Why ‘It’s Always Sunny’ Fans Love the Worst People on TV

A few months ago, I was listening to The Always Sunny Podcast (as I do quite regularly), the program hosted by the three co-creators, writers, and stars of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Each episode finds Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, and Rob McElhenney going through their sitcom episode to episode from the beginning (though occasionally veering off course) and, using discussion as a jumping-off point for anything from behind-the-scenes tidbits to road rage incidents. During the first of two call-in episodes the hosts have done, I was pleased to hear an excited young woman tell the guys that she wished Rob and his wife, fellow Sunny co-star Kaitlin Olson, were “her parents”—a celebrity designation I was all too familiar with.

The men were evidently charmed to hear it as well, though somewhat facetiously disappointed to now be at an age where they’re referred to by young fans as “fathers,” or even “uncles,” as the previous female caller had designated them. But it was also clear that the guys didn’t actually comprehend the true implication of their fans referring to them as “parents'' and “dads.”

I laughed to myself as I listened, wondering whether Day, Howerton, and McElhenney had any real conception of the nature of the fandom that they have spawned, in the whopping 18 years since their show premiered. It’s the same dedicated fandom that has allowed for the somehow still-niche series to take up the mantle of “longest-running live action American sitcom.” Listening to that podcast episode, I fondly recalled the time I spent on Tumblr in college—as a person perpetually on the periphery of obsessive fandom but never quite community-minded enough to engage on a level larger than myself—scrolling casually past erotic art of “MacDennis” (McElhenney and Howerton’s characters, respectively) and headcanons of Charlie Kelly (Day) as asexual.

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