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It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
2005 · TV series · 18 seasons
Created by Rob Mac
Four egocentric friends run a neighborhood Irish pub in Philadelphia and try to find their way through the adult world of work and relationships. Unfortunately, their warped views and precarious judgments often lead them to trouble, creating a myriad of uncomfortable situations that usually only get worse before they get better.
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The name for this effect appears to be the "Preparedness Paradox" [1]. The effect where people attribute the minimal or reduced harm due to some problem to the problem not having been that serious, instead of attributing it to the essential work performed by other people to prevent the worst disaster.
A very funny depiction of this effect is in the hilarious episode "Charlie Work" of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the titular Charlie Kelly works tirelessly to have their bar pass health inspection, only to have the other main characters shrug and say "But we always pass health inspection".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox
the show it's always sunny in philadelphia has a good episode covering this idea, the episode is 'dennis takes a mental health day'
Parodied by Always Sunny in Philadelphia S09E08 "Flowers for Charlie".
Also referenced by the TV show Lost:
https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Books_on_Ben%27s_shelf
That doesn't mean it wasn't profitable, just that the network thought another show in that slot might be more profitable.
Talking about audience thresholds for profitability of TV shows is a bit pointless though, because there's so much variation in how much they cost to make. Effects-heavy action shows are ~30 million dollars an episode at the moment. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is ~1.5 million. Gameshows and reality TV are even cheaper.
Wasn't this the basis of one of the latest It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode?
I don't watch many sitcoms these days. Someone else mention It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you really believe the media treats women as paragons of virtue there should be no female villains in sitcoms, right?
Velma and Clone High have women as bad as the men and female villains. Wednesday is pretty removed from it's Adams Family roots and is only occasionally a comedy, but also features at least one female villain.
The recent Beavis and Butthead made for TV movie had a subplot where a female politician is chasing Beavis and Butthead through the country and trying to murder them to cover up a scandal. That's certainly not treating women as "paragons of virtue."
> Seinfeld is one of the few sitcoms where a female character is as flawed as the men. You couldn't even do that show today.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Succession? Yellow Jackets? The Righteous Gemstones? Beef? White Lotus? House of The Dragon?
You could argue about percentages but it is in fact extremely easy to do a show with flawed female characters today.
I agree. I'm still annoyed that they started censoring It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For example, they (Hulu) removed one episode where one of the characters does a black face. But the whole point of the show is to surface these social and political issues in a comedic way. They're not endorsing black facing, they're saying it's wrong. That's why it's funny.
This also reminds of something the comedian Ricky Gervais often says (I'm paraphrasing): You can joke about everything. The problem is people mistaking the target of the joke with the subject.
Yes, that's the question. It may seem obvious that it would be the latter, but Raiders of the Lost Ark is nearly 42 years old at this point. Today do you think more people have seen Citizen Kane (1941) or Bambi (1942) as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)?
Granted, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn't as popular, and not everyone who has seen one IASIP episode will have seen them all, but the target audience is similar.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was butchered on streaming platforms, so I agree with you OP! Taiwan Tammy? GONE! Martina Martinez? GONE! Santa asking: "Is he retarded?" when Charlie just stares at him frozen in rage? GONE! Lots of funny moments missed by new fans unfortunately.
Related: Why have hard drive sizes stagnated? It feels like 8TB has been the golden standard going on 8 years now.
I'm very close to doing the following: Putting 6 drives in a portable RAID device, and ripping my movies to 720p x265 for storage. I can store a near limitless amount of movies and TV shows this way, and honestly I don't notice 720p. At least not enough to trade a 1GB movie for a 45GB 4k Remux. And I own a latest brand new 65 inch LG OLED and Sony OLED.
Added benefit is that its trivial to stream this anywhere at home or remotely. The files are so small that even scanning around the movie is instant.
The only thing holding me back is 8TB hard drives. So I wait patiently and continue to pay for a plexserver some guy manages for me.
If you do it in a comedy way, sure, why not?
If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park), italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses" (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget blondes.
Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)? Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope. So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's even a movie just with jokes about them... made by bosnians of course - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/
We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in serbia, it's people from pirot).
A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for other people.
edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to historic reasons, mostly war-related.
ps: What you americans would call racism could only be mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the house (or basically anything metal), that it was the gypsies. Usually it's even true.
I use the phrase "God hole", introduced by TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to refer to the phenomenon mentioned in the article. If you're familiar with the show it may seem crass to use that phrase to generalize incredibly complicated philosophy, but it succinctly allegorizes many peoples desire to attach to something greater than them that provides a sense of belonging, identity, and purpose. For example, having been raised with no religion or "greater power", I "filled" my God hole with learning to program as a kid and particularly studying math as an undergrad - math and the processes required to understand and "do" it made me feel as close to a higher power as I can imagine.
How and why the God hole is filled varies wildly per person, but the desire to do so does seem to be ubiquitous. I've struggled a lot with nihilistic thought in the past - e.g "why do anything? If you look at a big enough picture the sun will explode and nothing will ever matter or be remembered". I speculate that a major downside of higher levels of consciousness/awareness, like those found in humans, is knowing their own insignificance and normality relative to the grand scheme of the universe. I speculate filling the "God hole" and the aforementioned nihilistic perspective is a direct response to that awareness. It could even be argued that, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's important for most people to fill their God hole so they feel like they should be doing _something_ as the species would otherwise die.
tl;dr if something that fills a "God hole" is an interface in the programming sense, conspiracy is one of many implementations of the interface
See also "Flowers for Charlie", S9E8 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2999352/
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
I love typography but decided to follow the trend of removing custom fonts from my websites as the value add is actually very, very low. A lot can be achieved with some simple letter spacing and line height, as well as antialiasing correctly. I looked into paying for nice custom typefaces but the cost is too much.
I have been using the same open source typeface for programming since I found it many, many years ago. The industry reminds me of music licensing, there are so many free choices that are public domain, but if you have the money you flex and spend it on something custom, even if it is more or less the same as the free option, because that distinction is made by the end users. It reminds me of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' using public domain music for many of the scenes and the theme, and now I hear that tune in many TV shows.
The article doesn't claim that we are worse off for the more adolescent, individualist culture. Just that it poses unique challenges, especially in its excesses and pathologies.
Moreover, it explicitly makes your point:
> The phrase ‘unintended consequences’ used at the beginning of this essay usually implies negative effects, but there are notable benefits as well. .... These youthful character traits have served to make us more accepting and generous in many respects. Rising tolerance towards marginalised groups can be partly attributed to this emergent youthful mindset
Evidence is indeed lacking in the article, but the author is clearly writing against a scholarly background that almost certainly provides mountains of evidence and analyses, quality notwithstanding. Complaining about evidence in a context like this is like one of my friends in high school who went through an obnoxiously cynical phase, exhorting "prove it" after even the most prosaic, non-substantive statements. (I think he had just begun dabbling with philosophy, including epistemology. Or maybe I had and was also obnoxiously regurgitating philosophical claims in other conversations.) This is not an academic paper. It's an essay summarizing some themes that the author and others are investigating--or at least analyzing. And while making some rather concrete claims[1], it abstains from specific, substantive judgments, conclusions, or prescriptions. Personally, it's only when I see the latter that I begin to scrutinize arguments more closely. Otherwise, I understand these essays as merely providing a window into discourse that hasn't yet gone mainstream, and I mostly look for rough coherency. Whether I agree with the claims, let alone the premises, is an entirely different matter. But these essays can help you anticipate socio-cultural memes and identify potential evidence, both confirming and disconfirming.
[1] Specifically, the linkage between high school socialization and culture. Which, IMO, is an interesting thesis I had not come across before; one that is much more concrete and falsifiable than typical Golden Age-themed lamentations; and one arguably in the vein of the Hajnal line hypothesis[2] in that it links particularized adolescent social patterns to broader social phenomena and evolution. By contrast, mere observations that modern culture is increasingly adolescent are hardly new. The TV show Seinfeld parodies and even satirizes it, albeit without ridicule or negative judgment. Compare It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which uses similar satire, except the themes are less subtle and the writers and actors admit to substantively critiquing contemporary culture.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line
have you ever seen an episode of it's always sunny in philadelphia? the show is regularly far more offensive than any line in airplane, and nobody cares.
Aside from (mostly) practicing normal sleep hygiene recommendations, I listen to a sitcom that I've already watched many times using wireless earbuds as I fall asleep. Sometimes I do both ears, somtimes one ear, depending on whether I feel like sleeping with my head turned. I'm normally a back sleeper.
Because I've already seen the episodes, they don't stimulate any thinking. They're comedy, so all happy and lighthearted. Well written comedy is funny on multiple-goarounds, but other than some chuckles the point is mostly to help me fall asleep happy. On a bad night I'll listen to two episodes, but mostly I'm asleep halfway through the first episode.
My go to shows fwiw are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Office. Parks and Recreation also works. It's OK to have plot, as long as you already know the plot / have seen the show enough, so you aren't trying to watch the episode.
Since some of these shows moved off Netflix I've had to buy them on Google Play store. FWIW Google Play's player is better than amazon video's for mobile (it's basically youtube's player).
The wireless earbuds I use are these: $35, https://www.amazon.com/Soundcore-Bluetooth-Headphones-Waterproof-Sweatproof/dp/B07WPFPP5C and they're connected by a cord so you don't lose one of the buds when you sleep (used to happen to me). I have two sets of earbuds now, because I really struggle to sleep without it now that it's part of my routine and I can't risk them not being charged.
I don't know, I don't think we give network/cable TV enough credit.
I'm pretty intrigued by stories of how certain shows flopped in their first season (or two) but managed to persevere through some persistent TV exec who kept it funded until they got the story right.
Plenty of examples of mainstream TV shows that went this route. Seinfeld, The Office, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the list goes on.
TV execs really care about the product. By contrast, I don't think Netflix cares about the product. I think Netflix cares about the data about the product, which ultimately means dropping an original after 2 seasons.
It works I guess, but I've haven't had a Netflix subscription in a while, and on those occasions where I do renew it I just take a peek for a month before leaving again. More than enough time to watch 2 seasons of TV.
[Offtopic]: The name Luau reminds me of an episode from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia :)
I signed up for Netflix because the original (maybe too good to be true) premise was that I'd be able to stream basically everything in one place. The key is that I came to stream shows that I already watched but which had no home on the internet.
Now Netflix is a place to watch shows and movies made by Netflix. So it's like HBO, but more quantity and less quality. My favorite "comfort food" shows like The Office, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, etc are slowly leaving the service.
So I find my Netflix account collecting digital dust most of the time. More and more I find myself liking YouTube TV. It gives me mindless channel flipping, live sports, and the cloud DVR gives me a pseudo-netflix where I have every episode of all my favorite shows ready at a click (I just need to fast-forward recorded commercials).
I really love how Hulu's current web interface makes it really easy to toggle Autoplay on/off. I hate how Netflix makes me search through account menus.
Hulu's current interface definitely isn't perfect, but I love the convenient toggle for Autoplay; and I love being able to search for episodes by name. As a fan of Seinfeld and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I can remember an episode's name waaayyy more easily than I can remember its season/episode number
Maybe it's just in my head, but I feel like Netflix doesn't care what I want or think anymore. I feel like they've taken the position that their metrics and projections know better than I do.
They remove public reviews because they can't have their million-dollar properties soiled by negative reviews. To be fair, sometimes the reviews (like Yelp reviews) are not about the show/movie itself, but about how the company is bad because they stopped carrying "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on some markets. The nature of Netflix attracts that kind of audience.
...maybe it's just that storytelling is like a magic trick which requires the wholehearted participation of writer and reader to be successful. If you're not interested, you should quit and find something else to do.
I'm the same with television - cannot watch The Wire too many times, cannot watch most other things even once.
Wholeheartedly agree. I can't stand movies and most TV shows but there is a relatively small set of shows that I will binge rewatch at an interval of every 2-4 years. A few are the great ones like The Wire or the Star Treks that make me rethink my place in the universe as I get older, but when I say the rest out loud they all sound so... banal. And yet, I love rewatching them every time, especially when it's with friends or family - when they don't know what's going to happen and you get to experience that again vicariously.
Arrested Development, Archer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Moral Orel, Xavier Renegade Angel... stupid stuff like that. It's especially great today with so many shows surviving for 5-10 seasons. I'll watch one or two seasons that are available and come back years later to something that combines elements of nostalgia with brand new never before seen seasons.
Edit: Also, to add, I have always been a voracious reader, especially of nonfiction. While I absorbed a lot of knowledge, I can't really remember any actual stories that I have read in my lifetime save for one. Some young adult book, House of the Scorpion, published in 2002 that was required reading for one of my kids so I read it to help them with their book report. For some reason, that book just resonated with me and it's still my favorite.
Whenever I began to feel depressed I would simply go to my tv and start watching episodes of `It's always sunny in philadelphia` or whatever comedy made me happy
This sounds a bit like you discovered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. That's actually a very insightful, practical approach you developed.
Nice one. The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis is my favorite episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
There is an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" where Charlie, a character who never gets any success in life (a janitor living in a dump of an apartment, gets rejected by his love interest constantly, abused by his friends, etc) gets really engrossed in an online videogame. He becomes really good at it, and exclaims "I'm thriving! I never get to thrive, and I want to be the guy who thrives for once! It's like when I'm doing good in the game, I'm doing good in real life!"
It feels like there's an interesting insight there - if you're near the bottom of ladder in life (in an area with few/no jobs, have a hard time making friends, have no money for activities, etc), positive feedback loops can be few and far between, and it is very hard to get a feel for whether you're actually making progress or not. Work hard in life, and maybe you can reap some rewards years and years later, or maybe not (working at Walmart 20 years won't make you wealthy, or a respected Walmart executive). But work hard in a videogame for a few weeks or months, and you can have very concrete evidence of your progress. It's not hard to see why people would prefer investing hours in the latter then.
Maybe that's where the appeal of the army lies for some. The very clear hierarchy means you know exactly where you fit, and what the path to the next rung of the ladder is - something that is true in very few other organizations.
[1] Pepsi: That was the biggest PR blunder of the week, year maybe.
United: Hold my beer.
Sean Spicer: LEEEEEEEEEERROOOOOOOY JEEEENNNNNNKINS!
Fickle indeed. Hopefully United learns from this incident, tho I think it's unlikely
There's also an episode of It's Always sunny in Philadelphia (S12E04) where they talk about the 24 hour news cycle - which pretty much sums up social media unforgiving nature
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/lance_bradley/status/851864862426890240
and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3765158/
Very nice to see they have a rainy day fund. Watching the city government here they really believe the TV show title "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" Wish governments were paying attention to past history
Interestingly the first sentence of your second paragraph is a plot point in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia ("Science is a liar ... sometimes") : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk8UdV7GQ0
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 11, Episode 1: "The Gang Finds A Robot"
That's a great movie as well. Roddy Piper also shows up in an episode or two of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia".
It's from The Nightman Cometh episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Both the OP and reply.
> It seems that in UK comedy at least, instead of pitching your show to commissioning editors at the channels, who probably won't understand it, you just make your own pilot
That's less common than people who pitch traditionally, but yeah there are people who do that. I think the reason it works with comedy is that often you can make a good pilot with a tiny budget, and possibly the reason it happens more in the UK than the US is that our (English) comedy is slightly less formulaic and more crazy - subjective point of view, though.
A couple of other examples... American sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", the actors spent $200 shooting a pilot that they showed to networks as their pitch. The Office (original UK version) was originally a student project by Stephen Merchant, with Gervais as the only actor in it, and they then sold the show to the BBC based on that video they made. Gervais said in an interview something along the lines of "the BBC never would have bought it based on a traditional pitch because it only makes sense and is funny when you actually see it".