Rob McElhenney Tweets a Touching Tribute About ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s 19th Anniversary

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia turned 19 years old this past weekend — it better not get on any boats with Dennis Reynolds.

It was a minor miracle that the longest running live-action sitcom in American TV history ever even made it to air back in 2005. Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton famously shot the pilot of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on a $100 budget while the former-most waited tables to make ends meet, just like so many other aspiring artists living in Los Angeles. Thankfully, FX liked the premise of a bunch of friends running a shitty bar in Philadelphia and being the worst people possible while still somehow escaping every episode alive and non-incarcerated enough to barely fund the first season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Danny DeVito found the trial run charming enough to sign on for Season Two. 

Today, almost two decades later, the most meaningful miracle of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s ongoing run isn’t that FX is still willing to shell out the dough for new seasons, but that the core cast of McElhenney, Day, Howerton, DeVito and Kaitlin Olson have all been able to continue working together for so many years without growing to hate one another — in McElhenney’s Always Sunny birthday tweet, he celebrated the time spent with his “best friends.”

The video in McElhenney’s post appears to come from the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's second season as the adorably youthful cast discusses Dennis’ improvised speech in “The Gang Runs for Office” among other now-nostalgic and iconic moments from Season Two. It’s also notable that McElhenney and Olson both listed their co-star’s scenes as their favorites from the series thus far, and Olson’s sly smile when she closed with, “I’m glad it ended up this way” seems to have that glint that her and McElhenney’s co-stars would later learn indicated some on-set romance.

Thankfully, the last 19 years haven’t caused the real-life gang behind Always Sunny to tire of working with each other, either in the series itself or on the sadly concluded podcast. There are few examples of fruitful collaboration in comedy history that have lasted as long as the chemistry behind Always Sunny, and we hope that McElhenney will still feel the same way about his best friends next year when the series hits the big 2-0.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and roses — Ryan Reynolds has yet to comment on McElhenney officially confirming that the Wrexham boys aren’t best friends.