I have several friends who love the show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I think it’s funny and creative too, if not shocking and appalling because it’s a show about twenty and thirty somethings who seem to do everything wrong and by the end are made to pay for their mistakes, meanwhile they hardly realize they are paying for them. It’s formula for media, to be honest. Movies like The Pineapple Express or Superbad and to some degree shows like Entourage carry the same formula…Loser looks great and has a great life not working, smoking pot and living like a rock star.
Anyway, I have younger friends who love these shows and try to emulate the lifestyle a bit. They drink and don’t go to work and dress like they don’t care, and all that is fine if you live in Portland because you don’t have to grow up in this town (unless you want kids, which, when you realize that’s what you want, most women find you to be a loser because you didn’t cultivate a craft in your twenties and while they are attracted to your hipster image their eggs are screaming inside them no Mommy, don’t marry him, he can’t keep a job and we are going to need to eat!) But here’s the thing about that show and shows like it: The actors are working their butts off. These are not slackers in real life. They work 18-hour days writing the show, then acting in the show, then marketing the show. If they lived like the loser characters they portray on television, they’d not have a show at all. The only time they take breaks is to attend a Lakers game and sit on the sidelines with a notebook in their hands to write down any thoughts they may have about their show and keeping an eye out for celebrities who they can ask to make guest appearanes.
So the real losers aren’t the characters in the show, or the guys who write the show, but the people who watch the show and think if they act like losers they can be famous too.
