It's Always Sunny's Emmy Award Mockery Was Heavily Debated Behind The Scenes
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has been on for a record-breaking 16 seasons, making it the longest-running live-action sitcom of all time ... but, for some reason, it's never won an Emmy. Actually, it's never even been nominated for an Emmy, unless you count the three times the series was nominated for "Outstanding Stunt Coordination For A Comedy Series Or A Variety Program." The show has been around forever and continues to make people laugh and fans go absolutely rabid creating memes and video edits, so it honestly feels a bit absurd that it's never been honored with the biggest award in television. The gang even appeared on the 2024 Emmy Awards ceremony and poked fun at the fact that they had never been awarded, though Danny DeVito noted that he had (for "Taxi," not "Sunny").
When the gang made their 100th episode of "It's Always Sunny" back in season 9, they decided to go ahead and poke a little fun at the fact that they had never won an Emmy. (At that point, they had not even been nominated for the stunt awards!) The episode, "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award," is a whole lot of fun and is full of hilarious meta-humor for folks in the know. Yet, apparently, there was a lot of discussion behind the scenes on whether it would work at all.
'We really debated it for a long time'
In an interview with Yahoo back in 2013, "It's Always Sunny" star, writer, and co-producer Glenn Howerton explained that the writers had a lot of discussions about whether or not they wanted to poke fun at the Emmys:
"We really debated it for a long time. We were like, 'If we don't get this right, it could really look like we're just bitter.' So we almost didn't do it. But the more we talked about it and conceptualized what the episode would be, we were all laughing. This is funny! We can't back away from this just because we're worried we might alienate the entertainment industry in some way. That's not how we operate. So we decided to just go full-force into it. And I'm glad it turned out well, because it could've been a disaster."
In the episode, the gang gets upset that Paddy's Pub has never won any awards and they decide to compete, checking out some of the other award-winning bars and trying to imitate them. The two bars they try to copy are inspired by the shows that win awards: one bar is a cheery place that represents the average network sitcom, with forced romance and a bell that tells you when to drink (a brilliant metaphor for a laugh track), while the other is a burlesque club, representing more serious, artistic fare. It all works at face value, too, because it's easy to understand why the gang can't seem to win. After all, on "Sunny," failure is the default.
Some very clever writing
The gang is always doomed to fail, so it's really no surprise when they throw an industry night to try and impress their peers and manage to make a total debacle of things. But along the way, they also manage to make some really apt comments on the awards industry, especially with regard to entertainment. Whether they're pointing out the fact that Black bars don't win awards (just like Black shows never won awards in 2013, something that's only just now starting to change) or realizing that they have their own fans who love what they do, and they just are a bit too fringe to impress the mainstream, the gang makes a lot of good points. That's really rare for them, so take note!
The episode also features two different songs sung by Charlie (Charlie Day): the first is a very middle-American, "Cheers" opening-like ditty, while the other is about spiders living in his soul and ends with "I want to tell you all, go f*** yourselves." The latter is pure "It's Always Sunny," and we wouldn't have it any other way.