One Style Of It's Always Sunny Joke Was Never Funny To Danny DeVito
The comedic stylings of the team behind "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" can get pretty raunchy and weird, but actor Danny DeVito has been on board for almost all of their depraved ideas over the years. As Frank Reynolds, the patriarch of "the gang," DeVito has rolled around in hand sanitizer in his underwear, eaten the ingredients of a cake in a dog crate, and more, but there is one bit of the gang's comedy stylings that doesn't really tickle his funny bone. As they often do, the writers of the series turned that discomfort into a joke in one of the episodes, poking fun at the situation through Frank.
On the "Always Sunny Podcast," co-writers/producers/stars Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, and Rob McElhenney were joined by co-writer and producer Megan Ganz and co-star Kaitlin Olson to discuss the episode "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters," which features the joke in question. The episode is chock-full of humor that really pushes the boundaries of good taste, with jokes about necrophilia, cannibalism, and more, but it's really one of the tamer bits that made poor DeVito squirm!
A bit of nipple-rubbing
On the podcast episode, the group gets around to discussing a scene where Dennis (Howerton) asks Mac (McElhenney) to feel his nipples because they're as hard as "diamonds" and "could cut glass," all in anticipation of hunting down Rickety Cricket (David Hornsby). Frank is already upset about the guy's intent to hunt a man, claiming the plot of "First Blood" as his own past, but he's also totally perplexed by the whole nipple-rubbing display. McElhenney explains to the listeners that DeVito would ask, "Your generation and your idea of what's funny, what is this?" with regards to them touching one another's nipples (and balls, according to Olson). Howerton apparently took it a step further, teasing DeVito by touching the elder actor himself:
"I would occasionally, every once in a while, just touch Danny's nipples to see how he — [...] He hated it. He f***in' hated it. But then eventually he realized that I was getting too much satisfaction from him hating it. [...] So he had to start letting me."
Howerton's trolling managed to make it into the series, albeit through another person touching him instead of the other way around. While DeVito may not have understood the humor, many fans did, and "Mac and Dennis: Manhunters" is a beloved early episode.
The gang gets gross
While it's understandable that DeVito didn't want his nipples touched, the resulting scene is hilarious and is far from the episode's most disconcerting joke. After all, this is an episode where Charlie (Day) and Dee (Olson) believe that they've become cannibals by eating meat from Frank's fridge and they go on a journey to try and sate their hunger by taking a hot plate and beers into a morgue. Meanwhile, Mac and Dennis are hunting Cricket with the intention of putting their testicles in his mouth as a kind of punishment, something they've been doing to him since high school.
It's potentially pretty problematic ... but since the gang are the worst people in the world, it totally works.