Here's The Unsung Hero Of The Iconic 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' Episode "Charlie Work"

In retrospect, the episode “Charlie Work” would be better named “Adam Sklena Work” – but Trundle probably wouldn’t have been able to pronounce that title, let alone spell it.

Back in the mid-2010s, it seemed like every film bro and hotshot dude director was rock hard for exhilarating, multi-minute-long tracking shots. In 2014 alone, we got a double-whammy of Alejandro Iñárritu’s essentially two-hour-long take with Birdman and Cary Fukunaga’s flashy, six-minute, single-take sequence in True Detective that had reviewers across the internet crying “Peak TV!” 

So during the planning stages of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 10 in late 2014, perennial Sunny director Matt Shakman probably looked around at all the showy camerawork that drew acclaim to so many other directors at the time and decided that he wanted his own long-take statement sequence to turn the upcoming episode “Charlie Work” into a cinematic masterpiece. And, to his credit, that’s exactly what he did.

But the glory of the immaculately executed, seven-minute-long single-shot scene in “Charlie Work,” in which the titular janitor pulls off the most impressive and undeserved passing grade in health inspection history, doesn’t belong to Shakman, or Iñárritu, or even Charlie himself – no, for once, we’re going to pay homage to the person who actually had to hold the camera and chase Charlie around as he turned Paddy’s Pub into a place for steaks and back again while passing the test with flying colors.

This one’s for Adam Sklena.

In an interview about “Charlie Work” with Collider, Charlie Kelly praised Sklena's performance in the episode, saying, “I have to give credit to Adam Sklena, our camera operator who's been with us since the very first season - look, we didn't have special dolly tracks or a pre-programmed rig. This is a man holding a camera who had to walk backwards, most of the time while I'm walking forwards, and we actually got it without screwing up on take-one.” Day then clarified that, though Sklena nailed it on the first try, TV production still necessitates multiple takes, and the one used in the final cut was their fifth attempt. 

Glenn Howerton added of the episode's editing style, “There's a couple things that are pasted in there, much like Birdman, but I think there's about a seven-minute one-er in there that really, genuinely the camera does not cut. That's all really happening in real time, and it was like a little choreographed dance. It was fun.”

“It was cool, Adam and I have been working together for a decade, to just sort of feel in sync. … It did feel like doing a play,” Day reflected on the process that led to the creation of arguably the most exciting and memorable Always Sunny scene ever shot.

Though Day and Sklena had the most demanding roles to play in the creation of the iconic sequence, Howerton revealed that, much like Dennis himself, he was sweating over his own instructions, saying, “You don't want to mess it up, you don't want to screw up the timing because it messes up the whole fucking take. You don't want to be the last guy in the thing who screws it up.”

Ultimately, every member of the Always Sunny team executed to create one of the most ambitiously entertaining episodes in sitcom history but rarely do talented and hard-working camera operators like Sklena get enough credit when they successfully shoot such a complicated scene like the one that made “Charlie Work” an instant classic – much like how Charlie never gets acknowledgement for the gang passing the health inspection against all odds. After all, they pull it off every year.