About

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia is an American TV sitcom created by Rob McElhenney that premiered on FX on August 4th, 2005. The series follows a group of five underachieving twentysomethings who call themselves "The Gang" and run Paddy's Pub, an Irish bar in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since its premiere, the show has garnered a cult following for its anti-heroic characters and open exploration of ethically controversial and offensive themes.

History

The show was originally conceived in 2004 by Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton (who portray the characters of Mac and Dennis, respectively) as an idea for a short film that begins with a man telling his friend that he might have cancer, while the friend is still entirely fixated with trying to borrow a cup of sugar for the "shitload of coffee" he has made. The short and comical vignette was subsequently developed into a pilot episode for a show about struggling actors in Hollywood called It's Always Sunny on TV, shot on a digital camcorder by the two and Charlie Day (who portray the character of Charlie).

After a period of circulation of the pilot episode among various studios, FX Network ordered the first season with a few changes in the show's setting and premises, which transformed the characters' backgrounds from aspiring actors in Los Angeles to co-owners of a dive bar in Philadelphia. In addition, actress Kaitlin Olson was cast for the female lead character of Sweet Dee.

Broadcast

On August 4th, 2005, the pilot episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia premiered on FX and ran for seven episodes with the finale airing on September 13th. Although the premiere episode earned relatively low ratings with just over a million viewers, the first season was met with generally positive reviews from the critics and the show was renewed for a second season, which ran from June 29th to August 17th, 2006.

Reception

Upon its premiere, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was met with somewhat mixed reviews from the critics, with some reviewers for publications like San Francisco Chronicles and Variety praising its unrestrained exploration of taboo topics and unapologetically self-centered nature of the main characters, while others, including critics for The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, gave less generous reviews of its writing as lacking in wit to adequately support its often controversial materials. However, as the series continued onwards into its second season with Danny Devito joining the cast as Frank Reynolds, the show quickly became regarded as a must-watch sitcom among the critics and viewers alike, as reflected by the increasingly favorable ratings for the subsequent seasons on the review aggregator site Metacritic.^[6][13]

Accolades

By the end of the fourth season in 2008, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had received several nominations for awards, and in 2011, the show won the Satellite Award for Best Television Series, Comedy or Musical. In 2013 and 2014, the series was nominated for Primetime Emmy Award in Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or a Variety Program. In 2014, Entertainment Weekly listed the show at #7 in the "26 Best Cult TV Shows Ever." In 2016, the show won the People's Choice Awards in Favorite Cable TV Comedy.

Online Presence

In addition to the official website run by FX, the show has long maintained extensive presence in the social media; the official Facebook page^[3] for the series began posting promotional materials in May 2009 and remains active for its nearly 3.6 million followers, while the official YouTube channel^[19] for the show was launched in July 2010, followed by the creation of the official Twitter account in October 2011. As of January 2016, the Twitter account^[4] has over 144,000 followers.

Related Memes

Green Man

Green Man is the nickname for people who dress themselves in green lycra body suits and perform strange dance moves in public, typically during major sporting events as an attempt to distract opposing teams. The suit initially became popular through its appearance on the American TV sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2007.

Green Man Hits Dee With a Volleyball

Green Man Hits Dee With a Volleyball is an animated GIF based on a memorable scene from Episode 3, Season 4, "America’s Next Top Paddy’s Billboard Model Contest," wherein the character of Charlie Kelly, dressed in a green lycra suit as his alter ego Green Man, tries to ambush a burly man with a volleyball, but gets intimidated by his physique and instead strikes his friend Sweet Dee in the face before fleeing the scene. Online, the GIF has been used as a photoshop template to illustrate various situations in which a third-party gets scapegoated for the failure or misdeed of another.

Trash Man

Trash Man is a joke derived from the show The Gang Wrestles for the Troops. In the episode, the gang forms an underground wrestling ring in order to gain popularity for the bar, under the guise of for the troops. In one scene, Frank enters the bar in a leotard and a barrel of trash, claiming that it's his character for the ring. The scene has gained popularity, most notably from the Tumblr community.

The Nightman Cometh/Dayman

The Nightman Cometh is a rock opera written by Charlie, based on two songs, The Nightman and The Dayman, which he had written in a previous episode. The musical follows a the story of a small man known as "The Boy" and a coffee shop princess. The Boy is haunted during the night by "The Nightman" who takes the boy's innocence after paying a "troll toll" to a troll. The Boy then becomes "The Dayman" and proceeds to kill The Nightman and the troll, thus winning the heart of the coffee shop princess. It is revealed in the end however, that the whole performance was an attempt by Charlie to woo a woman that he has been stalking.

The performance and the songs featured in it, particularly the Dayman song have been the subject of many covers and many parody videos on YouTube.

Search Interest

External References