WGA Credits are up for Sunny 17! (And there's a lot of Charlie Work!)

 I've fallen into a routine every day at lunch time. I open a browser on my phone, type in "WGA," let it autofill to the Sunny page and load in to see the same "154 Episodes" glaring back at me. 

Yesterday after my routine check, I ran a private poll among some close friends to laugh out some of my frustration knowing it could be months until we get any updates on Season 17 (due to the premiere date being months out). The poll had two simple choices, asking my friends to pick whether we'd get Season 17 writing credits or the mere ~existence~ of Glenn Howerton's upcoming Netflix show, Sirens, writing credits first. 

Today on my lunch break I noticed I had a notification that my 24-hour poll had concluded, and the results were in: Sirens, as voted by my friends, would appear before Sunny 17. Honestly, probably, I thought— yet still I pulled open a browser, typed in "WGA," and let it autofill to the Sunny page. But today, instead of "154 Episodes" appearing on my screen, "162 Episodes" glared back at me. My heart leapt into my throat, completely caught off-guard and anxious to confirm what I already knew this change meant—Season 17 writing credits were up.  

I rushed to quote my own poll (letting my majority voters know they were wrong was the priority), and then went back to report the news to various friends and social media, excited to discuss the list of writers on the eight episodes in Season 17. Of course, if I had any self restraint maybe I would have waited to post about it for the first time here, so people would actually read this blog, but alas I do not have any self control when it comes to yapping about news for this show... Though, now that I have the time to sit and make a blog post with an annoyingly long and personal lead-in, here are the official writing credits for Season 17:  

Via WGA.org

What stuck out to me almost immediately was the number of times Charlie Day's name is listed here. Seven times. Out of eight episodes! That's insane, truly. Because while we know Rob, Charlie, and Glenn always do an "RCG Pass" on all of the scripts (that is, they review and revise each script for both plot and characterization), one of the three of them being a credited writer on all but one episode in a Season hasn't happened since Season 1, in which Rob was a credited writer for 6/7 episodes.

Charlie teased last month that he thinks Season 17 is one of their strongest in years, which in hindsight is pretty funny to claim for a season he wrote so much of (though, I'm sure accurate). 

The second thing I noticed about these credits is that there are absolutely zero solo writers, a first for any season of Sunny (though Seasons 4 and 15 come close with only one episode, each), and a striking difference from Season 16 for which only the RCG episodes had more than one writer credited. Does that mean Season 17 might have a different feel from 16? Maybe some more cohesiveness between individual storylines with Charlie threading through almost all of them? Maybe...but maybe not. 

It is Sunny, after all, and many of the things we've picked up about the various plots definitely seem to be more classic "weekly schemes" as opposed to an over-arching storyline... so perhaps everyone was just simply meshing well with each other in the writers room this year and didn't want to separate after breaking scripts. 

And, in case you missed it, we were already aware Glenn wouldn't be on any scripts this year, so the lack of his name among the credited writers isn't shocking, and it also doesn't indicate that he had no input in the writer's room this season, because he definitely did. And Glenn's former assistant and "rock," writer of Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day, is interestingly paired up on an episode with Charlie this season, notably #1701, placing him at the bookmarks of the last and latest seasons. 

But it should be noted that #1701 is the first episode in production order and doesn't necessarily equate to Episode 1. In fact, it likely is confirmed not to be Episode 1, as Rob has hinted the Sunny half of the Abbott Elementary crossover will be the Season 17 Premiere (which is #1705).