It’s Always Sunny: How the Podcast Is Actually Improving the Show in Season 16

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has always been an unlikely success story – so maybe it’s no surprise that the series is once again defying all odds to achieve new success. With Season 16 (which is currently airing on FXX and streaming on FX on Hulu), It’s Always Sunny has officially secured its place as the longest-running live-action TV sitcom of all time; however, that longevity has also brought on the usual criticisms that any long-running comedy series gets – namely that the show’s best years and episodes were far behind it. Even longtime Sunny fans would comment that the love and dedication to the show had become largely more ritualistic and earned – until something drastic changed heading into Season 16. 

Enter The Always Sunny Podcast. In January 2022, Always Sunny In Philadelphia creators/stars Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day teamed with writer/executive producer Megan Ganz to launch a podcast based on the series. Like the show, the format of the podcast was kept loose early on, as the three creators settled into a rhythm of bantering and being funny in real-life conversation, for a watching/listening crowd. The basic framework was using each episode of the podcast to rewatch and discuss a single episode of Sunny, starting from the pilot (“The Gang Gets Racist”) and continuing until the show had been discussed in its entirety. However, it quickly became apparent that the makers of Sunny were far to intellectual in their comedy to simply rehash old eps and reminisce – in many ways, The Always Sunny Podcast became the most intensive dissection of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia there’s been. 

Indeed, fans of the Sunny Podcast seem to delight in listening to McElhenny, Howerton, and Day analyze the absurd, over-the-top, raunchy, twisted happenings of Always Sunny, like true scholars of comedy. The trio hadn’t actually watched a lot of the episodes in years (now decades) making for a nice distance from which to detach and look back at the show almost like outsiders. With Ganz (who joined Sunny in 2017 after being a longtime fan of the series) providing an actual outsider fan perspective, the Sunny creators haven’t shied away from facing the question of whether or not they’ve lost any steps since the early years, pin-pointing specific filming techniques, story ideas, improvisational magic or comedic twists they used to lean on, but may have lost as budgets got bigger, and more experienced direction took over. The podcast has also leaned into doing live event shows in key venues (Philadelphia, Ireland), which seems to have connected the creators with fans in a more direct way than ever, and (by their own admission) re-sparked their enthusiasm in the show, its fans, the legacy of its high comedic standard. 

Many Always Sunny fans have been intensely curious about how the podcast would influence Season 16 (if at all), the first season to be made and released since the podcast began. 4-5 episodes in (at the time of writing this), and the viewer response to Sunny Season 16 seems to indicate that fans are seeing it as a significant resurgence in the quality of the show – more than that, they see it as achieving the nearly impossible feat of a long-running series actually finding its way back to its “classic” standard of quality. 

On a business level, turning a long-running TV show into a multimedia IP is nothing new. However, The Always Sunny Podcast is a fascinating and very noteworthy experiment in using a secondary format of the IP (podcast) as the most effective tool for creatively refining the main show – while still gaining brand expansion and possible profit. It is a game-changer move that could easily become a pioneering new industry standard, if Always Sunny In Philadelphia Season 16 continues going down as one of the best seasons in years – and the start of a whole new, revitalized energy around the series. 

It’s Always Suny In Philadelphia Season 16 airs new episodes on FXX and streams on FX on Hulu. The Always Sunny Podcast is available on YouTube and podcast platforms.