The It's Always Sunny Cast Faced A Big Challenge When Writing The Child Pageant Episode
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has managed to stay on the air longer than any other live-action sitcom in television history because it constantly one-ups itself. Every episode is more extreme than the one before. The show has aired for 16 seasons and counting, yet it has never stopped taking big swings.
By season 7, the series creators wanted to continue to challenge themselves and make themselves laugh. So they came up with an outlandish and offensive premise — a child's beauty pageant that takes place in a bar. It might sound like one of the most inappropriate things to ever air on television, but of course, that's their bread and butter on "Sunny." However, series creator Glenn Howerton insists that the point of the show is not to push boundaries.
"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," Howerton told Uproxx in 2021. "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. That's my feeling."
By the time the gang pitched "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties," the FX execs had already okayed some pretty controversial ideas, from a pedophile uncle character to a full episode in blackface. So, it wasn't the higher-ups that were the problem, and it wasn't Danny DeVito either, who had already resigned himself to some of the wildest comedy in the series. (After you burst out of a couch naked, what's a child's beauty pageant or two?) "So far, there's nothing they've come up with in their addled brains that I've refused," the "Taxi" alum once confessed to Entertainment Weekly.
But if DeVito and FX weren't the biggest problem with shooting "Little Beauties," what was?
Why and how did the gang end up throwing a pageant?
When the "Sunny" creators had the genius idea to throw a child beauty pageant in a bar, their only problem was that they couldn't figure out a way to trick their characters into doing it.
"The biggest challenge for that episode — and it took us a long time to lock into how we would do it — was figuring out why and how these characters end up throwing a pageant," Howerton explained to Collider in 2011. "We didn't want to just do something where they just decide to throw a kids' pageant because that's f***ing ridiculous. So, we had to come up with something."
Their conundrum produced one of the best jokes of the series — Frank tries to run an adult beauty pageant as an excuse to ogle beautiful women, but he accidentally organizes a children's pageant instead. But what type of parents would let their children hang out in a dive bar all day? Well, that answer is simple: there's a crown involved, isn't there?
Throwing a beauty pageant for children might not seem like the most natural premise for an episode of a raunchy adult sitcom, but for the "Sunny" creators, the outrageous ideas come easy — it's fitting them into the real world that's hard. Howerton went on:
"The challenge is not coming up with concepts or ideas for what these characters can get into. The challenge is always building a good story around it and grounding it, in its own way. Obviously, the universe that these characters live in is a little bit heightened. But, a lot of the work that we do, when we come up with these big things that we do, is to work really, really hard to make sure that, at least for the characters, what they're doing is justified, at least to them."
DeVito is down for anything — within reason
DeVito is one of the only main cast members in "Sunny" who didn't create the series, nor does he take part in writing and directing like his co-stars Howerton, Rob McElhenney, and Charlie Day. He has also done some of the most unbelievable and boundary-pushing bits in the series, including but certainly not limited to covering himself in slime and rolling on the floor of the Paddy's Pub bathroom. He is unafraid of the ideas that the crew cooks up for him, and he will never stand in the way of an episode getting made.
"You want to shoot me in the back of the head and take part of my memory away, or I fall down? I always say to them, the 'Sunny' guys, take it as far as they'll let you," he proclaimed in an interview with Uproxx. "And [John Landgraf, producer] and FX have been very, very good about all that."
In fact, DeVito is so willing to participate that the series creators even thought up a fake storyline to trick him. In the gag script, Frank goes to jail and is repeatedly, erm, violated — by the inmates, the prison guards, the police, everyone. DeVito didn't realize he was the victim of a practical joke until he got to the last line of the script: "April fools, b****."
Even though DeVito is down to do outrageous stunts, he agrees with Howerton's ethos — the characters' actions should always be justifiable, at least to themselves. The "Twins" star actually had a similar requirement for joining the "Sunny" cast in the first place. DeVito initially told FX execs he would only be on the show if "'they come up with an organic character, something that was not just Danny DeVito coming into a show, if it made sense,'" he recalled on "The Always Sunny" Podcast.
The gang always follows their own twisted logic
Frank needed to have a rationale for joining the gang, but as soon as DeVito read his first script, he fell in love with his character.
"I don't know what it is about Frank," he once swooned to the New York Times. "He's got the Midas touch, but he misses living in squalor. The one line that got me hooked to do the show was that I had a scene with Charlie Day, and I say [...] 'Let me come and live with you, man. I miss living in this Bohemian style.'"
Frank's logic might be totally backward, but there is a logic there. This kind of twisted reasoning is the fuel that runs the non-stop comedic machine that is "It's Always Sunny." The gang is constantly doing things that defy all common sense, but we can always follow their trail of logic, however misguided it might be. They aren't just outrageous — they're outrageous for a reason.
"We work really hard to make sure that our stuff just isn't like, 'Yeah, that's a funny joke,'" Howerton elaborated to Collider. "It's gotta feel like there's something more happening, so there's a little depth to it. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is that you can watch the show multiple times and get more from it because that's what we challenge ourselves with. Coming up with ideas though, there's a lot of stuff to prey on. There's always something crazy going on."
Whether it be a child's beauty pageant or biting the ear off of a mall Santa, the "Sunny" creators have no shortage of nonsensical ideas. The only question is how to fit them all in. Luckily, with 16 seasons in the books, they don't seem to be stopping any time soon.