Extreme Dysfunction at its Core

     It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a prime example of what a perfect black comedy is. It’s extremely easy to point out many episodes that leave you on hard-punching dark moments: Frank and Charlie dragging a dead hooker out of their apartment to be found in the hallway (Frank’s Pretty Woman), Mac serving Dennis his dog for dinner (Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs), Dee tricking a man into giving his daughter a lap dance (PTSDee), the Gang attempting to relive their childhood experiences causing a severe number of child casualties (Risk E. Rats Pizza & Amusement Center), but it's their long-running, underlying plot of extreme character dysfunction that truly makes the show unique. This theme at the core of the show grants us the ability to see the Gang not just as terrible people to laugh at, but as deeply tragic characters stuck in their own cycles of abuse. 

    Even amongst each other, they're completely self-serving: their motivations are more-often-than-not born from their own selfish interests, they don’t care to exhibit kindness to anyone in their lives in an attempt to reach their goals, and they’ll fuck over anyone they need to in order to act on every terrible whim they conceive, often resulting in the Gang destroying the lives of anyone who crosses their path (and being hated by (almost) everyone they encounter). Yet despite insane motivation, they rarely accomplish the menial goals they set out to achieve—the comedy lying in the fact that their actions are not only terrible, but an incredibly stupid, destructive way to attempt to meet their means.

    Sunny is a black comedy because their characters continually fuck people over in the most reckless, idiotic ways possible and they manage to make their own circumstances worse in every attempt to get ahead, but digging into the lives of the Gang reveals something much more tragically dark than the terrible schemes we laugh at on the surface—because it’s not just that they don’t care about what they’re doing (as that’s sometimes, provenly not the case at all), but that they’re such broken people they’re almost completely unable to recognize that their behavior is extremely dysfunctional.

The multi-faceted aspects of their dysfunction is buried in the core of almost every episode, for each character in many different ways, and as you come to learn more about the Gang, it becomes increasingly clearer as to why they continue to stay together, trapped in their own miserable cycles of abuse—because it’s all they’ve ever known and all they’re willing to understand (consciously or subconsciously, as each case greatly varies, yet almost always linked to past trauma). 

The Gang Misses the Boat is an episode which masterfully grapples with this idea, exhibiting how when these characters are separated from each other it’s not only much easier for them to recognize their own behaviors as self-destructive, but shows how they’re completely unable to even attempt to exist as functional individuals:

Dennis believes that, without the Gang, he’s viewed as a “cool guy,” and it’s their insane behavior which causes him to act out. Yet when he cuts the tether and ventures out on his own to negotiate with regular people, he finds it impossible to keep his cool. He experiences emotions to an unhinged degree—upset frustration and anger impossible to contain—and instead of grappling with why that may be, Dennis storms back to the bar and demands the Gang come back together, because at least when he’s among them he can continue to justify that that’s where it comes from—he doesn’t have to address a part of him he’s completely unwilling to face. 

    Mac believes that it’s because of Dennis that he’s no longer a “party boy who bangs chicks all the time,” yet when he’s given the chance to be with a hot woman, he’s unable to get it up. Though he’s intent on simply lying to the Gang, he’s clearly unable to lie to himself in this state, so when he’s given the opportunity to go back, no questions asked, he jumps on it—he’s more willing to live in the delusion that Dennis is sabotaging him than admit what Dennis’ true role in his inability to be with women is. 

Charlie and Dee believe the Gang are holding them back in life, forcing them to do and say things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain, and think they would be much better off making their own choices. Yet when they’re left to their own devices, they act on pure instinct and quickly destroy their relationship with each other. Completely unable to address it (another state of dysfunction), they happily fall back in line under the guys, eager to re-adhere to the Gang’s expectations if it means they don’t have to admit what really ended up happening when there was no one around to tell them how to act. 

Frank believes that he’s not valued for his ideas outside of the Gang’s need for his money. He ventures out to find a new crew, only to discover that every move he makes is incredibly nonsensical and life-ruining—and while that’s completely true among the Gang as well, the wretched consequences of his actions go much more unnoticed when it’s among people whose lives are not only already destroyed, but already completely dependent on him. He storms back in and demands things return to what they were, because at least when he’s among the Gang (for as long as he’s wanted to some degree) he can delude himself into believing that he’s still of some character value. 

The moment they recognize their dysfunction is actually worse-off isolated, they’re desperate to come back together as a group, solidly affirming that they’d rather live in a collective cycle of delusion and destruction, where they’re able to shift blame onto each other and outsiders, than deal with the fact that they’re deeply fucked up—because understanding why that is requires unearthing irreparable trauma they’ve spent their whole lives keeping buried. 

   

     Almost all of their behavior is rooted in extreme dysfunction, and it makes the Gang much more tragic than what we see on the surface. Once you begin to understand the characters, a lot of what they do is explainable and sometimes even understandable, and that's where we find rich complexity that draws us in and keeps us invested in their lives. That's not to say we justify the behavior we see on screen as acceptable (or believe they'd ever be view as "good"), but to explain why we're able to look much deeper than “terrible people who do bad things,” and view these characters as sad, fucked up individuals caught in cycles of abuse—their motivations are ripe with complexity, deeper meaning begging to be dug up and analyzed.

While a lot of people intrinsically understand this idea, picking up on the long-running theme of trauma-based responses the Gang reacts by (and their histories of trauma that are all but explicitly said), I thought it would be helpful to spell out ahead of any future meta or analysis on these topics. I find it incredibly fucking difficult to actually write what this frame of reference is, and where it comes from, so I believe it will be helpful for myself, if not others, to have a base-line post to refer to when it comes to discussing these characters, their motivations and behaviors and reactions.