Zack's Ramblings: It’s Always Gay in Philadelphia
The Onion AV Club tells me that It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia has started up its new season. On an anti-gay marriage note, at that! And I’m proud to say I won’t be watching it. I think this show sucks. Sucks like a vacuum cleaner. Sucks like Linda Lovelace at a popsicle stand. Its just so goddamn bad and I don’t understand why it has the following that it does.
For the uninitiated: Sunny is about four supremely loud people who live in the city of brotherly love. They own a bar, though it would’ve closed long ago in real life because it has no customers. One owner, Dennis, has a sister/waitress named Dee. Their dad Danny Devito is a co-owner. Charlie has a severe glue sniffing habit and lives (and sleeps in the same bed) as Devito. The last owner, Mac, has tribal tattoos, the IQ of my prostate and a on/off “tranny” girlfriend. (His word choice, not mine.)
The entire show, by the time I stopped watching, was predicated on these five characters yelling at each other. That’s it. They get a really stupid idea, fuck up its execution and then scream at each other, at the top of their lungs, all at the same time for seemingly twenty minutes each episode. The plot is invariably second to the yelling. I thought the first season of this show was beyond hysterical. Then it began to sink with the inclusion of Devito. By the time I swore off altogether, after Season 4′s finale “Nightman,” there was literally no reason to continue watching. Every character is basically the same with the barest condiments of differentiation. Dee’s back brace or Dennis’ narcisism are well-defined, but hardly enough to set them apart from the other functional idiots within the cast. I have no problem with a show about morons if it’s funny. But this one stopped being funny about 45 “aren’t we shitty” plotlines ago. Even “Nightman,” the musical episode, was not funny. Not even for all the gay rape it featured. Lox and bagels seem like Lenny fucking Bruce in comparison.
However, there is one very strong reason to keep watching: homoeroticism. Dingy, long john-clad, teabagging homoeroticism. That’s it. The show is blessed with three male leads who are unbelievably fuckable. (Danny Devito is obviously not one of them.) Mac, Charlie and Dennis are all extremely cute and the show takes pains to put them in a capital “G” GAY situation at least once an episode. Devito’s Frank and Charlie share a bed. One show’s entire B plot involved Mac and Dennis finding new and creative ways to rub their crotches on each others faces. It’s a miracle that Dee hasn’t gone down on Artemis yet, but that would probably be besides the point.
The point, as I understand it, is draw further attention to the male characters’ self-absorption by making them fail to realize they are one circle jerk away from full-out fagitude. As aggressively, misguidedly macho as they are, they are unable to see past their own hijinks long enough to realize what they are. They are assholes and troglodites, as we are so frequently shown, but they’re also gayer than they will ever realize.
And I appreciate this, for the most part. The show is always fairly sensitive to its queer characters, the MTF”s insultingly prominent bulge not-withstanding. When Mac won’t tell his friends he’s dating her, it’s meant to make him look like an ass, not her like a freak. But the show still treats her like a freak, no matter how much it shifts the focus to the other character’s reactions. And I doubt the majority of “Sunny’s” audience sees the joke the way I do. Without a modicum of charity towards it’s creators, or personal queer experience, the probably just think that gay people are funny. So seeing the cast act gay is funny. And then we’re just another punchline.
Again, I could be much more understanding about this if “Sunny” was a good show. But its not. It’s obnoxious at best, repetitive and formulaic at worst. But I’m gay, so I might get a little charge at seeing how close the protagonists get to actually fingering each other in a given episode. But they never actually did, so I stopped watching. The people that do continue watching, though, they might just be calling these characters fags and meaning it. When all a show’s humor comes from gay-baiting, maybe its time to either let that part drop or find some other things to actually be interesting.
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Cheers to that!
A few (straight) friends of mine are die-hard fans and begged me to start watching the show. I largely ignored it until they started showing it on Comedy Central (which is my go-to channel when I can’t find anything else on) and decided to watch a few episodes.
They were funny at first, but got repetitive real quick. I found myself having the same reaction as you: The guys are hot and it is EXTREMELY gay-adjacent, but that they never got naked and sucked each other off made me feel like I was watching a gay version of Twilight.
My frat-ish law student straight brother swears by this show and often tells me how hilarious it is, or how hilarious he thinks I will find it. I’ve resisted, mostly because, growing up in South Jersey and defining myself against the cultural norms imposed on the region by Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love rarely gets any from me. And I say this as a gay person from a loud Italian-American family, too. Thanks for pointing out what most non-gay viewers of the show might miss, Zack, and for reminding me never to take television recommendations from a brother I had to disabuse of the use of the word “fag.”
As a gay OPPOSED to marriage, I’m happy to see that sitcoms are finally demonstrating that the gay marriage movement is a joke. I can’t wait to see this.
I think the show’s hilarious.. For me, the over-exaggeration of certain gay or trans themes is exactly the point — by blowing it out of proportion, the writers create a space to insert a more rational, reasonable approach to these issues.
Take for example the “gay marriage” season opener this year. Yes, on the surface, many of the guys’ comments about the MTF character are indeed offensive on the surface. But, in the midst of making comments along the lines of “I don’t want to have to cut my dick off to marry you” the MTF character is able to explain that she’s had her tucking operation done, which is what many trans people actually do. For better or worse, the vast majority of people (and most gays, including myself until recently) actually do believe that MTF’s want to remove their penis, when in reality that’s not usually the case. This is perhaps the only occasion where many people would ever be exposed to that fact.
Another example — Danny Devito gets worried that either he or Charlie is going to have to “be the woman” if they get gay married. Again, the MTF character explains (paraphrasing) “Neither of you has to ‘be the woman’ — you’re both men!”
I watch this show with my straight housemates all the time and it gives us an endless series of openings to talk about things that they might never encounter in their everyday hetero lives.
@Mike – totally agree! Good points, and having lived with a bunch of frat guys for a while I can totally back you up on the fact that Always Sunny’s absurdity allowed for real rational conversations to take place after the tension was diffused with over-the-top situations.
RE: the show being bad, I couldn’t disagree more! They went through some really bad patches, and I was ready to call it quits, but last season was all about redemption to me, and I think they got back into their groove. Kitten Mittens? Hilarious! I defy you to not laugh at the kitten mittens commercial.
I can proudly state that I couldn’t stand the show from episode one. I watched two more just in case, and realized that the rest of the world must be crazy for liking this show, because I thought it was outright stupid if not insidious. Glad you came around, Zack!
i think the show is great. and not just because i like philly and the city is prominently featured. perhaps it just fits my sense of humor more than it does michael’s or others’. but i don’t see how someone can say it’s “stupid.” i know people who are part of it and they’re not stupid. the main characters are meant to come off as stupid. the non-stupid characters they piss off, offend, and annoy confront them with their stupidity in many instances (likes the “tranny” did, apparently) and a lesson is learned by all.
and let’s not call things other people like “stupid.” it sounds stupid.
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