It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

 


I really do think this is a brilliant sitcom, but honestly it's not my favorite sitcom in the entire world and there are parts that I was absolutely disgusted by it, but I think it's brilliant and here are the reasons I find it brilliant.  I think it's really, really hard to make a good sitcom nowadays and the in my opinion the only person who has some kind of inkling as to where the format can go is Michael Schurr, because of sitcoms like the American version of the Office, Parks and Rec, the Good Place and Brooklyn 99. All of those have unique selling points, and it's not just the traditional sitcom. The traditional sitcom is about a family and or about a group of friends and   every half hour they have some kind of adventure, there's punchlines and maybe there's a learning moment and then the sitcom is finished.  The fundamental problem with all sitcoms apart from the ones that I mentioned is that people on sitcoms are horrible people.  If you take the classic sitcoms-if you think about the best sitcoms of all time.  Seinfeld or Friends those are the two that people bring up and with Seinfeld you might say well that was the whole point, that these were just normal people that they never learned anything, and they never grew.  But actually they're not normal people, no one would be friends with George or Jerry or Elaine or Kramer I mean Kramer in the show is not a horrible person per se he's just odd but the rest of them are horrible people in the world and to each other and that's the thing about sitcoms is that the characters in sitcoms are really horrible to each other.  Go back and watch an episode of the Golden Girls.  They are absolutely horrible to each other. If a person in real life treated you that way, you wouldn't be their friend, unless you're some kind of masochist. The thing that's brilliant about this show is it takes this idea that sitcom people are horrible people and throws away the pretence that these are likeable characters.  These are horrible people doing extremely horrible things. All the events in the show are just sort of set pieces to display how horrible these people are.  There's like lots of gross out comedy, there are lots of things that are funny and true. It's one of those things where you watch and one episode will be like wow that was really, really great and the next episode, at least for me, I'll be like I can't watch this is so uncomfortable I can't watch this. I think it's brilliant. It's kind of a deconstruction of where a sitcom logic ends up, and it presents you with the most horrible people that you're still supposed to find someone sympathetic and because of the magic of television you do. 

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