It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Why do I like Sunny?
I’ve been trying to reconcile why I like this crazy, sick, and often demented comedy/sitcom extravaganza, often described as “Seinfeld on crack”. Transfer the setting from wealthy Manhattan (anti)socialites to a bar in Philadelphia with much, much poorer Irish-Catholic leanings, and you’ve got this…thing. To describe it as anything other than bleak and dark would either betray a slight insanity on my part, or show that I laugh at terrible, awful things.
For one, the show’s main characters represent the absolute zenith of narcissism. Dennis talk like he’s the center of the universe, often acting in borderline sociopathic ways to everyone around him so they will recognize his “greatness”. His sister Dee, the “normal” one of the bunch, remains entirely self-centered and often ends up drunk and/or sleeping with somebody or someone by the end of an episode. Their friend Mac and Charlie remain no different; Mac’s obsessed with his own self-image and/or money-making schemes, while Charlie has the brain of a twelve-year old and just as much common sense. Add Frank (who raised Dennis and Dee, but is actually Charlie’s father…not that this spoils anything) and the search for money/fame, and you see a pattern beginning to develop.
Each episode title pretty much tells you what you’re going to see from the very first frame. What other comedy series do you know that starts with an episode called “The Gang Gets Racist”, which ends up being incorrect since they actually become homophobic instead? This is not a comedy that wanders from tough issues and topics, all dealt with the irreverence you’d expect. What you do not expect, really, comes from the rather biting social commentary (possibly) hidden underneath a lot of this.
It is, to put it in words, the sitcom we deserve. Seinfeld did not make us better people; rather, it just pointed out what’s already the case. Self-absorbed people remained self-absorbed, and rather than seeing their faults we related to them. Yeah, it’s funny, but we basically pointed at these characters, said “we’re not like THAT!”, and moved on with our lives. That’s exactly the response you’d expect. This is your brain’s way of disguising guilt: by projecting it outwards and applying it to other people. Seinfeld characters did this all the time, as they absolutely hated to see other people doing things and enjoying themselves.
Crank it up to eleven, and that’s how all the characters on Sunny act. Every episodes consists of some strange concocted scheme to make lots of dough or get famous, or maybe even both. All of them are good friends, but they hate everyone else for having things they don’t have, or being successful in something where they do not hold even the slightest notion of talent, skill, luck, or hard work necessary to get there. They then concoct some awful scheme with the worst logic possible, proceeding to offend anyone and everyone. Well, not always offend, sometimes killing people, or revealing terrible secrets, or actually smoking crack cocaine to get welfare checks (yes, I am being absolutely serious right now). Yet even when they’re horrible to other people, they’re strangely honest and forthright with each other…most times. They will call something out as terrible in their friends with impeccable precision, as long as it doesn’t apply to themselves. It’s a strange mix, showing how often our perceptions and subjectivity can blind us to obvious truths.
It takes a deft hand to make such horrible people both lovable and hilarious in the midst of terrible situations, but I find myself laughing in both genuine ways and in utter shock or disbelief (take your pick). Unlike, say, the Penny Arcade guys, they somehow find a way to make a giant, GIANT rape joke (“The Gang Buys a Boat”) funny while also showing how the train of thought leading to it isn’t far from our minds as we’d think. They like to find humor in extremes, and so do I. It probably doesn’t have something to say, but laughing in the face of horror seems a far better alternative than drinking it in (not literally), doesn’t it? Apparently we laugh in the face of anxiety or emotional stress, and certainly such subject matter puts us in a similar space to a traumatic experience. Shall we laugh at sin, which has no power, or will we let it bring us into the doldrums where it wants? I think you know my answer.
I’m almost glad that this show rarely delves into political issues except to make fun of them, mostly in good fun. As creator Rob McElhenney says regarding it:
But I figure that I have this platform in order to make you laugh and enjoy yourselves for 30 min, not to preach to about how I may feel on a particular subject. Besides it’s way more fun to present the extremes of both sides of an issue. That’s where the idiots who drive the national conversation dwell.
And, of course, if I don’t quote Chesterton here you’ll want me to do so, so here it is from Orthodoxy:
The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
I laugh at terrible things, and I’m not guilty or ashamed for doing it if the context is right.
