“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is one of the darkest and most hilarious satirical TV shows. It revolves around the dark, twisted lives of five adults - Dennis, Dee, Mac, Frank, and Charlie - all of whom have significantly traumatic problems. Dennis is a selfish narcissist, Dee is seemingly kind but actually apathetic, Mac is homophobic and has a psychopathic father, Frank leads an inappropriately active sex life after being cheated on by his wife, and Charlie is a would-be piano prodigy, illiterate stalker who is addicted to sniffing glue. And yet, the dynamic of the group is laugh-out-loud funny rather than deeply depressing.
The most evident satirical technique in It’s Always Sunny is hyperbole. Its characters' lives are the most obvious example - they face their problems with a level of derangement that no non-fictional, functioning adults could exhibit. Their interactions with each other and the outside world generally make the argument that human beings are inherently selfish. Even the group’s finer moments are tinged with the audience’s feelings of discomfort and shock. Ultimately, the characters represent the cynical outlook that, no matter how hard we try to be good, our instincts and environment will work against us.
I was hoping someone would do Always Sunny! It actually took me a while to realize that the show was satirical and I hated it because it made no sense to me! The thing that I noticed was that the five main characters never seem to learn a lesson from the episode; perhaps that's also satirical about how sitcom characters are so often completely static? Or something even larger?
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