DingleJerry wrote:Licensed to Il wrote:jakecronus8 wrote:Not sure if It’s Always Sunny is going to continue much longer but I weirdly love the emotional episodes they’ve done as season finales the last couple years. They could’ve ended the series with both of the last two finales if they wanted to and it would be a satisfying ending. Just such an underrated masterpiece. Not many shows can be consistently funny and stay relatively fresh for 15 seasons.
I think "It's Always Sunny" can be off putting with some of the low notes they have hit (Dennis rape jokes, Mac gay jokes, etc). But as you point out, they have always been able to hit some really high notes of: creativity, social commentary, and emotionally satisfying and complex character payoffs. I'm not sure I can think of another example of a show that has consistently hit such low, lazy, and easy comedy targets while also surpassing what any other comedy was doing. Its really unprecedented, in my opinion. As you can tell, I love it and I hate it. And maybe that's actually what they are going for. I can watch 2-3 episodes from any season and think.. this is pretty insulting and common. And then hit a 2-3 episode stretch in the same season and say "these guys are legitimately brilliant."
Thing is on most insulting type things in the show they're doing it to show the absurdity/insulting of it. Yea there's some PC terms you could say in 2005ish you can't now, but for the most part they are pointing out the bad-ness of those things and these characters. Not glorifying it. But yea a dude comedy still has to hit their allotment of dick/fart jokes, after all poop is funny haha.
I'm a huge fan and its a consistent background rewatch show for me. I'd say the last 4-5 years are hit or miss with probably about a 50% hit rate. Which after this long is still pretty good and even still the misses aren't awful. Think they might've played a bit too far into some of the characters at times, like say Mac becoming so needy to Dennis as an example. And at times since they're all mature adults now some of the recent seasons may be trying to do too much for what's supposed to be a dumb comedy overall. But again, after this long they have to do new things and 45 year olds are gonna think differently than when they were 27.
Also, Podcast is definitely worth a listen for any long time fans
I suppose what I was trying to say, is that "Sunny" is packaged in the wrapper of a cable sitcom for frat boys. That is probably the most common audience demographic. If you watched it once or twice, it would be easy to make that assumption. If you watched a randomly edited montage, there would be some indefensible and wince-worthy jokes. But there is so much more to it. Some of the episodes are smarter than any other sitcom. Some make brilliant social commentary underneath that "frat wrapper." Some episodes make you laugh out loud with brilliantly crafted situations that I haven't really seen since peak Seinfeld. And some are just daring you to clutch your pearls because they know they have crafted a gritty, dystopian, setting that is going to make you laugh even if the other shows on your DVR are pseudo classy things like Downtown Abby.
