Rob McElhenney Says ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Can’t Be Both Mainstream and Satirical
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star and creator Rob McElhenney doesn’t want his cult hit to ever be “mainstream,” both for the show’s sake and for all of ours, too.
Unfortunately for fans of pointed comedy, the term “satire” has suffered a severe watering-down in the last few decades to the point where it only ever comes up when someone on Twitter snidely remarks that it’s become indistinguishable from reality. Long gone are the Jonathan Swift-type writers who used their wry wit to highlight societal absurdities in complex prose. But, thankfully, we still have McElhenney holding down the acerbic fort like a TV comedy Mark Twain as he and his co-writers and co-stars continue to use Always Sunny to skewer all of the lowest common denominators in American culture.
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But while It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has already shattered the record for longest-running live-action sitcom in American history, McElhenney’s biggest fear for the series is that its runaway popularity could destroy its iconoclastic outsider’s perspective as Always Sunny becomes too central to the zeitgeist. McElhenney shared his thoughts on satire in Always Sunny during his recent Hot Ones interview:
During the talk, Hot Ones host Sean Evans asked McElhenney to expand upon a comment he made during a 2011 interview with The A.V. Club when he said, “I feel like its a dangerous and dark world if Sunny becomes mainstream comedy. If you were to turn on CBS at 8 o’clock on Thursday and see an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, I don’t know if I want to live in that world.”
McElhenney told Evans, “I think that satire, just by nature, needs to be somewhat counter-culture, otherwise it would be culture. And, if it’s culture, then it would be taken at face value, and if it’s taken at face value then it’s no longer satire. And then you can’t do the things that we do on Sunny.”
“We’re satirizing hypocrisy in culture, and I don’t think we get it right one hundred percent of the time,” McElhenney admitted. “In fact, if you do, then you’re probably not pushing as far as you need to. So we’re always right out on the edges and on the fringes, some would say, of good taste — and they’re right.”
As McElhenney has often maintained, he explained that Always Sunny’s ability to mock the most base and selfish impulses in American culture hinges on its ability to deal with sensitive subjects using intentionally obtuse humor that won’t always age gracefully. However, McElhenney posits of some of Sunny’s early insensitivity, “Whether it’s fair to even look at a show from 2007 and judge it by the same standards as we do today, I think the vast majority of the people who watch what we do understand what our intent was at the time.”
Well, Mac, tell that to Hulu — your fans are still demanding that they put Lethal Weapon 5 and 6 back in the library.
