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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is definitely one of those “love it or hate it” shows. If you’ve tried it out before and decided it wasn’t for you, there’s nothing in this Christmas special that’s going to change your mind. If you’re like me, however, this is one of those few, cherished moments to really kick the hell out of a holiday that somehow manages to be both sentimentally endearing and really, really freaking annoying.
Christmas always arrives amidst endless cloying TV specials and thinly disguised marketing onslaughts. As much as I still love the idea of goodwill toward all, the commercialism and pageantry of it exhausts me by pretty much the second week of December. Thankfully, there are shows like this to balance out all that sweet, sugary salesmanship.
A Very Sunny Christmas finds all five of the gang grappling with the ghosts of Christmas past. Mac (Rob McElhenney) and Charlie (Charlie Day) both discover that their idyllic memories of childhood Christmases have concealed the wretched and hilarious behavior of their parents. Their resolve to keep the Christmas spirit is fun, but not nearly as much fun as watching Charlie literally go for the jugular on a poor, unsuspecting mall Santa.
Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton), meanwhile, are scheming to get some revenge on their dad, Frank (Danny DeVito). Throughout their lives, Frank has made a habit of purchasing their ideal Christmas gifts for himself, ostensibly to teach them something about greed, but mostly just for the joy of being a prick. Their attempts to put him through his own personal A Christmas Carol are predictably doomed, but they lead to one of the special’s most arresting visual gags: a naked, sweat-covered Danny DeVito, wriggling his way out of a leather couch at a corporate Christmas party. It may well be one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen on television.
There are other treats in here as well, from Mac and Charlie digging out some great ‘80s-era toys (including the TOMY Omnibot that I must have drooled over for a solid year) to Frank’s auto accident-induced hallucination of himself in a classic stop-motion Rankin/Bass Christmas special.
And, believe it or not, in the midst of all this vulgarity and holiday sacrilege, there’s even a pretty decent moral lesson. Apparently, Christmas isn’t just about what kind of parents you had and how good the loot was. Okay, done? Good. Now let’s get back to songs about horrifically slaughtering cranky people ‘cause they made Christmas suck.
There are a couple of extras on the DVD, including deleted scenes, a making-of that’s mostly noteworthy because it’s weird to see Fred Savage running the show, and a near-hallucinatory Christmas sing-along with the gang. I’d save that last one for when you run out of eggnog, as I think my brain was just too sober to comprehend what I was seeing.
Don’t get me wrong; I love Christmas, but sometimes I just want to see the madness surrounding it get taken down a peg or two. I’m sure I’ll still watch It’s a Wonderful Life again sometime this year, but I might just be following it up with a chaser of A Very Sunny Christmas.
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