I Would Love To Read A More Detailed Verdict Of Iasip! Highlighting Both Its Flaws And Its Perks

i would love to read a more detailed verdict of iasip! highlighting both its flaws and its perks

i was reading some interview with glenn howerton where he compared the show’s structure to entourage and essentially said that every character in entourage was an unabashed pile-of-shit human being and yet these despicable characters kept landing hot girls and making money and getting away with their petty schemes, and he said that always sunny was in a way a response to that - a show full of terrible, terrible people who constantly and consistently face consequences for their bullshit and never come out on top.

and that’s a remarkably difficult place to write from, it really is - like, who wants to see a bunch of unequivocally immoral and nasty characters failing to learn or develop from week to week? i mean, it sounds unwatchable when i describe it that way. there are no redemption arcs, there’s no voice of reason to counteract the bad guy (like, say, kyle broflovski vs. cartman on south park), and it’s not even some bad-guy-descends-into-deeper-evil narrative like breaking bad (which, obviously, can be very compelling to watch). these are bad people, and they do bad things, and they never learn.

but that ultimately allows the show to throw the “good people and death eaters” attitude under a microscope and, over the course of the series, provide understanding of the characters’ behaviour through a process of empathy and background reveal that never feels forced upon the viewer. all of these characters are substance abusers, all of them come from broken homes, all of them were abused by their parents, three of the four were sexually abused as children, one has severe and untreated borderline personality disorder, one’s been closeted for forty years due to catholic guilt - and so even if you can’t root for them, even if their weekly schemes are morally objectionable in every way, it’s like, you get it. you start to see the roots. on the rare occasions when a character’s better nature does win out, it’s all the more powerful. and when you start to understand that these characters are there for each other - that no matter what, week after week, they come back to paddy’s and confide in each other and stick together and protect each other - it turns the gang into this cohort of really multi-faceted anti-villains, holding each other back but also holding each other up, in a way.

a lot has been made of how the show seems to have two wildly divergent fanbases - the reddit dudebros on the one hand, who are mostly just here for the edgy humour and the genuinely, inexcusably offensive shit - and, more puzzlingly, politically conscientious teenage lesbians on tumblr.com in a post-yfip age where always sunny should be persona non grata. (tv show non grata?)

i’m gonna pose a theory re: that last cohort.

there is not a lot of social support for young people who abuse substances, or young people who come from broken homes, or young people who were sexually abused as children, or young people who are in the closet, or young people who are mentally ill. you’re not supposed to talk about experiencing any of these things. you’re not supposed to exhibit any inconvenient, unattractive symptoms of any of these things. and the few cultural mirrors that you do have are often so aestheticized and glossy and shiny as to be unrecognizable. 

always sunny, on the other hand, is a generally light-hearted comedy about people who come from all of the above circumstances, and who exhibit ugly, messy symptoms of those circumstances, and who continually fuck up, and yet they manage to stay afloat. they manage to love and care for one another. they manage to grow and heal in slow and small and significant ways. 

there are no “issues” episodes - a la glee, where a Topical Issue would be introduced and explored and wrapped up and abandoned completely after a single fifteen-minute subplot. the issues are interwoven with the characters themselves. dee grew up with a disability, and with a mother who persistently told her she was ugly and worthless, and that affects everything she does. charlie grew up without a father and began abusing substances to cope at a young age, and that affects everything he does. mac’s parents never loved him and his religion never accepted him, and that affects everything he does. dennis was raped as a child and he lives with an untreated mental illness, and that affects everything he does. 

and the show doesn’t flinch away from portraying the really unattractive, problematic residual effects of the characters’ trauma, but it also doesn’t reduce the characters to their trauma, and it doesn’t imply that they’re worthless or beyond hope. when you look at it in that light, the huge fanbase of queer and mentally ill and traumatized teenagers makes a lot more sense.

Dodging all these IASIP season 13 spoilers has my hype level reaching 157 Units.

I’m so proud of them and am in love with their love.

season 1 - season 13 💙

I screamed.

oh did anyone else tear up when “the boys are back in town” started to play during the end credits scene lmao

reddit

r/IASIP - The ultimate ocular patdown

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Stumbled upon what people are describing between Charlie and the dennis doll... in what context would Charlie be willing to do this...? I can’t wait hahaha

An escape room scene!

(Dennis’ actual weird sex stuff to be used on women that’s there normally might incidentally be included and be scarier than whatever’s set up)

this is so fucking ominous oh my god