On the heels of the announcement that FX has renewed "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" for at least two more seasons (and signed a big-time deal with the creators' production company, RCG), it's time for me to catch up on my Comic-Con 2011 notes with a short recap of their panel.
Throughout my weekend at Comic-Con, I got to see panels for a lot of comedy shows, and the best ones (as I've said repeatedly) had the folks on stage geniunely having fun in the moment. Sunny had much of the same energy, but three things kept it from being a really great highlight: it was held on a Sunday (the last day and the one with the lightest crowd), it was limited to about 45 minutes (instead of a full hour), and it was held in Hall H (the largest of the panel venues, where all the major studios held their events on Friday and Saturday).
It's hard to complain much about the Hall H problem - despite it being Sunday, the room was mostly full of folks there to see the Sunny/Sons of Anarchy FX doubleheader. But after they screened an episode from the upcoming season (entitled "Frank's Pretty Woman"), there was little time left for Q&A, and the panel ended right as they were gathering momentum.
It wasn't for lack of effort by the cast, though - Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, Kaitlin Olsen and Danny DeVito all emerged from backstage dressed in their respective characters' costumes from "The Nightman Cometh", the show's fan-favorite "musical" episode and live stage adaptation. They also played in to most of the crowd's referential non-questions ("How do you prepare a milksteak?" or "Have you used the D.E.N.N.I.S. System to pick up women?") even though there were about five minutes remaining in the session.
The most surprising thing to me was how little they addressed the amazing/horrifying/incredible/some other superlative detail that McElhenney gained 50 pounds for this season without just because he wanted to play Mac as a fat guy. The screened episode did a bit to explain how it happens in the show's plot, but as of the day of this panel, the hysterical commercial for the new season had not yet aired so the weight gain was a fairly new development. He made mention of it at the top of the panel (and how he was already working to shave those pounds) and stayed mostly quiet for the rest of the session. I would have liked to hear a little more from him about what it was like to live as an obese man, albeit for a little while, but most of the fans preferred to show off their trivia knowledge when they stepped to the mic.
Some other gems from the Q&A:
- Olsen was asked how she perfected Dee's trademark gagging, and in response she only looked at McElhenney (her husband, but if you're reading this you probably knew that) and rubbed his back. That was enough to set the crowd off, but since Sunny has never been much for subtlety, the rest of the guys spent the next few minutes alluding to blowjobs with increasingly-obvious euphemisms.
- They were asked for their favorite moments on the show, and they all went back to the scene of DeVito crawling nude from a couch during the "A Very Sunny Christmas" special (link NSFW, duh). Howerton revealed that DeVito originally emerged wearing a large pink dildo to prank/surprise the rest of the cast, and Olsen added that she got an unfortunate rear view. Her quote, I believe, was "I saw inside Danny DeVito." My notes from this section also include the phrases "troll dick," "sweet troll balls" and "Vigorous dick," so just paint by numbers there to get the whole picture.
- Rickety Cricket will return in the upcoming season even though writer/actor David Hornsby has recently signed a deal for his own show ("How To Be A Gentleman").
- Charlie "almost" gets The Waitress this year, although Day admitted that he "almost" gets her every season. They admitted they weren't sure if Charlie would actually get a real romantic interest, or even get laid.
- Other episodes in the coming season involve The Gang in their high school reunion and a child beauty pageant, both of which sound amazing.
- They said they'd love to shoot more in Philadelphia if possible and professed their love for the city