It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is a hilarious comedy on FX. The show is about four friends that own an Irish bar in Philadelphia. It’s similar to Seinfeld in that the characters are vain, selfish, and self-centered. In fact, you might think of it as a low-budget Seinfeld for the Gen X\Gen Y crowd. But although many make comparisons to the megahit of the 1990s, there’s a lot about Philadelphia that’s unique:
- The pilot episode cost $85 to make! The cast of the show were already good friends, so no money was needed to hire any additional actors. The show was shot in various locations that the friends could use for free, and since one of them owned a video camera, the only cost they had was for video tapes. Although FX has repeatedly stated that the pilot episode cost $200 to make, actual cast members have said that the actual cost was closer to $85.
- The show has no original music! Although there have been a few scenes in the series where the characters sing popular songs – such as Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” – the show itself uses no original music. According to Wikipedia, the opening theme “is a piece of production music called ‘Temptation Sensation’ by Heinz Kiessling” and the rest of the music comes from stock libraries.
- Charlie’s unattainable love is… his wife! One of the friends – Charlie Kelly (played by Charlie Day) – is in love with an unnamed barista who works at a coffee shop near the bar. She is completely unattainable to Charlie; she constantly rolls her eyes at him, sighs and asks “what do you want, Charlie?”. What makes this funny is that the waitress is played by Charlie’s real-life wife Mary Elizabeth Ellis.
- The ending has backwards messages! The ending of each episode has the “RCH Production” logo, which features the friends wearing hoodies. A backwards message is also heard. In season 1, the message said “You are stupid for playing this forward”; in season 2, the message was changed to “Is it brown? Is it brown? Is it brown? Good work. Is it brown? Is it brown? Is it brown? Good work”. No, I have no idea what that means.
- Frank’s MySpace page exists! In the final episode of season 2, the guys hook Frank (Danny DeVito) up with a MySpace page. Not only does the profile actually exist, he has only one friend (Tom, the guy who’s everyone’s friend!)