It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Goal Wasn't To Push Boundaries Of Comedy
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has a reputation for being the edgiest sitcom on television. There seems to be no line that this raunchy satire won't cross to make their characters look like fools, but the intent of the show is not to offend the viewer. The objective of the series creators is to poke fun at their characters, but the humor is often misconstrued as an intentional test of their viewership. Co-creator and star Glenn Howerton is adamant that his series doesn't just push the envelope for the sake of it.
"The way the show is talked about, it's as if that's our goal, or that our goal is to push the boundaries of what's decent or whatever," the comedian lamented to Uproxx. "And that's never the goal. That being said, what is the goal is to make people laugh. And often in order to do so, you have to kind of shake them up a little bit."
The "It's Always Sunny" cast and crew aren't afraid to shock their audience for the sake of a good joke — in fact, Howerton finds that his favorite comedy comes from breaking taboos. "The best jokes to me, are slightly acerbic and make you go, 'Oh, s***! Can you say that?'" he confessed. "That's just what I like because I like to be provoked. I like to be poked by art."
Even still, Howerton doesn't appreciate humor that is offensive just for the sake of pushing the audience's buttons. The joke has to be solid and funny, communicating a clear perspective. Otherwise, it totally falls flat. Howerton rejects the notion that "It's Alway Sunny" can be lumped in with this brand of comedy. "I often find [shock-value comics] offensive because it's just not f***ing funny," he said.
'The goal is to make people laugh'
The reason "It's Always Sunny" works — and has continued working for 15 seasons and counting — is that it is a clear satire. Howerton and his co-stars closely examine their characters, writing and improvising many of their own lines for themselves. They have developed these characters over the years to poke fun at some of the darker shades of humanity. Episodes like "Gun Fever" stake the characters at opposite ends of hot-button political issues, so no one is safe from the show's scrutiny.
"For me, it's more raising questions, forcing people on any side of a particular issue to sort of face what is often absurd about their point of view, or the reasons behind their point of view," Howerton explained. "[...] poking fun at the extremes on any side of any given issue or argument is ... I mean, I think that's just what the show's always been about."
Despite its edginess, "It's Always Sunny" has aired for more seasons than any other live-action sitcom in the history of television. Since the comedians are constantly trying to push their comedy and their characters further, to surprise the fans that have stuck around for well over a decade, they occasionally push boundaries so far that they step over the line completely and need to reel it in with an apology.
Sometimes they go a bit too far
Series co-creator Rob McElhenney admitted that the show may have gone a bit too far by putting his character, Mac, in blackface. In the tradition of "Tropic Thunder," Mac plays the Black character Murtaugh in the gang's rendition of a "Lethal Weapon" film, but it doesn't quite land the same. The satirization of blackface in "It's Always Sunny" is not as clearly and pointedly purposeful as it is in the 2008 film.
The streaming giant Netflix removed the episode containing the first "Lethal Weapon" parody in 2021, over 10 years after its original airdate, per Deadline. McElhenney addressed the controversy at a press conference that year.
"I find that my barometer is off for what's appropriate sometimes in situations because, like, we've spent 15 years making a show about the worst people on the planet, and because it's satire, we lean so heavily into this idea. And then we are always, like, right on the razor's edge, but that's the only way that satire works. And then I go and do something else, and I may be pitching something, and then I realize, like, 'Oh, it's wholly inappropriate for the show what I'm doing because these are supposed to be real human beings,' whereas, on 'Sunny,' they are cartoon characters, and we can, kind of, get away with a whole lot more."
McElhenney and his co-stars addressed the controversy directly in "The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7." Mac apologizes for donning blackface in "Lethal Weapon 5," and the others remind him that he wore blackface in "Lethal Weapon 6" as well (a detail that slipped by the Netflix censors). The writers still sneak in a jab at woke culture — as a solution, the gang hires a Black actor to play Murtaugh, thus subjecting a Black person to their racial insensitivity.
But the best jokes come from pushing boundaries
From the very beginning, the "It's Always Sunny" creators took an uncompromising approach to their comedy. They didn't think they'd last very long on the air in the early seasons, so they had nothing to lose — especially before the actors had real-life responsibilities like children and mortgages.
"We decided from quite early on that we weren't going be bound by the normal laws of television," Howerton recalled in a 2015 interview with Vice. "By the time we got to season 3, I remember having a specific conversation with the guys where [...] our attitude was like, 'Any minute the show's gonna get canceled, so f*** it, let's see how far we can go with these characters — let's see how far we can push them.'"
Even still, the purpose of the show has always been to satirize and poke fun at its characters, not to condone them. Howerton admits that the series creators have gotten better at making their messaging clear over time.
"I don't think we were quite as good at this in the early seasons ... making it clear that the writers of the show aren't saying that this behavior is funny because we like it and we stand by it," says Howerton. "It's funny because it's so awful, and it's exactly what you're not supposed to do."
It might step over the line at times, but the goal of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has always been strikingly clear — it's a critical satire, through and through.