One Of The Most High Quality Shows - Tumblr Posts
This belongs in the credits of every episode of the show as a plaque.
the closest thing it’s always sunny in philadelphia has to a leading romance à la rachel and ross or jim and pam is a twelve-season will-they-or-won’t-they between two of their main male characters. ordinarily the “straight best friends with homoerotic tendencies” trope never genuinely puts pressure on the nature of the characters’ relationship, always ending with the pair receiving their respective girlfriends or wives. gayness itself becomes the punchline in cases like these, but sunny—a dark social-satire whose thesis continually subverts sitcom tropes—has managed to push a storyline that may have started as just another cliche joke into previously uncharted waters. the romantic aspect of mac and dennis’ relationship isn’t ridiculed or dismissed as ‘platonic,’ ‘brotherly,’ or ‘only in the fan’s minds,’ by the creators (who, for those who don’t watch the show, are also the characters’ actors and main writers); instead, it’s been built into the fabric of the show from the very beginning, and is constantly reinforced in canon and commentary. while it’s far from a traditional ‘slow burn’ given the show’s tone and the characters’ largely toxic, unhealthy behaviors, the relationship isn’t a rushed, sidelined gay storyline between minor characters, a one-off attempt to please a certain fragment of the audience, or a gay relationship established at the onset among a cast of other heterosexual relationships either.
since the show’s start in 2005, the show has progressed mac and dennis’ more-than-platonic relationship from comedic subtext to genuine text, allowing one of the main characters to ultimately come out of the closet and begin blatantly addressing his previously hinted-at feelings for the other in multiple episodes of the most recent season. the show has managed to present the relationship in a way that doesn’t make gayness the butt of the joke, instead driving humor from the characters’ inability to come to terms with their sexualities and latent feelings for one another. despite its biting satire and dark roots, sunny allows for rare sentimental moments that feel more genuine than those on other shows with canon homosexual relationships. whether or not mac and dennis’ relationship is ever officially consummated, i honestly can’t think of any other sitcom, or drama for that matter, that has done anything like this in the history of television.
why don’t they have an emmy. why when shows like big bang theory are lauded for making stupid gay jokes about raj and howard and even though its nearing a run as long as sunny’s penny/leonard still feels just as predictably uninspired as it did in its infancy
IASIP’s Dennis Reynolds subverts the “ladies man” role, a sitcom staple held by Joey from Friends, Barney from HIMYM, and countless others while revealing the manipulative and misogynistic nature of his conquests. Instead of playing his deception for laughs Dennis is shown to be trapped in his own toxic masculinity and need for attention. In this essay I will
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.
AND pehaps like how when something/someone is missing from a person’s life that they’re used to, they unintentionally take on those attributes or roles as a way to cope with the loss (provide certain absent constants themselves by adding them to their own personality and behaviors as a way to replace that)
i feel in my soul that rob is using glenn’s natural hand gestures & affectation to create gay hands mac….but either way i love big beefy mac with the delicate gay hands
i love this i love this i love this i lo
When Stupidity gives a bad review, that’s a compliment..and in this case an incredibly ironic one
it really shows how fucking awful cishet male sunny fans are that they think the boggs ladies reboot is the worst episode and are going out of their way to get it to the lowest rating. lower than the episodes with blackface, lower than the episodes that just straight up aren’t funny, all because they hate women that much. it’s ridiculous
As much as the whole ratings situation makes me sad, part of me believes that’a what RCG expected to happen.
Women wrote this episode, it was directed by a woman, and stars all women plus only 4 men but few seconds each (together they appeared for less than 2 minutes in a 20 minutes episode). As much as we can be loud, 70% of sunny’s audience is made of white cishet men, but RCG have showed more than once how much they value that 30% made of lgbt ppl, women and poc more than that 70%.
RCG has done it again.
They let this episode air, well knowing it was gonna go bad ratings wise, but the fact that the ratings are going so badly only further proves the point of that episode.
RCG let a “””bad”””” episode air because its meaning was way more important than the ratings it was gonna produce, they know that when something stars only women especially in a mainly-male domain, its gonna perform poorly, they know this, they’ve been in the business for 15 years. All the men getting mad at the episode airing just proves RCGs point and guess what? They don’t give a fuck, they don’t give a fuck about the low ratings, about upsetting 70% of their audience, you know why?
Because this is what they’ve been doing since 2005, creating the anti-sitcom, all other sitcoms never dare not respect the ratio, the 3:1 man/woman ratio in cast for comedies, but RCG don’t give a fuck about it, they always do what other shows never do: sacrificing their ratings by airing an episode that says fuck you to what other shows do, in this case: the 3:1 ratio.
♥️♥️♥️
this is…literally the softest video ive ever seen
Contact (1997) // The Gang Goes to a Water Park (2017)
i think my favorite thing about the gang gets new wheels is how the old range rover itself becomes a symbol of dennis’s life in philly. it’s broken down, unglamorous, something even an “economy man” scoffs at, but, it’s somehow everything dennis wants. when he went to north dakota, the gang blew up his old rover, symbolizing the start of a new life and the end of the person dennis had been in philly (dennis even said, the range rover was a big part of his identity). in both cases, dennis tries and tries to get used to a new car (a new lifestyle in north dakota being a family man ) that is considered better, more conventionally successful. but he doesn’t want it. at the end of the day, he wants his broken-down fucked up life in philly more than anything else he could choose from, and he will go back to it every time.
@jen__marie (instagram): WHEN CHARLIE DAY AND ROB MCELHENNEY WAVE YOU TO ACROSS THE STREET. I am fangirling SO DAMN HARD.
Rebloging for the comments in the tags, I totally agree and really like how you put it @glam0urmuscles
rcg don’t let us down challenge :/
i thought i dreamt this how is it even real
i’m so pleased this is a two-parter penultimate episode of the season
before The Big One
hmmmmm……..what do u mean there are only 2 eps left after this one……..hm
“World Premiere- It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 13″
Warning- Contains spoilers
Love this analysis of what’s to come with what info we’ve been given!
We also know that part of the scene during Mac’s dance will be similar to the classic ending of the movie Sullivan’s Travels, which to make a parallel to, especially in that episode, makes a statement about Always Sunny’s layered goals and the purpose of what topics and situations they’ve chosen to involve in the show, while categorized as a comedy. Both hold serious notions in each hilarious absurdity, and demonstrate that the best way to aid in resolution of actual hardship is through an element of comedy.
It’s also self-referential in a way, in that rcg successfully pursued their dreams of acting and creating their own show about people trying to pursue their own dreams (originally in the plot they were all aspiring actors - It’s Always Sunny on Tv).
Sullivan’s Travels is one of the most highly acclaimed movies about movies, and Always Sunny is one of the most high quality shows about other shows (highlighting and subverting known cliches and scenarios of established popular fiction) in order to make self-aware statements on negative behavior/societal dynamics.
these are the three scenes from the official season trailer that we still haven’t seen, i think. all of these look to be from mac finds his pride, with the possible exception of the last one (frank has no injury/different outfit) except why would they be in the apartment still in the gang wins the big game? also, the trailer for gang wins the big game contained almost exclusively clips from charlie’s home alone, so it’s safe to say we’re pretty much going in blind and there are reasons rcg doesn’t want to reveal literally anything about the ep before it airs.
we have slightly more information for mac finds his pride, based on interviews, the official trailer, and screenings. we know mac is going to come out to luther via interpretive dance to a sigur ros song, we know it won’t go well, and we know frank will try to find mac a boyfriend. looks to me like frank is showing off cricket to dee as an option – god, just look at what cricket’s wearing. we all know frank is into some kinky shit and has in all likelihood worn something similar before & he’s probably trying to make him seem sexy and viable for mac. i’m just saying, if cricket’s being presented as an option for mac in the same episode that mac tries to get closer to luther, that’s two people off the machelor list right there. correct me if i’m wrong, but i don’t think the mcpoyles have been in this season yet, and they’re, like, staple side characters – i’m pretty sure i remember rcg saying, like, “it’s not a season of sunny if it doesn’t have the waitress, artemis, and the mcpoyles” so it’d make sense to put them in the finale, especially seeing as they’re fan favorites. another machelor person crossed off. frank will probably use a mcpoyle (liam) & cricket, possibly among others, to be mac’s boyfriend (seeing as the gang is on decent terms w about five people and the mcpoyles/cricket are two that have been openly gay in the past, for one reason or another), and push mac to come out to and bond with luther. none of this will work out. none of them will fill mac’s “hole”, literally or emotionally, as the machelor said. and who did mac end up choosing in the machelor? dennis.
i’m not saying the machelor prophecy but uh! the machelor prophecy! fingers crossed lads
Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, and Kaitlin Olson show some love for Danny DeVito at PaleyLive 2016.
how to come out to your dad (and find your pride)