It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Delivers a Perfect Homage to True Detective

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about emergence of Wednesday night as the broiest night on television, thanks in no small part to the ongoing adventures of The Gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Now in its tenth season, there is no denying that Mac, Dee, Charlie, Dennis and Frank are the grizzled veterans of the bro-TV genre, and while the series still stands out among its peers and imitators, I don’t think anyone would blame The Gang if they chose to walk away from the show before it started to really show its age.

And then “Charlie Work” happened.

http://youtu.be/b1fX7C9o1C4

This week’s episode of Always Sunny was a Charlie-centric episode, which is never a bad thing. But in addition to the twisted genius that usually accompanies episodes where Charlie steps up to lead The Gang, this episode also was the most technically impressive 22 minutes of comedy TV has seen in a long time. Armed with a tip that a health inspector is going to make a surprise visit to Paddy’s Pub, Charlie arrives at work to find Dennis, Mac, Dee and Frank in the midst of a disgusting scam involving airline miles, live chickens, and tainted steaks that’s left the bar in shambles. With the Pub’s future on the line, Charlie immediately takes charge and devises a brilliant scheme to not only clean up the Pub and ace the health inspection, but also help his doofus friends successfully pull off their highly unethical and possibly illegal plot to score some quick cash.

About 10 minutes into the episode, Charlie flips on the lights in the Pub and viewers are treated to a madcap, frenetic romp during which the camera follows Charlie throughout Paddy’s as he babysits the health inspector and directs The Gang through a series of increasingly complex tasks that seem unrelated, but which ultimately prove Charlie is playing mental chess while everyone else is just playing checkers. The pace of the scene is amazing, thanks in large part to Charlie Day’s breathless performance, but it’s all the more mind-blowing when you realize a large portion of the scene was done in a single take.

In an interview with the Associated Press, series co-creator Glenn Howerton (who plays Dennis) said the scene was inspired by this memorable six-minute, single-take tracking shot from the first season of HBO’s True Detective (the video at that link is HIGHLY NSFW unless your place of employment is cool with you watching videos where people drop F-bombs, engage in fist fights, and shoot at one another).

Matt Shakman, the director of “Charlie Work,” spoke with Alan Sepinwall of HitFix and described what went into pulling off the ambitious shot:

“The stage sets that are contiguous are the bathroom, main pub interior, back office, and keg room.  The bathroom wasn’t originally connected but we made it connect for this episode. For this episode we also built a partial back alley on stage.  There’s a back alley location in downtown LA that we usually go to.  We used the real downtown location for when the delivery guy is first seated and Charlie sees Devito running away.  I wanted that to be the actual place so the audience wouldn’t doubt the veracity when we used the stage set for later scenes: Charlie arguing with dee about moving the dumpster and checking in with the inspector in the alley.  Going from the interior bar set to the real alley required some green screen and a few camera tricks–going into a wall as Charlie passes, and then coming off the wall on location to reveal the real exterior alley, etc.

BUT there is a huge chunk of the show that is one take, no tricks (about a third). It begins with Charlie first escorting the inspector inside the bar and continuing all the way through to Charlie leading the inspector to the basement.  It was rehearsed at the end of a Tuesday if I remember.  Took about two hours to stage it all.  Actors then went home to study up on lines and I took the crew through the camera blocking.

The next morning we took about four hours to light everything and rehearse the camera move again and again.  Our B camera operator wore a headset and talked the A camera operator through the choreography during the shot.  Reminding him what was next, who to focus on, where the next transition was, etc.  The AD’s practiced (with a bunch of PA’s and set dressers) moving all the live chickens in and out of the back office in a very short amount of time.  And we worked out all the other miscellaneous things–Devito’s black paint, the chickens that shuttled back and forth to the keg room, etc.  Then we brought in the actors and started shooting.  Took about twelve takes if I remember right.  Around 11 script pages.  A third of the show.  All before lunch.”

The scene is also reminiscent of Birdman, one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture that is edited to look like a nearly continuous 2-hour shot, but Shakman said most of the work on the episode and accompanying score was completed before anyone on the crew saw the film, so it simply became an “unintended homage” after the fact.

The “Charlie Work” scene doesn’t appear to be online in its entirety at the moment, but the full episode is available (depending on your cable/satellite provider) on the FX Networks site. It’s definitely worth tracking down, if for no other reason than to experience the payoff that comes after watching Charlie continually slam a barstool against the ground several times throughout the scene for no apparent reason.

@TheSEShepherd