‘Always Sunny’s Creators and Stars on Season 13 and How the Show Will End

When a show’s been on the air for over a decade, you can forgive it for getting a little sloppy. But It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is no ordinary show. This year marks the 13th season of the FX and now FXX comedy, and yet the series is just as delightfully scathing as its first episode. At the Television Critics Association‘s 2018 summer tour, Decider had the chance to speak to three pillars of this comedy powerhouse — Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olson, and Rob McElhenney.

Always Sunny is known for taking big risks, and Season 13’s premiere certainly did that, starting with an episode that reimagines what the gang’s life is like without Dennis (Glenn Howerton). The episode is a nod to Howerton’s own uncertainty about returning to Always Sunny after signing onto NBC’s on A.P. Bio. “He was sort of 50/50 about coming back, and we understood that,” McElhenney said. “So that first episode, we wanted to kind of explore that. Like okay, what’s the show without Dennis? And very quickly you see that it doesn’t quite work.”

The gang’s lives are infinitely better without Dennis. They’re nicer to each other and far more productive under the leadership of Mindy Kaling’s Cindy. But the second Dennis returns, every member of the gang immediately welcomes their equally toxic friend back into the folds, a move McElhenney refers to as “the nature of self-destruction.”

“[The episode] was interesting, but it’s also nice to mix things up,” Olson said. “One of the reasons this show isn’t getting old is we try and keep it fresh and keep people on their toes and do different kinds of episodes.”

And there are a lot of interesting episodes planned for this new season. According to Always Sunny co-creator and star Charlie Day, who also spoke to Decider about his upcoming The Cool Kids, this season will feature a two-part episode about the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. There will also be an episode about the gang trying to beat an escape room and an extravagant episode about Mac (McElhenney) coming out to his father. But two of the season’s most interesting sounding episode revolve around Olson’s lazy egomaniac, Sweet Dee.

Later this season Dee will take center stage in an all-female reboot of Season 10’s iconic “The Gang Beats Boggs.” Dee will be trying to down 70 beers during a cross country flight along with her friend Artemis (Artemis Pebdani), Charlie’s love interest the waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), Mac’s mom (Sandy Martin), and Charlie’s mom (Lynne Marie Stewart). Dee will also be a central part of this season’s Time’s Up-themed episode, something that was teased in this year’s trailer.

“It’s just really fun to me to comment on what’s going on in the world in a unique way. I just love that the one woman of the show thinks that the (Time’s Up) movement is bullshit and is just totally using it for a completely different reason,” Olson said. “It’s just so ludicrous and so not how I feel in real life, and that’s why I find it so funny.”

The upcoming Time’s Up episode is just one specific example of how today’s current political climate has affected Always Sunny‘s writer’s room. But according to Day, the whole gang’s bad behavior allows the show to joke about taboo topics even during this heated political climate. “You understand we are satirizing bad behavior as opposed to endorsing it. And it allows us to go down some roads that you couldn’t do if the show wasn’t a satire,” Day said.

Because of the show’s take-no-prisoners approach to controversial topics fans on both sides of the political aisle often think Always Sunny is mocking their opponents. “One of the things I love is that I’ll run into people who are liberal or progressive and they will say ‘Oh man I love this show because it makes fun of conservatives or these backwoods rubes, and isn’t it great how you’re pushing your progressive agenda?’ and I’m like ‘Oh yeah absolutely,” McElhenney said. “And then I’ll run into conservative fans who are like ‘How do you get away with that living in California and all you’re doing is destroying the liberals?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,'”

“That’s what we are going for. We want it to feel like — and it is true — that we are exploring all facets of the human condition, and all sides are hopefully eviscerated in some way,” he said. “We are less interested in the politics of it and more of the behavioral aspects of it.”

For now the Always Sunny creators are happy to ruthlessly mock hypocrisy on all sides, but they do have an end game in mind. When asked when he wanted the show to end, Day said he was interested in at least doing a Season 15. That would make It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia the longest-running scripted comedy on television. “There might be something nice about having that accolade because we don’t have many,” he said. “[Future seasons are] something we kind of play by ear and go year by year. We still enjoy doing the show and the audience is still there so who knows!”

McElhenney largely agreed with Day. But just because Always Sunny doesn’t know how long it will go on, that doesn’t mean there’s not a definite ending in mind. “We have discussed, actually many years ago, ‘Hey, if at some point this show might have to end, how do you think we want to do it?'” he said. McElhenney pitched his series-ending idea without consulting his co-creators Day and Howerton. But as luck would have it both were thinking about similar ideas.

“I felt like we figured [the ending] out. But let’s just wait until 2047 to do it,” McElhenney said. We’ll still be watching.

New episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia premiere on FXX Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET. 

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