If you would have told someone in 2005 that the new show that just started with characters that were rude, yelling, jerks that in their first 7 episodes alone pretended to be gay to boost their tips bar tending, decided to serve high school kids alcohol and then got involved with their personal lives, and attempted to sell nazi uniforms to a museum would not only be on the air 15 years later but that it would move you to tears, they would have called you insane, and yet it happened.
For those not familiar, or only mildly so It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows the exploits of “The Gang” Three friends since high school, Dennis, Charlie, and Mac, who own a bar in South Philly as well as Dennis’s twin sister Dee and the twin’s father (but also not, but maybe Charlie’s. It’s complicated) Frank. The show follows these five as they get into all kinds of adventures and they are just literally the worst people you can imagine. They all make fun of everyone the come in contact with, they’re all various flavors of self centered and delusional, and there’s even a running joke about them just calling people not by their names but simple titles and all that is the tame stuff. So why bring this up for this blog? Well that has to do with how the show develops the gang as characters over the years. They don’t grow and change like other shows or real people do, more and more just gets slowly revealed. Charlie goes from being maybe dyslexic to definitely illerate and that is made all the worse by his frequent drug usage. Dennis is slowly revealed to be kind of creepy with women when he thinks he’s charming to more than likely being a sociopath, but then there’s Mac.
Mac has always been the most insecure one of the group, but the most in denial about that fact. He always asserts that he can do these amazing physical feats he absolutely cannot. He sees himself as the badass of the group when he has no real skills in anything he says he does. Most importantly to this and what leads to the episode in question is something they started in roughly season 6, his repressed homosexuality. It starts off with small things, a childlike admiration of a local baseball star and obession with body builders but grows over the seasons until when he is out of the room Charlie says to the other characters “I know we’ve never said this out loud but, Mac’s gay right?” And everyone else agrees and is annoyed by how repressed he is (because again these are the worst human beings alive) and how they all just wish he could admit it to himself. Mac is also very catholic in the worst way that one can imagine a person would be, which is another big part of why he is as repressed as he is. This all leads to an actual heartwarming moment where in order to be legally deemed the owner of a unscratched lotto scratcher he admits he’s gay, only for the others to assume that once he has it he’ll just go back into the closet as he has before. When they tell him that though he softly says “You know, I think I’ll stay out this time” Everyone with mild shock that he was actually able to come out shares that they are proud of him and say good for you and stuff like that. It’s a sweet moment in a show that doesn’t often give them but the real point comes a year later.
Roughly a season and a half after Mac came out the show aired this as their season finale and I think its one of It’s Always Sunny’s finest moments. Frank has been tasked with getting Mac to dance on the bar’s float for the pride parade and Mac just says he doesn’t feel very proud. Frank agrees to help him, even though he admits that he never “got” Mac and probably never will since he’s come out. After proving that a sexist, awful 75 year old rich guy really doesn’t get gay culture at all Frank sees the problem as Mac having not come out to his own father. His father by the way is a convicted criminal who has been in jail most of Mac’s life. He’s man Mac sees as so tough that when he tries at first, his dad think he’s saying “he knocked some broad up” and Mac can’t correct him.
After it looks like Mac might go back into the closet Frank has a revelation that brings him back to Mac where he says that you can’t keep stuff like this inside you, “Sometimes you just gotta let the blood flow.” While for Frank that lesson was alarmingly literal it leads him to help Mac set up an elaborate interpretative dance Mac has been considering all episode right in the prison so he can come out his way. It’s a striking and moving piece and while Mac’s father does not stay for the whole thing, Frank does. Frank is captivated throughout the whole performance and once it concludes, with tears in his eyes Frank goes
Frank then starts the standing ovation that takes us straight to the credits. This episode might be one of the best episodes of tv period in the last few years and it certainly is one of the most unique, interesting, and down right good coming out stories I think I’ve ever had the privilege to see. If you have the chance, and can take It’s Always Sunny (not everybody can, it’s a lot of...everything and I can totally see why it would turn people off) seek this episode out.
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia S13 E10: Mac Finds His Pride (2018)
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That’s all for today folks but as always don’t forget to leave any comments or likes you may have and feel free to leave suggestions or even cover your own topics using the tag #LGBTQPril and I will see you next time.











