The One Question It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia Is Always Trying To Answer
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is a series that poses some pretty wild questions to its audience. Is the Nightman based on Charlie's super creepy pedophile uncle Jack? Is Dennis (Glenn Howerton) secretly a serial killer? Is Paddy's Pub only able to stay open because of Frank's (Danny DeVito) deep pockets? There are a million different questions fans can ask themselves while watching the series, but there's one question that Howerton has said really drives the show on a conceptual level. In the "The Always Sunny Podcast" episode where the podcast gang discussed "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life," Howerton said there's a question the series is "constantly answering," and he's spot-on in his assessment — I've certainly thought it while watching!
The characters on "It's Always Sunny" are some truly terrible people (even if the show is so much more than that) and they get up to some ridiculous antics, which means at any point someone might look at their TV and ask: "Who in the world acts like that?"
The big question
In the episode "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life," Frank and Mac (Rob McElhenney) end up seeing a movie together and are the world's worst movie patrons after a failed Bon Jovi business meeting. They talk loudly, Mac answers phone calls, and Frank plays with a laser pointer, which Howerton explained shows a common but important theme throughout the series:
"But what you were saying about the obnoxiousness of those people [Frank and Mac in the movie theater] ... That was so — I feel like that's a question we're constantly answering on It's Always Sunny, and the question is always: Who does that? You know what I mean? Like when you go through life and you see people act a certain way, you're like, 'Who the f*** ... who acts this way? Who does this?' And 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia' is the answer to that question. You know what I mean? It's been such a delight to purge that from myself because I've been in movie theaters where people are basically doing exactly what you guys are doing and I'm like, 'Are you f***ing kidding me?'"
Almost everyone who's ever been to a movie theater has had an experience with horrible audience members (seriously, who talks on the phone in a theater?!) but as always, the gang take things up another notch. They are pretty much always obnoxious, but they've even shown their bad movie theater etiquette on multiple occasions. After all, it's crucial that the gang never grows or become better people, because it would defeat the whole purpose of the show!
The worst people in the world
Since its very first season, "It's Always Sunny" has allowed its characters to be truly awful, pushing the boundaries of good taste in the name of comedy while also reminding us that even the worst people are still people. They are despicable, saying and doing things that any decent human being only ever maybe imagines doing but would never act on, and maybe that's part of the magic. The gang get to be the worst of us and it's a little cathartic to revel in their awfulness because we know we shouldn't ever do these things ourselves. We know it's wrong to spit in people's faces, lock your enemies in a burning apartment, or poison your rivals at a flip cup tournament, but when the gang does it, it's satisfying. They get to be bad for all of us, and be really freaking funny while doing it.