Rob McElhenney Wanted It's Always Sunny To Be The Exact Opposite Of Friends
Like many sitcoms, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" follows a group of friends initially grouped by their workplace (and family ties) who have become bound by their long history of antics with one another. Unlike most sitcoms, the gang on "Always Sunny" really does not act like they care about one another pretty much at all. Sure, characters on shows like "Seinfeld" and "How I Met Your Mother" are frequently snarky with one another, but they generally have one another's backs when things get tough. In the original pilot for "Sunny" that eventually became the season 1 episode "Charlie Has Cancer," Dennis (Glenn Howerton) visits his friend Charlie (Charlie Day) to borrow a basketball, only for Charlie to tell him that he has cancer, which makes Dennis do everything he can to leave without having to really help Charlie or deal with his discomfort in any way. It's brutal and brutally funny and set the tone for the cruelty the gang is able to inflict upon one another.
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise then to learn that the series creator Rob McElhenney has described the original idea for "Always Sunny" as being "the anti-'Friends'" in an interview with the YouTube channel Let's Shoot! with Pete Chatmon. He goes on to explain that while the perspective shifted a little bit, that original idea has always been the backbone of the series, giving us some of television history's most wonderfully awful characters.
The gang are kind of anti-friends
In the interview, McElhenney shares that the original concept for "Sunny" was actually "It's Always Sunny on TV," and that he wanted it to be the "anti-'Friends,'" although he clarifies that he loves "Friends" and has seen every episode. However, he felt that something like "Friends" wasn't exactly new, explaining that while the "Friends" theme song was "I'll Be There For You," he wanted to do the opposite:
"['Friends'] was telling the story of these friends who would always be there for each other and I thought maybe we could do a show that would be the opposite of that which would kind of fly in the face of what traditional television was understood to be which was you want to watch people you like and that they need to be likeable. Now I agree that you want to watch people you enjoy watching but that doesn't mean you have to like them on a personal level, I mean you know Tony Soprano is a psychopath but we loved watching him, so I thought well maybe we can do a version of that in comedy and make these sort of awful sociopathic people enjoyable to watch..."
While it took the "Sunny" folks a little while to fully make the gang as lovable as they are hateable, making the show more than just a bunch of goofs about terrible people, it did find that groove and has been running for 16 seasons strong, with FX signed on for at least two more.
Ross and Rachel could never
The friends on "Friends" aren't exactly the best people in the world, but they're nowhere near as depraved as the gang from "Sunny." Sure, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) threw his date's prosthetic leg into a fire and then ran out on her, but the "Always Sunny" gang is responsible for the total destruction of several lives and might have actually gotten away with murder. (Whether or not Dennis killed his ex-wife Maureen, he almost certainly killed his sister's date in Ireland in the season 15 finale.) Originally, McElhenney planned on having the characters all be actors, which would make their narcissistic and sociopathic behavior "just a function of being in Los Angeles," but eventually only Dee (Kaitlin Olson) ended up having aspirations of acting stardom. The series was moved from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, where McElhenney is from, and the rest is television history, baby!
McElhenney succeeded in his original idea, to subvert the "Friends" theme song completely. Every once in a while the characters manage to do something bordering on real friendship, like Mac buying Dennis a rocket launcher for Valentine's Day, but even that is twisted by the gang's uniquely twisted worldview. With friends like the gang, who needs enemies?