Why “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is Signaling the Beginning of the End for Network Sitcoms

Like any millennial who’s recently dropped out of college and started working at a bookstore, I spend most of my time doing one of two things. On a bad day, I find myself wondering what could have possessed me to turn down an acceptance letter from NYU’s Tisch program. On a good day, however — as good as a day can get in these trying times — I will indefatigably be consuming hours of various sitcoms and Ben Stiller comedies on the soul-crushing time machine that is Netflix, the sinful mistress that she is.

I watch sitcoms because I like sitcoms. There’s no ironic reasoning behind it. I didn’t lose a bet that left me responsible to endure six hours of “Hot in Cleveland” everyday; and it is definitely of my own volition that I’ve now watched “How I Met Your Mother” in its entirety almost seven times. I watch sitcoms because they take the overpowering and all-consuming hurdles of death, divorce, unemployment, depression, and neatly package them as completely solvable problems in a convenient, digestible 22-minute gift each and every week.

Ironically enough, the streaming service that all these shows now call home is exactly the same streaming service that’s revolutionizing television as we know it. I devoured the new Netflix original “Love” in a matter of one day. I know for a fact that when “House of Cards” drops a new season every year, my mom calls out of work to sit on the couch and have her emotions and expectations thrown around like a rag doll by Frank Underwood and his Washington cronies.

But how can shows that are currently on the air keep up with such a rapidly developing market? Sure, we can just about abolish television as we know it, transition everything to streaming, and call it a day. Or, as one show has, we can return to the roots of what a sitcom really is: a situational comedy. Essentially, a standalone block of time in which we, the viewers, are offered a glimpse into the lives of (usually) five people and the hijinks they partake in on that given day.

And, right now, as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one show taking that concept to its fullest potential. In its 11th season, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” continues to be one of the most innovative, well-written shows on television.

The show is built on the foundation that sitcom characters are inherently terrible people. People like sitcoms because it’s fun to watch these shenanigans from a distance, and even relate to them on some level, knowing full well that these are often personalities that we wouldn’t associate with if our lives depended on it. It just so happens that “It’s Always Sunny” takes this conceit to the absolute limit, forcing its viewers to consider exactly why we enjoy it so much. Eleven years in and the narrative precision with which each episode is carried out only gets tighter with every subsequent season.

To illustrate this, I’m going to single out one particular episode, “The Gang Goes on Family Fight,” which aired as the eighth episode of the show’s tenth season. It has since been characterized as a kind of “love it or hate it” episode amongst fans since it originally aired in March of 2015, which is totally understandable. The show’s default setting, Paddy’s Pub, is only glanced at once during the episode’s final three shots, where the gang gathers around the TV to watch Dennis weep in a fetal position on the set’s floor, unsure of whether he’s telling the audience or himself that his behavior on the show “doesn’t represent” him.

But getting the gang out of their element is exactly why the episode works so well. “Family Fight” — a placeholder for the popular game show “Family Feud” — opens with each member of the “Sunny” gang going over his or her strategy to win the game. Frank insists on inserting some right-wing rhetoric into the proceedings, an idea which Dennis shoots down without hesitation. Sweet Dee, on the other hand, wants to go for a game of highbrow-lowbrow jump rope, bringing along a fart keychain and an array of horribly inappropriate jokes — at one point during the taping, she manipulates the answer “chicken” as an excuse to say cock, as “kind of a double entendre.”

Charlie, on the other hand, remains fascinated with a large bowl of cottage cheese, while Mac is consistently unsure of what game they’re even playing. “You gotta spin the wheel,” he says at one point, while infuriating Grant, the show’s host — played brilliantly by “Key & Peele’s” Keegan-Michael Key — with his refusal to understand that only the host can say the “show me…!” catchphrase that “Family Feud” fans know so well.

And finally there’s Dennis, who fancies himself something of a patriarch in the group dynamic. Surely his “Italian shoes made of the finest leather,” lack of any noticeable character flaw, and complete understanding of how to act on national television will lead the gang to victory.

Then, their opponents walk in. The Barrett’s, an African-American family led by character actress Anna Maria Horsford, are just happy to have the opportunity, but the Reynolds’ clan isn’t about to let their guard down for anyone. They mean mug the other family without any exchange of words, and Frank tries his best with this intimidation-cum-snarl…thing.

Finally, the game begins. It was in this moment that most “Sunny” fans knew something was different. This was not going to be a routine episode, but it also wasn’t going to quite be a filler episode, or an episode that’s particularly important to developing what little continuity there is throughout the series. So why exactly stage an episode on a popular game show? The themes that run through this episode seem to rely heavily on functionality, and making it clearer than ever why this post-“Seinfeld” romp is barely a sitcom anymore — and why it barely ever was to begin with.

Take, for instance, the fact that the show has never had a laugh track. Sure, it’s not the first, but when it debuted in 2005, one of the only established shows to have nixed the fake audience was “Arrested Development” (Note: “The Office’s” six-episode debut season also aired in 2005, albeit in March to “Sunny’s” August). However, nobody really watched “AD” when it was on the air, and it took a good decade for everybody to “get it,” so it’s not like a laugh-trackless sitcom was an ingredient for a surefire hit. Yet, in this episode, the “Family Fight” studio audience makes it so apparent how much different the show would have been had it gone a more conventional route.

Whether through the writing, the performing, or that concoction of “aww’s,” “haha’s,” “boo’s,” and cheers, some of the punchlines in this episode — the “Do you want me to answer that or answer this?” line from Dee stands out the most — seem like they’re coming from an entirely different show. And yet, if we think back to the show’s opening scene where each character is discussing his or her strategy to win the game, they’re not talking about “Family Fight” specifically: they’re talking about how basic cable television programs are forced to appeal to a mass audience, or, as Dennis puts it, “be right down the middle.”

But the gang has never succeeded in such a pursuit. They’re never going to be right down the middle, and watching them try their best to be the stars of a conventional sitcom is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen. The antics are a little cuter than they are most of the time. There surely isn’t anything nearly as disturbing as some of the riskier plot twists in this season’s “Dennis & Mac Move to the Suburbs,” but it only seems right that the writers would finally acknowledge how the hell such a niche program has been on the air for more than a decade.

There are also a couple of nice stylistic and performance-related details that strengthen the episode thematically. For instance, whenever the gang is discussing something privately, the cinematography resembles that of a conventional episode: handheld camera, 1080i (as of 2010), and more assured editing, allowing the conversational humor to have at least a little bit of visual flair. This all changes, though, when “Family Fight” is being taped. We transition into a series of standard definition crane shots, boring angles, and no visual personality. In other words, a picture-perfect game show replication.

The “Sunny” gang has always had a knack for teetering the line between satirical and offensive. And while in recent years, they’ve taken to just cutting that line in two and using it to swing around like monkeys, it’s paired with an increased self-awareness that often makes for the best episodes. Having written and performed these characters for so long, their individual personalities are the plot at this point. Everything they experience is nothing more than a reflection of their own fundamentally flawed personalities, with their “Family Fight” appearance being no exception.

In what is undeniably the subtlest, and perhaps the cleverest, joke of the entire episode, Dennis is tasked with getting just five points during the Fast Money round after Frank nails it with all the top answers. In the moment, Frank’s lucidity may seem unbelievable, but it’s important to remember that the only other time we see Frank have to pick a top answer — specifically in response to the question “What animal do we eat that doesn’t eat us?” — he succeeds in doing so.

When Dennis hears that Frank replaced Dee after a hunger-induced fainting spell — one that sends her fart keychain berserk, another opportunity to highlight the balance between highbrow and lowbrow humor that so many sitcoms fail to maintain — he assumes the responsibility of bringing the gang to victory. But with only five points to win, Dennis is reduced to a blubbering mess in a matter of thirty seconds, all because of a piercing buzzer sound that reinforces his own deep-seated insecurities with each burst of noise.

The irony of it all is, the reveal that Charlie took the survey that’s currently in play would have allowed him to get those final five points necessary to win the game, which only reinforces the idea that whenever the gang fails, it’s nobody’s fault but their own. Dennis’ ego, Dee’s vanity, Mac’s obliviousness, and Frank’s lasciviousness all play a key factor in the family’s loss, while Charlie is just strung along for the ride, as he so often is (sans his “Wild Card” moments).

In the end, nobody gets what they want and everything goes back to normal, as it does with the end of most sitcom episodes, but one of the episode’s final shots, a pull-out from the “Family Fight” set to the gang watching the episode in the bar, is a final affirmation that the episode was created to mock television itself, something the show does surprisingly often — think back to the cold open in season 8’s “Charlie Rules the World,” where Frank and Mac are seen watching a trashy reality TV show. Even more infamous is season 7’s “Fat Mac,” a risky decision made by the show’s creator and star, Rob McElhenney, as a sort of retaliation against the notion that sitcom characters become more attractive with every season — a trope that even “It’s Always Sunny” has fallen victim to since its transition into HD.

Regardless, not enough shows are innovating, trying, and succeeding as much as “It’s Always Sunny” continues to do just about every time it comes on the air. FX and FXX are already offering the best alternative comedies one could hope for, with “Louie” and “Baskets” furthering the precedents set by shows like “It’s Always Sunny.” But there’s still more to be done. With the genuinely clever “How I Met Your Mother” ending in 2014, and current network comedies being highlighted for their dramatic turns (had many people even heard of “Black-ish” before the clip from their recent episode “Hope” hit every social media platform faster than a video of puppies and kitties playing together?), it seems like there’s some golden age of television comedy coming to an end.

Louis CK’s newest show, “Horace & Pete,” has completely side-stepped the networks and gone fully independent, while the best new comedy series, like “Love” and “Master of None,” are all turning to alternative means of distribution. Most of Hulu’s original programming is better than anything on the basic cable channels, and even Amazon Prime is home to “Transparent,” one of the most culturally significant comedy shows in recent memory. With “Always Sunny’s” 11th season coming to an end, and a 12th hitting FXX next January, it’s clear that the gang is ready to move on and let this cultural juggernaut end on a high note.

But, when it does, what does that mean for comedy television as we know it? I mean, sure, other shows will come in to both literally and figuratively fill the hole left in its absence. Some shows already are, and the optimistic renewal of “Baskets” means FX doesn’t seem too worried about demographics at this point. But when I can watch clips of “Nathan For You” and “Key & Peele “— and entire episodes of “Last Week Tonight” — online while I stream other shows in their respective homes, what’s the point of paying for TV at all?