‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’: The Original Ending to ‘Charlie Got Molested’ Was Way More Heartbreaking
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has managed to remain pretty outrageous for nearly two decades now. But the first season — with episodes like “The Gang Gets Racist” and “Charlie Wants an Abortion” — was deliberately provocative. For example, the finale, “Charlie Got Molested,” was filled with dark jokes about Charlie possibly being sexually assaulted as a child. Given how unapologetically offensive the episode is as it stands, it’s difficult to imagine how the original ending could have been even more twisted — but it was.
At the conclusion of the episode that aired, we learn that Charlie was never molested by his gym teacher and neither were any of his schoolmates. The whole thing was just a frame-up job by the incestuous McPoyles.
Don't Miss
After Charlie receives an intervention for a sexual assault that didn’t happen, he sums things up at the bar. “The best part of it, actually, for me now, is the fact that everybody thinks that I’ve been molested,” he explains. “So, in a way, my life is ruined. In the meantime, I’m going to go in the back office and cry and cry and cry and drink for a while.”
However, a supposed earlier version of the script made its way onto Reddit recently, and in it, things are pretty different for Charlie. After Sweet Dee pats herself on the back for planning Charlie’s intervention, Charlie responds by saying, “Yeah. Isn’t that the best? It makes me feel all warm inside. It sort of reminds me of the moment when my uncle asked me if I enjoyed the sensation of a powerful man cradling my scrotum. Or when my grandmother told me that I probably deserved everything I got because God hates me for having pre-marital sex. Yeah, good times.”
In the Reddit thread, most of the commenters seemed to agree that the change was for the best. Nol-Felix115 wrote, “I’m kinda glad they didn’t go with the original ending because holy shit that is very, very dark even by Sunny standards.” Others concurred — not because the joke was too upsetting, but because it would have made explicit that Charlie’s Uncle Jack assaulted him, rather than leaving it intentionally ambiguous.
Implications about Uncle Jack possibly crossing a line with adolescent Charlie have been a recurring joke over many seasons of Sunny, including during the whole Nightman musical saga. But if someone were to outright say that Uncle Jack is a sexual predator, it kills the joke. Even worse, spoiling that gag would have ruined the character of Uncle Jack altogether — as well as his beautiful, totally normal-sized hands.
And that, too, would have been a real crime.
