Referred to as “Seinfeld on crack”, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” features an abrasive group of family and friends called “The Gang” who lead viewers through twisted plots and stories that illuminate the selfishness and lack of morality essential to the humor of the series..
Following a sitcom pattern of issue, development, and resolution, Sunny flips the expected on its head by having the characters selfishly act the opposite of accepted behavior and morality. Every season of the show finds The Gang in the same run-down Irish dive bar, Paddy’s Pub,, drinking and loudly arguing. When The Gang argues that it’s an American right to put bikini-clad young girls on display in child pageants, the satire is appreciable.
Frank Reynolds
Frank, played by Danny DeVito, is the catalyst the series needed to develop fully. While season 1 of IASIP is funny, after Frank Reynolds is introduced in season 2, the level of comedy rises off the proverbial charts. Danny DeVito can steal any scene with just a single word, adding a deadpan bluntness to hilarious effect. Frank is the patriarch of the “It’s Always Sunny” gang, bankrolling any schemes developed by Dennis and Mac.
His slide into depravity is one of the most remarkable character development arcs on TV. Frank starts the show as Dennis and Deandra’s successful businessman father, looking to divorce his children’s materialistic mother. As the show continues, he chooses to live on the edge of society, associating with misfits and addicts by choice, saying “I don’t know how many years on this Earth I have left. I’m going to get real weird with it.”
By season 18 he is a misfit himself: carries a loaded pistol around everywhere, discovers that Dennis and Dee are not his children, develops an obsession with eggs, and prefers to share a hideaway bed in a rodent-filled tenement with his roommate who may or may not be his son, Charlie.
Charlie Kelly
Charlie Kelly is an amazing character with a large viewer fan base. We are introduced to him at Paddy’s Bar where he works as the rat-killing idiot janitor and, as the show progresses, we realize that Charlie is profoundly illiterate. My favorite joke in “It’s Always Sunny” is the viewer’s realization that although everyone in The Gang knows Charlie is illiterate ridicules him for it, no one bothers to teach him how to read. We also find out that Charlie has survived an abortion attempt, does the majority of the actual work at Paddy’s Pub, is an expert in bird law, and that he was raised by a single mother who is likely a sex worker.
Charlie’s search to find his dad leads him to a red herring in Frank, who had previously slept with Charlie’s mom and wanted her to have a back-alley abortion. Charlie can be a lot more capable at difficult leaps of logic than he appears and, although a seemingly nice person at first glance, is as morally bankrupt as the rest of The Gang.
He stalks a woman known only as “The Waitress” for over ten years, chasing her from jobs, apartments and women’s shelters, watching her from windows while journaling her day-to-day activities. He continuously breaks into her home to try to impress her in different, creepy ways. He uses relationships with other women to make The Waitress jealous and, when The Waitress finally goes against all of her instincts to date him, Charlie sleeps with her and dumps her.
Dennis Reynolds
Dennis, the bartender, begins the series as a regular guy who drives a 1993 Range Rover but is soon revealed to be the one of the most disturbed characters on the show. He begins the series as Frank’s child but, as we discover, he and his twin sister Deandra are the result of their mother’s extramarital affair. He is a predator and almost definitely a serial killer.
In “The High School Reunion: Part 2”, Dennis exposes the duct tape, gloves, and zip ties he keeps hidden in a compartment in his car. He dismisses “his tools” as fetish stuff, but it rings very hollow, sparking the viewer’s realization that Dennis is a very bad man.
He states he checks women’s ID’s before hooking up because he likes them young, but legal. He uses boats to get women on the open water, where “they can’t say no, because of the implication”.
In season 11 when “Mac & Dennis Move to the Suburbs”, Dennis clearly goes insane, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. He admits to a fetish for skin, referencing it many, many times throughout the show’s run. Finally, the rumors and suspicions around Dennis’ criminal inclinations culminate in the episode “Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer”, a brilliant Sunny satire of “The Jinx” and “Making a Murderer.”
Mac McDonald
Mac, as he is known, begins the series as a straight, Catholic and somewhat tough guy who knows martial arts. He lives with Dennis, his codependent best friend, and works as the bouncer at Paddy’s Pub. By season 13, he has come out of the closet as a gay man multiple times only to hop back in., In one of the best phycially comic jokes on TV, he gains and loses fifty pounds over the course of the series. has gained and lost fifty pounds in one of the best physical comedy jokes on TV in years, He becomes obsessed with gaining Dennis’ erotic love , and is incompetent and untrained as a bouncer that he knocks himself out and is mocked for his obvious fear.
Mac is a weak, scared sexually-deviant man whose friends and family despise him. His name, Ronald McDonald, is finally revealed in season 7 and later we learn it was chosen by his dad specifically to humiliate Mac. However, Mac has an aspect of his character that is unique to Sunny.
In the only serious scene in the entire show, Mac comes out as a gay man to his father through a beautiful, meaningful interpretative dance in season 137.
Deandra Reynolds
Deandra, or Dee, is introduced as a single, aspiring actress working as a waitress at Paddy’s Pub. She and Dennis, her brother, are alike in many ways. They both seem normal from first glance, but Deandra is a predator too, just like her twin brother. Dee seemingly rapes Charlie in season 10, although viewers don’t find out until season 13 when Dee keeps insisting that a man cannot be raped. She destroys at least three men’s lives in the show, the first a recurring character named Cricket, the second a married drug-addict named Bill Ponderosa, and lastly a male stripper she takes revenge on for a slight.
We later find out that she lit her college roommate on fire, helps to get The Waitress off the wagon, and has attempted to destroy her high-school best-friend’s life due to jealousy. Her acting capabilities are worse than a toddler and her comedy characters she has been developing for years amount to nothing but old, racist stereotypes.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been renewed for two more seasons to many people’s pleasure. Viewers like me can look forward to seeing more of The Gang’s scheming, abrasive arguing and amoral antics in the future.
As to where their characters may end up literally and morally, viewers may need to take a hint from the series finale of “Seinfeld”.
