It’s easy to forget, but there was a time when Danny DeVito’s Frank Reynolds was not a main character on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” There were only four members of the Paddy’s Pub gang in the show’s low-budget, seven-episode first season.
Although the addition of DeVito in Season 2 is widely seen today as an obvious win for the series — a creative choice that allowed it to grow into the longest-running live-action comedy in American TV history – it was a risk at the time. The show’s creators, Glenn Howerton (who plays Dennis) and Rob Mac (who plays Mac), weren’t 100% sure if audiences would be on board with a fifth main character. To ensure Frank would be properly welcomed by fans, they switched up their writing approach slightly.
“When we were writing Season 2, somewhere along the way we decided to serialize the show,” Howerton revealed on the Always Sunny Podcast. “Not that we were necessarily committing to it being a serialized show every year, but there’s a continuity.” He explained how they wanted Frank’s addition to the gang to feel like a gradual, natural development: “We wanted to slowly integrate him into the gang.”
Season 2 was the start of a long downward spiral for the gang
Glenn Howerton pointed to a few small choices that distinguished Season 2 from the fully-episodic Season 1. In the Season 2 premiere, the gang got into a car accident that put them in the hospital. Rather than snap back to the status quo, the next episode (“The Gang Goes Jihad”) opened with Charlie getting his cast taken off. The detail made clear it hadn’t been long since the first episode ended, which helped explain why the gang still hadn’t warmed up to Frank.
The rest of the season had Frank use his wealth and power to slowly worm his way into the group. And as the gang became more reliant on him, Frank’s dark side grew more apparent. In his first episode, Frank’s worst crime is stealing Charlie’s date. By Season 2, Episode 9, Frank had basically killed a guy in the pub’s basement. (And that event didn’t even make TVLine’s list of worst things the gang has ever done.)
The Season 2 premiere raised many questions about Frank — “Is he here to stay?” “How can he be Dennis and Dee’s father if he looks nothing like them?” “Can the gang get his money?” “Is he a positive or negative influence?” — and answered them at a surprisingly slow-burn pace. Season 2 followed the original quartet as they slowly realized Frank would never rescue them from their Season 1 lives of misery … he’d only drag them further into the depths of hell.
It’s Always Sunny has kept playing with serialized storytelling since Season 2
With Danny DeVito’s integration into the cast complete by the end of the second season, Season 3 brought the show back to its largely episodic format. The series would stick to this approach until Season 6, when Kaitlyn Olson’s real-life pregnancy inspired another serialized storyline. Season 6 reveals Dee is pregnant in Episode 7 (“Who Got Dee Pregnant?”) and the next six episodes follow the storyline along until she gives birth in the finale. It’s one of the best pregnancy storylines a sitcom’s ever pulled.
“IASIP” once again embraced serialization in Season 15, featuring a four-episode arc following the gang’s trip to Ireland. The storyline ended on a surprisingly heartfelt note, with Charlie (Charlie Day) grieving the death of his real father. “The Gang Carries a Corpse Up a Mountain” is one of the best episodes of “Always Sunny,” and it couldn’t have happened if the show wasn’t willing to switch up its formula every now and again.
Still, no season of “Always Sunny” was quite as ambitious as that second one. Adding to the feeling that Season 2 was one large arc was the fact that the showrunners picked a single director, Daniel Attius, to direct the entire season. It was an unusual choice for them, Glenn Howerton explained, but they had a good reason. He shared on the Always Sunny Podcast, “We needed somebody who could pull off essentially shooting all 10 scripts as if it was one big script.”
