What Family Means to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Forgive me, I am about to be entirely too serious and dramatic about a fucking sitcom about five goofy, evil bitches. I kinda hate taking this show seriously because it feels like it goes against some of the show’s messaging, but fuck it. I love these characters in a very serious way despite the hysterical satire they live in. I hope this makes some sense. I finished s17 yesterday and am at a loss of what to do with myself, so I guess I’ll write about them forever?
This essay was inspired by the song “London Plane Trees Grow in Philly” by Annabelle Dinda. It’s a beautiful, wonderfully written song about the complications of family, and I swear, Philly being in the title is sort of a coincidence. This song always makes me think of the show now.
Family has always been “one of those things.” This unavoidable piece of reality attaches itself to everything we do. Healthy families, unhealthy ones, families that lie somewhere in between, they all permeate our culture like a looming fog covering the air around us. No television show can avoid the topic, and in fact, many shows are about family. Most things, in the end, are about some aspect of family. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia cannot escape from this fate. It does its best through its satirical absurdity; this is not a show about kind people going through difficult things. This show revels in the awfulness of its characters, this show is built on the fact that it has somehow convinced an audience to spend seventeen seasons watching the worst people in Philly ruin every life they come in contact with, especially their own. And yet, this show, in a way, still inherently makes a statement about family by existing in the first place. It may not be entirely intentional, but in a show brave enough to say something about almost everything, there is no way family exists as an outlier. Due to that reality, one question was on my mind through my dizzyingly hypnotic, addictive watch of this show: what does It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia say about family?
What this show says about family can be more easily defined by what it doesn’t say. It’s Always Sunny does not say that family is blood. Sure, Dennis and Dee are brother and sister, but is that what really keeps them together? How often does their relationship even come up? They clearly have no special allegiance to one another, no secret “bond” that encompasses their life together. Yes, they were raised together, but their shared blood isn’t what makes them family. They grew up with a cruel mother who did not care for them, especially Dee, and a father who was absent at best and vindictive at worst. Frank’s position as their father certainly isn’t what’s keeping him in their lives, and besides, we find out early on that he isn’t connected to them by blood, either. Dee, Dennis, and Frank are family, yes, but the show makes it clear early on that it’s not their bloodline keeping them that way. If it was, they would’ve dumped Frank the second they realized he wasn’t biologically their father.
Charlie enters into this equation with uncertainties. Yes, he’s got a blood-related mother, but she smothers him so profoundly that she is the one person who can truly test his patience. She instilled in him a level of fear he can never really fully let go of, a paranoia that infects him as he grows up. Not to mention that she hardly raised him, spending her time with men she deemed more important than the boy downstairs sitting on the couch. Charlie doesn’t know his biological father for the majority of his life, and when he finally meets him, he’s met with emptiness. A lack. A void. Sure, he can plug up the hole now if he wants to, but that chasm goes far deeper than a cork could ever fill up. So, he discards his biological father and decides against letting him into his family. And sure, Charlie’s got sisters, but he’s sworn them off just as they’ve abandoned him.
Mac’s blood family has always made me the saddest. In a show that is excellent at making horrific things funny, where it fails for me is the tragedy of Mac’s heritage. Unlike the rest of them who actively reject and happily ignore their blood families, Mac is always clawing for his. He has a mother who refuses to speak to him, refuses to acknowledge him, denies him love, safety, or comfort, and yet he practically falls to his knees in reverence in her presence. He has an oppressive, hateful, spiteful father who has time and time again proven he has not just a lack of love and compassion, but a lack of even simple recognition of his son. To Mac’s father, Mac is not his child. He’s just some guy who follows him around like a dog. And yet, there Mac goes, barking along on his leash, hoping that one day his parents will turn around and at least give him a second glance. It is profoundly sad to watch him spend his life begging for the attention he never got, always waiting, keeping himself on the line. Meanwhile, his parents kick him away time and time again, watching without emotion as he runs back. The foot always rises, and there goes Mac, tumbling down the road again. Back and forth, back and forth, but no matter how hard he wishes, no matter how hard he tries, Mac’s parents are not his family.
So, if blood isn’t family in It’s Always Sunny, then what is? The answer is obvious: the gang. The gang is a family. But, for me, that’s not enough. It instead leads me to the follow up question: why? Why do these people stay together? Is it love? Love tends to be the answer with found families, and yet in my opinion, that isn’t the case here. It’s not that everyone in the gang doesn’t love each other. Despite this show’s satirical humor and insistence on codependency trumping love, I tend to have the gentle, probably-wrong-but-just-let-me-have-this opinion that every member of the gang loves one another in their twisted ways. So, if they love each other, then how is that not what makes them family?
I return that question with one of my own: has love kept every relationship you’ve ever had alive? I know that for me, it hasn’t. There are people who walk this earth whom I have intense love for in my heart, and yet I will never speak to them again. Tragic as it is, love isn’t enough to keep people together. Love is powerful, love is beautiful, love is maybe the point of everything, but it cannot save everything. What keeps the Always Sunny gang a family is not love, but choice. Decision. Every single time a member of the gang is put through the wringer by the others, every time someone declares that it’s over, they’re through, they’re leaving for good, they look out at the world and make a choice. They see that world, full of mystery, full of cruelty and joy and inexplicable horror, and they turn back around. They look at the faces of those they love and decide that, no matter what, the gang wins out. You could say they stay out of fear of the unknown, that they stay because they hate their gang slightly less than they hate everyone else, you could say they stay because they’ve just got nowhere else to go. That may all be right, that may be what the show intends, but it’s not what I choose to believe.
I think that when any member of the gang reaches a crossroads, they look at their family and realize they can breathe easier in that gaze. I think Dee sees four men who have never tried to take advantage of her, who have treated her like shit but always outstretched a hand to her when she needed it, I think Dee sees four assholes who make her feel like she matters to someone, I think Dee sees those four and feels special in their eyes. I think Dennis sees people who, despite the headache they give him, will always go along with what he says. I think Dennis sees people who trust him, I think Dennis sees people who see him as someone worth something, I think Dennis sees a gang full of people who treat him like he may actually have value within him. I think Frank sees the two children he can start again with, as friends this time. I think Frank sees two boys without fathers who need him more than he or they’ll ever know. I think Frank sees a life he never got to have, friends he never got to make, I think Frank looks at those four and sees a second chance. I think Charlie sees people who’ll listen to his songs, who’ll act in his plays, who’ll tolerate his odd smells and dubious food choices and his consistent, dirty wardrobe. I think Charlie sees a man who’ll play games with him in the night and always be there in the morning, never at risk of running off and denying him a father. I think Mac sees people who he doesn’t have to fear will hurt him, I think Mac sees people who will listen to whatever comes out of his mouth, I think Mac sees people willing to accept him for who he is even when he can’t. I think Mac sees four people who’ll never see him differently no matter who he becomes.
It’s Always Sunny, ultimately, says that family is comfort. Family is safety. Family is warmth. Family members are the people who, no matter what happens, always let you back in the door and laugh along with you.
I often think back on “A Very Sunny Christmas.” In the end, after a disastrous Christmas, the gang throws rocks at trains. We cut to Mac and Charlie as young boys, as young brothers. They both don’t have a father. They both have ghosts of mothers. But they’ve got each other, rocks, and Philly at their backs. They’ll enjoy the holiday together and then go back to school with an insufferable pair of twins who’ll chirp on and on about their strange father.
If that’s not family, what is?
“I like knowing who will love me. I like how my loved ones bug me.” - Annabelle Dinda
(Had to include this photoshoot even though I cannot get any great quality photos of it. Gotta be one of my favorites of theirs <3)
