For many seasons, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia actively avoided such sentimental concepts as growth and character development, but after a “massive” show of enthusiasm from fans when Rob McElhenney‘s Mac finally came out as gay, all that might be (slightly) changing.
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At a press event ahead of the show’s upcoming thirteenth season, the cast got together for a table read of an episode called ‘Mac Finds His Pride‘, in which the Paddy’s Pub gang try to help Mac embrace his sexuality by taking him to a gay bar.
At the same event, the audience got to see a lengthy clip from the episode, which has been described as an elaborately-choreographed “gay pride dance sequence”, complete with rain effects, in which Mac visits a prison to come out to his incarcerated father Luther.
Speaking to the audience after the clip was shown, McElhenney explained that he and the rest of the cast were blown away by the positive response from viewers after Mac came out, and that they wanted to honour this with a “pride” episode. He said:
“We had a massive response from our fans in the LGBTQ community that reached out to say how moved they were and how they felt represented in a show they loved. I didn’t expect that and Charlie [Day] and I wanted to honor that and do something that felt very different from something we normally do … We wanted to try something, for lack of a better term, heartwarming.”
His co-star Danny DeVito also chimed in to say he was “moved” by the response, and found it “cool” and “inspiring.” In other Always Sunny news, the newly-ripped McElhenney revealed that Mac will indeed take his shirt off and show off his bod in the first episode of the new season, saying:
“In the last eight years, every time a man takes off his shirt in a scene, he tends to be insanely ripped like a Greek god … I don’t understand how teachers and engineers take their shirt off and are insanely ripped, and I thought it’d be funny to play with the vanity of that.”
Reportedly, after showing off his toned new rig once, the gang tells him to cover up, which he does for the remainder of the episodes.
Glenn Howerton, who plays Dennis on the show, was not present at the panel, and his future remains unclear. Deadline claims he will be in “more than half” the episodes of the upcoming new season, though he’ll apparently be represented by a “sex doll” in one.
The first episode of the upcoming new season will also introduce Mindy Kaling as “the new fifth member of the gang”. It’s unclear if Kaling will be a permanent member of the gang or whether they will ultimately drive her off in their usual, terrible way (which seems more likely).
Season 13 will also feature an “all-female reboot” of the classic Season 10 episode ‘The Gang Beats Boggs‘, involving a beer-chugging contest on a cross-country flight.
The episode will see Kaitlin Olson‘s Sweet Dee flying to LA to attend the women’s march, along with Artemis (Artemis Pebdani), The Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and Mac and Charlie’s mums (Sandy Martin and Lynne Marie Stewart).
The new season of Always Sunny will kick off on September 5 in the US.
