Sunny In Philadelphia, Overcast in Toronto

TODAY'S NYTIMES has a great profile of the creative team behind the FX show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which enters its third season this week.

Edward Wyatt's article raises a number of interesting points:

“The network came to us and said, ‘We don’t want a show about actors,’ and we said, ‘Fine, let’s put it somewhere else,’ ” Mr. McElhenney said. “I’m from Philly, let’s put it in Philly, and we’ll make it about a bar, because that’s a job where you can have lots of free time and still have income that could explain how these people can sustain themselves.”

That was one of the few changes that the network requested, a light touch that the creators, not surprisingly, say they think has much to do with the show’s success.

The first season drew attention for its often outrageously convoluted plots and for a visual style that is unusual in situation comedy.

The plots took full advantage of the show’s basic-cable home, which granted it more leeway both in language and subject matter than a network sitcom would receive. Among the titles of the first-season’s episodes, for example, were “Charlie Wants an Abortion” and “Charlie Got Molested.” In the second season Mac, played by Mr. McElhenney, has sex with the mother of Dennis (Mr. Howerton), just for the sport of it, which leads Dennis to seek a similar act of revenge. The visual style was equally arresting. Most comedies are produced using either multiple fixed-position cameras — producing the look and feel of “Cheers,” for example — or a single camera that can move around but which generally focuses on one character at a time, as in “The Office.”

“It’s Always Sunny” is shot using three or four hand-held cameras, all of them running and moving at once. The creators also keep several characters in the frame at once, encourage improvisation and have the characters
constantly talk over each other. In other words, they act like friends in a bar rather than actors on a set.

I'm of a couple of minds about Sunny. I'm one of the few that actually liked the first season of the show (pre-Devito) a bit better. I remember reading somewhere that they had to shoot Devito out quick, and I think the rhythm of the show may have suffered. And though some of the Devito episodes were very funny, others suffered from the need to work him into the story.

In the second season, I also thought that the characters started to lose their moorings. Dennis and Dee had seemed smarter than the others, and Dee was a bit of a moral centre -- flawed, but still. In Season Two, they all slappped on the idiot suit as required. And whereas the humor in the first season was deliciously over the line, sometimes some of the second season stuff seemed to me to be throwing poo at the wall for the sake of flinging poo.

That being said, it's still way, way, way funnier than most other comedies on TV. And the lessons of the three day shoot, multiple cameras, overlapping dialogue and shooting characters together is something to keep in mind for low budget comedy.

I've heard a lot of people in Canada say that low budget comedy is just not going to work, because Trailer Park Boys did the faux doc thing first and best. But I think that's a copout. Sunny, yet again, is another example of a show that could easily be done here.

If you could get somebody with an actual sense of humor to say yes, that is.

Okay, well. I'm off to stand in the rain at the Canadian Film Centre BBQ.

Living the dream. Enjoy your Sunday.