Here is a break down of FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia for those of you who aren’t familiar with the show. Three friends (Mac, Dennis, and Charlie) own the worst bar in Philladelphia. Dennis’ sister, Deandra, and father, Frank, also work in the bar. Frank is also a partial owner. During the day they scheme up terrible plots that almost always involve tricking and back stabbing each other in the interest of self-fulfillment and vengeance. They are alcoholics and sociopaths and each character has their own unique propensity for vanity, immaturity, stupidity, and self righteousness. Charlie can’t read or write which makes him the stupidest but most good-natured character, Mac has the maturity of a 12 year old and I obsessed with karate (although has never taken a formal class), Dennis is self-conscious and manipulative, Dee is completely ignored and excluded by the rest of The Gang, and Frank shares characteristics of all the other characters while maintaining a position of monetary power and relative control over the group. They often get themselves into ridiculous situations such as training Charlie to enter a Fight Club, finding a Dumpster Baby, hunting a man, running a Vietnamese Russian Roulette game in the basement, sleeping with transvestites, and basically ruining the lives of those around them without concern or remorse. In short, they are the worst people alive.
For those people who follow and care about such things, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has never been nominated for an Emmy in the Best Comedy Series category. The reason behind their absence on the list is most likely that if Always Sunny got nominated, it would have to win. Shows like 30 Rock and Two and a Half Men can’t compete with the outlandish. Since it would be a crime to nominate Sunny without allowing Sunny to win, here are 5 reasons why Always Sunny cannot be nominated for an Emmy.
5. It’s Not a Network Show
How could a show on a small cable offshoot station of Fox to land an Emmy nod? FX won’t be hasn’t earned Emmy-worthy respect because the industry still revels behind the Big Four networks and brown noses them to hell and back every year. FX is for action buffs and Millenials, thus, doesn’t gain recognition by the critics despite an impressive lineup of their own programming that includes Sons of Anarchy and Rescue Me (also absent from the 2009 Emmy nominations list).
The Big Four still have a stranglehold on the industry and with the exception of HBO it’s been very difficult for shows on Cable to grab nominations in the Emmys. It will be some time before critics and peers are going to open up to the idea that Cable TV has more inventive and better written programming than most of the dribble that gets primetime network placement. People who work at networks are going to vote for shows on networks, it’s the old style of thinking that leads to shows like Sunny getting snubbed. Network primetime shows are often safe, easy, and get more viewers and for the Emmys that translates too more nominations.
If It’s Always Sunny was on Fox, you could guarantee a few more people would tune in and the Emmy voters would be less hesitant to put it on the ballet. Here’s to hoping the new Fox show, Boldly Going Nowhere, (written by the creators of Sunny) will help them get the credit they have earned.
4. No Budget + No Names = No Emmy
Sunny is a notoriously low-budget show. McElhenney, Day, and Howerton claim to have filmed the pilot episode with just $85. All were struggling actors at the time and wrote Sunny as a way to rise up in the industry. Why audition for roles when you can write the show and cast yourself?
To most people these guys are still industry no names, and despite their talent and knack for writing great comedy, the Emmy’s are always going to kiss ass to shows with big name actors like Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, and Charlie Sheen. Expect 30 Rock and Two and a Half Men to be back on the ballet next year, regardless of how their seasons turn out. Don’t let Danny Devito fool you either, regardless of his respect going into Sunny, Frank Reynolds is a character that is too risky to be looked at by most with their Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy glasses. Any character that treats his children as horribly as Frank does is not going to be rewarded for it in this country. And there’s no way anyone in Hollywood would dare cross the great Alec Baldwin by passing him up for the eccentric Danny Devito.
3. Cult Status
Did anyone try to get tickets for the live performances of “The Nightman Cometh”? What did tickets cost near you? The cheapest seats on craigslist and stub hub for the NYC Beacon Theatre showing were $100, with better seats going for $600+. Fan dedication like that isn’t found in thoughtless routine sitcoms like 30 Rock and Two and a Half Men, yet those shows were both awarded with Emmys this year. Meanwhile, even HBO’s comedies of Flight of the Concords and Entourage, each with fantastic fan followings of their own, were snubbed (Eastbound and Down wasn’t even nominated, for many of the same reasons as Sunny).
Do you have friends who are It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans? Go over to their house sometime and tell them you’ve never seen the show and see what happens. Prepare to cancel your dinner plans, and probably your breakfast plans the next day because you are in for an all-nighter as they plant you down on the couch and start rolling out the episodes. You’ll probably be started on “The Gang Gives Back” or maybe “The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby” or Season 4’s “Mac and Dennis: Man Hunters” in order to get a taste for the characters. From then on you’ll be there on your own terms, insisting on going back to Season 1 and enjoying the show in its entirety.
Do you have friends who are 30 Rock fans? Go over to their house and tell them you’ve never seen 30 Rock and see what happens. You’ll go on with your night as planned while they throw out a comment along the lines of “Oh you’ve never seen it? It’s really funny.”
The reason behind these two very different reactions is because 30 Rock is a safe comedy, while Always Sunny is anything but. Taboo themes and outlandish behavior are what separate revolutionary comedy on shows like Sunny that set it apart from throwaway network comedies. And when people discover a show like Sunny for what it is, probably the funniest show on television, they can’t get enough. When it isn’t on network TV then you have yourself a cult following of dedicated fans.
With great risk comes great reward. In FX’s case they took a risk on Sunny and were rewarded with the funniest show on television and no acclaim. In contrast, NBC created 30 Rock to shamelessly promote their network and as a result the smug three-chuckle-per-episode sitcom has won them dozens of accolades. That’s the entertainment industry in a nutshell.
2. It’s Absolutely Ridiculous
The plotlines in Sunny are beyond absurd. The logic that each character uses to justify their actions is convoluted at best. They make no apologies for what they’ve done and usually believe they are doing good and helping people when in reality their behavior is destructive and malicious. For all of this, the show makes no apologies.
Similar themes can be found in Family Guy (congrats on getting nominated this year). Family Guy makes racist and rude jokes day in and day out, but often these jokes are 1-hit notes that don’t pertain to the rest of the episode. A formulaic flashback for a quick punch line that has nothing to do with anything is hardly good writing, and nowadays isn’t as offensive or “edgy” as it would have been 15 years ago. Sunny, on the other hand, harps on these themes and these jokes for entire episodes. Drug abuse, alcoholism, racism, abortion, and child abuse aren’t 1-off jokes that are quickly forgotten; they are episode-long themes that spawn boundary pushing jokes and hilarious commentary about each subject.
For Example, in Family Guy a joke about a dumpster baby would look something like this (Note: this isn’t an actual Family Guy joke, just an example of one following their usual formula).
Peter: Oh man guys I gotta poop real bad guys! Oh look, a dumpster!
(Peter Runs to the Dumpster)
Cleveland: Careful, Peter. Remember that time you found the baby in the dumpster!
(Flashback to Peter pooping in a dumpster and then hearing a baby cry, assumingly after he pooped on it)
Peter: Oh Jesus you’re right! I’ll have to be more careful this time!
(Peter opens the dumpster, sees a baby, moves it aside and poops next to it)
Peter: Oh man that was a close one!
While Family guy’s joke is funny and rude in its own respect, Sunny takes it a bit further. In the episode entitled “The Gang finds a Dumpster Baby” the gang finds a baby in the dumpster outside the bar and then proceeds to try to exploit the child by putting it in commercials. When they discover ethnic babies are in greater demand than white babies, they try to take it to a tanning salon to change his skin color, totally ignorant of the effects UV rays would have on an infant. When they get turned down they proceed to paint the baby dark brown in an effort to get it into a commercial as a black baby. This 22 minute episode is entirely devoted to exploiting an abandoned child that they found in a dumpster for their own profit.
While pooping on a baby is cruel, making several attempts to exploit an abandoned dumpster-infant is absolutely horrible, and their attitude towards it as being logical and in no way damaging to the child makes it all the worse. They exhibit total disregard for others in the ongoing effort to further themselves, and that is what makes the show so damn funny. This ridiculous behavior, sadly, is also what keeps it too risky for the Emmy Awards to touch.
1. It’s Too Funny
The nature of the Emmys is to award the most popular shows in each category, and this makes it heard for shows such as Sunny to break through. Sunny is not the most popular show on television (partially because of it’s late night cable timeslot) and partially because it’s too taboo for a lot of people. But taboo is what has helped comedy evolve over the years from The Three Stooges bopping each other over the head to Dave Chappelle doing pantomime of dodging a homeless man’s ejaculate on a crowded bus.
At the heart of Sunny’s comedy are heartless and awful schemes that are often psychologically and physically damaging. The characters never learn from what they have done and thus continue to make similar mistakes and follow the same path of chaos and stupidity that makes each episode shockingly funny, and taboo to some.
This shock value pays off in spades with the amount of times viewer are prone to laugh out loud during an episode. Watching a group of people watching Sunny often results in outbursts of laughter so loud and prolonged that the person holding the controller frequently has to rewind the DVR because they couldn’t hear any dialogue in the 15 seconds following the jokes.
Nominated shows Entourage and Flight of the Concords provoke very different responses. While Entourage is enjoyable and fun in its own sense, rare is the occasion that a viewer will laugh out loud. It’s more of a light drama than an outright comedy. Concords is hit or miss with most viewers. Either they laugh at each song or they sit around waiting for the jokes that never come. Family Guy and How I Met Your Mother are the only shows on the list of Best Comedy Series this year the consistently evoke audible laughter from their viewers, and they didn’t even win.
It is ironic that a show can be too funny to win the Best Comedy Series Emmy Award, but it’s also undeniable. If Sunny ever wants to win an Emmy they will have to tone down the inappropriate behavior, make their characters less malicious, and weed out themes of alcohol, drugs, cannibalism, and glory holes.
Thank God the writers don’t give a shit about winning Emmys.
