral for the baby she never had. This is another example of how far the gang is willing to go for the sake of satirical and absurd humor.
In terms of fan-following, there is a tumblr blog that specifically follows each episode and adds images with quotes, as pictured above, and includes a place in which fans can comment about the episode specifically. Fans admire and appreciate the uncalculated formula that makes an episode of this dark-humored series. Several fan-based blogs refer to the humor as “random” and “ridiculous” in the best way possible, and often go episode by episode. The show also has its entire own “subreddit” run by fans who get involved enough to write entire articles based upon just one quote within an episode. Comments on Twitter include quotes such as “this show never stops being funny” and “fat mac is amazing in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia” with a crying and laughing emoji. Fans respond very positively to the satirical approach to masculinity and femininity as defined by the show.