Always Sunny Season Seven: A Retrospective

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” just finished its seventh season, and the results have been mixed. Never before has it felt as though the show careened so wildly between brilliance and boredom, instead offering a steady diet of laughs throughout its three months of airtime. But what we have this season is a mix of episodes that would rank among the show’s best, and an almost equal amount that would be considered the show’s worst.

The season started out strong with “Frank’s Pretty Woman,” less a parody of the Julia Roberts romantic comedy than a total annihilation of it. Any episode that throws in the phrase “tighter than dick skin” and ends with a hooker lying dead outside of Charlie’s apartment surely counts as a series high, especially for a season premiere. After last season went out spectacularly with the end of Dee’s pregnancy storyline and “A Very Sunny Christmas,” this episode proved that the show was suffering no creative setbacks at the start of the new year.

Next up were “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore” and “Frank Reynolds’ Little Beauties,” two solid episodes that were elevated by a handful of great lines and typically strong performances. It also marked the return of side characters like Artemis and the Waitress, checking in on where they are at the start of the new year (for Artemis, much the same, and for the Waitress, doing ecstasy on the Jersey Shore, a new all-time low). For a show that only gets a few scenes for auxiliary players per season, these two episodes did a good job of using the two actresses and reminding the audience how deep the bench goes for this show.

“Sweet Dee Gets Audited” should have made more of an impact, considering it ends with the characters saying this is the “darkest thing we’ve ever done.” That thing is staging a fake funeral for the baby Dee gave up for adoption at the tail end of last season. It’s always amusing to see Dee’s delusions of cleverness crushed by reality, but the background to this whole episode – an attempt at democracy manipulated by Frank and Dennis to get the bar decorated to their liking – is pretty flat and uninspiring. In fact, the Dee plot would have probably worked a bit better as a B-story, because the baby’s funeral really doesn’t provide that strong of a conclusion for the episode. And while it may be dark, the show is careful to introduce another character (the IRS agent auditing Dee) to react with suitable human disgust and horror when the whole thing goes wrong and the “baby’s” casket is opened to reveal the rotten corpse of a dog from the alley next to the bar. Shame that an image like that doesn’t leave more of an impact.

But following that strong opening four, “Frank’s Brother” showed that there is a limit on what the show can do. I personally enjoyed “The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell” and “The World Series Defense” for their chance to hear the storytelling ability of the characters. Each paper-thin character or anachronistic phrase made perfect sense coming from Charlie, Dennis, Mac, and Dee. But Frank’s story is meant to be true, so when things don’t add up, it feels like a cheat – the writers aren’t playing fair. Sure, it’s funny to imagine that the mid-60’s Danny DeVito “looks like a 12-year-old,” and seeing that the name “Shadynasty” spelled out makes up “Shady Nasty,” but a few jokes like that can’t make up for a plot that ultimately goes nowhere and has nothing to do with Frank’s brother at all.

“The Storm of the Century” was purely mediocre. As an episode it barely hangs together, working much better as a series of funny scenes and concepts. The hurricane framework, especially considering Hurricane Irene did indeed bypass the Northeast with little incident, lends almost no urgency. And benching Mac for the lion’s share of the episode, even if it is balanced by the punchline of seeing him sitting safely without the Gang, eating ice cream and watching television from the bar, leads to a mismatched ensemble. Dee’s shrill fear of the storm returns her to the less dynamic shrewish archetype she hasn’t played since the first season. Again, this is subverted by the ending of the episode, but that doesn’t make her come across as any funnier. Charlie and Dennis have some spectacular material when they pursue a large-breasted TV anchor and later a few young attractive women shopping in a Home Depot-like home improvement store, but it works better as six or seven isolated minutes rather than as the A-story in an otherwise underwhelming 22 minutes. However, I will admit that this sends Dennis on a fantastic arc this season – and I believe his unhinging all starts here, when he is rejected by the news anchor and the young girls shopping for disaster supplies. His barely contained disgust for himself and the three women is as unsettling as it is funny.

“CharDee MacDennis: The Game of Games” was pure brilliance from nearly start to finish. It’s one of dozens of bottle episodes “Sunny” has done over the years, restricting the action to the bar and stripping away all characters not in the Gang. This season has proven that this tried-and-true formula is far from tired. In fact, it’s still where the most innovation can be done. This episode probably packed in the most jokes, the most character beats, the most callbacks out of any other episode this season (aside from the two-part finale, which I’ll get to in a moment), and it did so without leaving the confines of a single room. When you get down to it, “Sunny” doesn’t do alternative structure as well as many other comedies, but it does laugh-out-loud character comedy better than almost all of them.

Next up was “The Anti-Social Network,” another largely inconsequential episode held up by Dennis’ madness. Aghast at the thought that a random gin bar patron “shushed” him, Dennis drags Charlie along on an elaborate plot for revenge. Mac and Dee split off, looking for the “shusher” via Facebook in what turns into a “Catfish” parody. “Sunny’s” pop culture parodies have never been one of its stronger elements, so it’s no surprise that Dennis’ fury is far more fruitful than Mac and Dee’s unraveling of a vast online conspiracy. As he and Charlie enlist the help of the gin bar owners, the police, and a street cartoonist to help them track down the “shusher,” they become more and more wrapped up in their righteous fury. Charlie becomes fixated on the “shusher’s” “almond shaped eyes,” which can be added along with “people’s knees” to the list of physical attributes that drive him crazy. Dennis, on the other hand, reacts with an eerie determination. He will not stand to be insulted. Again, this just serves to build the intensity behind Dennis’ murderous edge.

The following episode, “The Gang Gets Trapped” might just have won the crown for my all-time least favorite “Sunny” episode. Once again, I appreciated their attempts to mess with typical structure, but it doesn’t quite work. Rather than have a long buildup to a bad idea, with all five characters at varying levels of interest and commitment, the episode cuts straight to the fallout. The opening finds Dee and Dennis trapped in a woman’s closet as she packs for a trip, after sneaking inside to steal an artifact her family won in an auction. It’s clearly intentional but no less disappointing that the characters pay lip service to Dennis’ passionate speech in favor of breaking in, or Mac and Charlie’s piqued interest due to a recent obsession with Indiana Jones. The whole thing feels like it takes place in the interim between the hilarious setup and the impact punchline. And while it might be a fun exercise for the writers to imagine what the characters get up to in between their outsized antics, it results in a rather unfulfilling half-hour.

Perhaps the most disappointing was “How Mac Got Fat.” With a title like that, you could expect that the show would go wild. But the episode is actually repurposed footage from an aborted attempt at a script from season six. On first pass, the episode seems very funny, taking a tour of Mac’s fractured psyche, from his staunch Catholicism to his oddly homoerotic fascination with fitness and muscles, to his delusional self-image, to his impatience – all things that are ripe for laughs. But on second watch, the structure actually seems rather sloppy, relying on Mac’s confession as an expositional monologue forcing the bits and pieces from the old footage into the framework of this new story idea. Only the smaller things on the sidelines – the candy stuffed in Mac’s pockets as he reveals his newly fattened physique or Charlie’s turpentine-fueled dance in the back office as Dennis watches with a glassy, drugged out stare - land. Perhaps the show only needs to make the audience laugh, but with so few episodes per season, I’d prefer they focus on making episodes I can laugh at time and time again, not just once.

Things looked up the following week with “Thunder Gun Express,” a fun adventure around Philly featuring actual location shooting as the Gang attempt to make it to the action movie of the year. What worked well about this half-hour was the pairings and isolation of the different characters. Mac making fun of Dennis’ slow, methodical, needlessly creepy way of picking up girls spurs Dennis on to listen to the collection of tapes (tapes!) he’s made of his various romantic encounters, actually having a few moments of self-reflection. Of course all that’s undone in a moment when a good looking woman presents herself and Dennis reverts to his tried-and-true ways. But even that’s upstaged by the adventures of Mac, Dee, and Charlie after they leave Dennis stranded in traffic in order to get to the theater more quickly. For once, the writers take Fat Mac into consideration and leave him stranded on the sidewalk after Charlie and Dee slip through a narrow grate into the sewer. Frustrated and preoccupied with the thoughts of action heroes, Mac spies a nearby motorcycle and tries to ride off on it. The resulting sight gag is worth the price of admission. Meanwhile, in the sewer, Dee becomes trapped when her shoe gets caught in the ground. Best line? When Dee asks Charlie if she can just take his shoes until they get back up to dry land, he stubbornly refuses. “You’ll stretch them out!” he insists. “You’ll stretch them out.”

After careening so unpredictably throughout the season, the once promising idea of the Gang’s high school reunion approached as I faced it with trepidation. Sure, it looked like there would be plenty to look forward to, but when finding out about Frank’s past or the whole concept of Fat Mac fizzled out, it looked like high concepts were the kiss of death for “Sunny” episodes that made me laugh. Fortunately, the full hour made sure there was plenty of time to deliver on such a loaded premise. Callbacks bring back plenty of recurring characters like Rickety Cricket, plagued with wicked cases of ringworm and kleptomania, Fatty Magoo, looking prettier than ever, and the Waitress, pathetically wandering around in the background, drunk and disappointed.

Hitherto unseen aspects of the characters were finally revealed. Dee is forced to don her torturous back brace, looking like something out of the early twentieth century, literally prohibiting her from any effortless movement, from turning her head to shrugging her shoulders. Finally, we learn Mac’s real name – a little bit of a letdown after so many years, but hey – and it turns out to be Ronald MacDonald. Luckily, the show knows not to stop there and also reveals that Mac was a rotten little snitch nicknamed “Ronnie the Rat.” Charlie devolves back into the unconfident, sniveling “Dirt Grub,” humiliating himself at every turn in order to somehow appeal to his more popular peers.

All that is upstaged by the climax of Dennis’ mania, which comes to a head after encountering the jocks who never respected him and the former friend he believes once slept with his prom date. When he fails to ingratiate himself or get revenge on them, his resulting fury is terrifyingly hilarious. Entering into a psychotic breakdown, he actually reveals what was always implied – a trunk full of creepy sado-masochistic gear that somehow includes both a camcorder and zipties. The rest of the Gang (as put off as the audience, though unable to find it as funny as we can) quickly talk him out of using “his tools” against his rivals.

Nothing, however, can outdo the final few minutes for pure humor. Throughout the hour, the Gang speaks reverently of their “Plan B,” only to be deployed under the direst of circumstances. When those circumstances are more than met, they are forced to go through with it – even though, as Dennis exclaims, it’s only a dance routine. But from top to bottom their manic, passionaite performance is hysterically funny - and that's before their delusions crash down around them, and everyone else at the reunion heads off to what sounds like a wicked afterparty. Once again, the Gang is left alone to go back to the bar. Back to the status quo.

Two more seasons have already been confirmed by creators and stars McElhanney, Day, and Howerton. Hopefully they can avoid some of the pitfalls they stumbled into this year. But despite this season’s weaker offerings, at no point has it felt as though the characters were weak or their chemistry diminished, but rather that what once seemed like endless possibilities for episodes wasn’t quite so endless after all.

It’s Broke; Please Fix It

Why I can’t stand the success of “2 Broke Girls.”

Television naturally demands a hearty suspension of disbelief, no form of which more so than the three-camera sitcom. It feels a bit stale, with hangovers from theater and radio in the tone, style, and performances. However, that does not mean three-camera shows can’t be relatable. Think of “Cheers.” Think of “Seinfeld.” The form itself is no more inherently flawed than any other. So when critical complaints are heaped on CBS’ new fall sitcom “2 Broke Girls,” my eye doesn’t go to its studio audience, its limited number of locations – some of the best shows in television history have made those elements work to their advantage. And the template for shows about young professionals working in New York City, “Friends,” was also a three-camera show. But “2 Broke Girls” has dozens of other problems, all of which stem from character, writing, and structure.

The devil’s in the details, as they say. “2 Broke Girls” continues to only make it halfway to accurate. There is a fundamental misunderstanding what it’s about to live as a young person in New York City, especially one with very little money. Michael Patrick King, the showrunner, served many, many years on “Sex and the City,” and he was effective there, providing an escapist fantasy for non-city dwellers while being careful to keep the geography accurate for sharp-eyed natives. However, there he was dealing with characters living like the upper class, even if they never identified themselves as such. Here, the characters pay constant lip service to their poverty, but King does not know what stories, attitudes, and behaviors organically rise from this situation. Being young and broke in New York has plenty of inherent drama. Think – the same stories from shows like “Friends” or “How I Met Your Mother,” stories of love, work, and friendship, still apply, but with the added stakes of money and circumstance. Impressing that new wacky boss becomes a necessity if you can’t quit your job after 22 minutes. An annoying landlord on a quest for the rent becomes the only thing standing between you and life on the street. The situations are ripe for comedy, particularly, in my opinion, farce. The very best farce – with humor that can be as broad as the side of a barn – comes from urgency. Necessity. Pacing. The more a character needs something, and the more that necessity contradicts the needs of other characters, the funnier the farce becomes. “NewsRadio,” one of the better and more overlooked sitcoms from the 90’s comedy boom, played as a wonderful farce in its three best seasons (the ones right in the middle of its five-year run). How did it do so? By establishing each member of its eight-person ensemble as a distinct personality, always looking for something specific. When each of these needs came in conflict with one another, the jokes flew faster and so did the laughs. So far “2 Broke Girls” has set the stage for farce but failed to deliver in pretty much every way.

The two leads, Kat Dennings as streetwise Max and Beth Behrs as sheltered Caroline, are fine, and their friendship (and business partnership) could be enough to hang a show on. In fact, “Laverne and Shirley” did just that for plenty of years. But just like that lowest-common-denominator show, “2 Broke Girls” is soft around the edges, relying on easy gags about the characters being female, having sex drives, and any number of unappealing sounds, smells, or sights in downtown Brooklyn.

The supporting characters are all on the miss side of hit-and-miss. Each attempt at developing a character who is not a young white female has been a wild miscalculation. Garrett Morris proves what a funny person can do with paper thin material, but his character still only gets about ten seconds of stereotypical jokes about being old, black, and cool per episode. Though he’s been set up as a surrogate father for Max, he’s yet to display anything more than polite concern for her well-being, let alone any advice or comfort. The other supporting characters – all of whom are male, actually – are also given next to nothing to work with. Michael Moy is forced to adopt a fake Korean accent and an embarrassingly nerdish demeanor, dropping jokes about his Tiger Mother and changing his name to “Bryce” (get it? It sounds like “rice,” a food Koreans are partial to) in order to become more American. Worst of all is Oleg, the lecherous line cook. With only a few seconds, he manages to fit in an hour of discomfort, with his obnoxious and unreturned sexual advances. Paired with a vaguely Eastern European accent – Ukrainian, according to the exposition – Oleg challenges the viewer to keep watching with his noxiously perverted one-liners.

Poverty is not inherently funny. But wealth is not inherently funny either. Economic realities are not, in general, inherently funny. What’s funny is watching loveable characters navigate those realities in ways that stem from real emotions, but can get outsized, crazy, and weird because of their place in a fictional universe. But no matter how wacky their antics get, their motivations and impulses have to be logical and relatable. “2 Broke Girls” is rarely logical. In fact, the jokes fall apart so quickly simply because of the lack of logic. In the first episode, Caroline and Max sneak uptown and steal Caroline’s horse. They bring it back to Brooklyn and put it in their backyard. The giant horse in the tiny Brooklyn patio is a decent sight gag. But each successive episode has kept the horse there! This is so stupid it boggles the mind. The title of the show references how poor the leads are. Are the writers unaware of how expensive it is to keep at horse fed and taken care of? Are they unaware of how much time that takes? Are they unaware of how much exercise a horse needs per day? I know I was. But then I spent three minutes researching on the internet. The information is there, and it readily contradicts any chance that “2 Broke Girls” is taking place on planet Earth. There are plenty of little things, too – the anachronistically graffiti’ed subway cars from the mid-1980’s, the girls wasting money on five-dollar Starbucks lattes when they work at a coffee slinging diner, the constant references to hipsters when no one seems sure of what a hipster is – it’s all frustrating. And it all drags the viewer out of the show and, at least for the astute TV-watcher, into a more critical mindset. Similar problems surely dogged other shows over the years. But small inconsistencies can be overlooked when balanced by great jokes.

And here’s the biggest problem of all – “2 Broke Girls” isn’t funny. Dennings and Behrs both seem aware of what a joke is, and how to tell one. But neither one has been handed a genuinely well-crafted one so far. Most of the humor relies on sarcastic puns, repeating what another characters has just said, the word “hipster,” or some kind of tripping, slipping, squirting, or splashing. There’s plenty of sexual content, but it’s all crude and mean-spirited. Unlike the best blue comedies, like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” there’s again, no strong sense of character behind it. Instead, every character is either shamed for having a sex drive or shamed for not having more of one. The girls don tight shirts and short skirts in what seems like a desperate attempt to retain male viewers. The girls put down every male in sight in hopes of appealing to female ones. But what appeals to viewers of all types is humor that arises from universal experiences, understandable reactions, or a complete and utter subversion of them. You cannot prompt the audience to worry about whether or not Max and Caroline will get a new electric mixer when the denouement of the episode finds them doing a gross, sexually charged take on Lucille Ball’s famous chocolate-wrapping routine. The comparisons do not favor “2 Broke Girls.”

“I Love Lucy” was probably the last and best example of a show that could combine farcical comedy with realistic family stakes. Perhaps it was lent some level of empathy because the audience knew Ball was married to her onscreen husband Desi Arnaz. Perhaps gender politics of the time made Lucy’s increasingly ridiculous schemes feel more realistic. But my prevailing theory is that when “I Love Lucy” aired, audiences found it the funniest show on television. But with so much fantastic comedy on TV right now, hopefully audiences will come to their senses and realize there is more to choose from than “2 Broke Girls.”