David Creech. Blog 2

It's Always Sunny with Narrative Criticism

Why do people love TV shows based around horrible people? So many of TV's best comedies of all time were centered around one person or a group of truly awful people. South Park, Arrested Development, The League, Archer, Community, and Seinfeld are some shows that come to mind. In my opinion, the show with the absolute worst people is It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. It's one of my favorite shows of all time, and I've seen every episode at least three times, but I've seen most of them at least 6 or 7 times. People love this show and its characters, but why? Not one of the 5 man characters has any sense of morals or virtue. 

The show takes place in Philadelphia, predominately a bar owned by the characters. It is in a really poor part of Philly. And these characters live in a really poor part of Philly.  Because the audience attempts to connect with the characters and their situations, we begin to ignore the intense poverty that the characters endure. We just think that they're weird. They talk about sleeping in piles of garbage. Two male characters with at least a 35 year age gap between them share a fold out couch. 

The characters are also really bad people. Mac lied to an abortion protestor, telling her that he had killed several abortion doctors, just to have sex with her. She told him that she was pregnant, and his reply was "You gotta get an abortion."​ That's one of my favorite examples in the whole show, but there are dozens others. I think people being to realize that these are the most narcissistic people ever thought up, so we begin to look down on them. It's like schadenfreude​ of someone's personality. We are laughing at these destructive people, when they all just need intensive mental care. I don't know what that says about us.