The Survival Guide: Watching Always Sunny as a Saint

1. Should You Even Start?

Let us be honest with one another, as the Gospel requires. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is not a show for everyone. It is, in many ways, a show for almost no one — and yet somehow fifteen seasons in, here we are.

The Gang does things. Terrible things. Things that would make a reasonable person set down their cocoa and quietly leave the room. Deception, cruelty, gluttony, wrath, and an episode involving a Dayman that you will either find transcendently funny or deeply concerning. Possibly both.

Before you begin, ask yourself the following questions in sincere prayer (or at least quiet reflection):

• Can I watch morally reprehensible behavior critically, rather than admiringly?
• Am I in a spiritually stable season of life, or is this a trial period where I maybe need Anne of Green Gables instead?
• Do I understand that laughing at something and endorsing it are not the same thing?
• Have I already watched the first episode? (If yes, this question is somewhat moot.)

If you answered yes, yes, yes, and possibly yes — you may proceed. If you're uncertain, please consult The Verdict: Should a Saint Watch Always Sunny? for my full, prayerfully considered ruling on the matter.

A word of genuine caution: The early seasons in particular contain content that has aged poorly and which the show's own creators have acknowledged. Proceed with eyes open.

2. Watching Alone vs. With Family

This is perhaps the most important section of this entire guide. Please read it carefully.

Do not watch this show with your parents. I cannot stress this enough. There is an episode — you will know it when you arrive — where you will wish with every fiber of your being that your mother was not sitting next to you on the sectional. She will look at you. You will look at the wall. The relationship will survive, but it will be different.

Do not watch this show with your bishop. Not at a ward activity, not at a ward party, not even if he brings it up first. Bishops are people too, and some of them have great senses of humor, but this is not the arena.

Do not watch this show with your Young Women's class. I should not have to say this. And yet.

Do not watch this show with anyone in your ward you have known fewer than five years. Spiritual trust must be established before comedic trust. These things take time.

Approved Viewing Companions

• A spouse who already knows your full range of flaws and loves you anyway
• A sibling who has seen you at your worst (holidays, specifically)
• A non-member friend who can provide context and will not report back to the Relief Society
• Yourself, alone, with earbuds in, like a normal person

Watching alone is genuinely fine. There is no commandment requiring communal television consumption. The Sabbath movie rule applies: ask yourself if what you are watching uplifts or degrades. Then make a choice. Then maybe watch something uplifting first so you have context for the contrast.

3. The Word of Wisdom Drinking Game (Inverted)

Traditional drinking games for Always Sunny are not appropriate for this audience. Frankly, they are not appropriate for any audience — the characters drink so frequently that participating in the original version would constitute a public health emergency.

Instead, I propose the Inverted Word of Wisdom Viewing Experience, which is fun, wholesome, and slightly absurd in exactly the right way.

4. Skip Lists by Sensitivity Level

I have organized the following guidance into three tiers. Identify your tier honestly. No one is watching. (Except the Lord, but He already knows about the Hulu account.)

5. What to Tell Your Ward

The question will come. It always comes. Usually at a ward dinner, usually from someone you respect, usually while you are holding a paper plate of funeral potatoes and there is nowhere to run.

"What have you been watching lately?"

Below are several scripturally defensible and socially survivable responses, organized by relationship type.

For your visiting teacher / ministering sister:

"Oh, I've been watching this show about a group of friends in Philadelphia who run a bar. It's more of a study in human nature than entertainment, honestly. Very illuminating. How's your family?"

For your home teacher / ministering brother:

"It's a comedy. Very dark. Makes me grateful for the Gospel every single episode. You'd probably find it interesting from a sociological perspective." (Pause.) "Do you want to help me move some furniture?"

For a curious teenager in your ward:

"It's not for you yet. Ask me again when you're twenty-five, you have a testimony that can withstand turbulence, and you've already read the Book of Mormon twice. Also ask your parents."

For your Relief Society president:

"I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the natural man." (This is true. Say nothing else. Change the subject to her garden.)

For your bishop:

Just say The Crown. It's fine. The Crown is fine.

6. Palate Cleansers

After a particularly challenging episode — one that has left you feeling like you've been sitting inside Paddy's Pub for three hours and the whole place smells like Dennis's schemes — it helps to return to something that reminds you goodness exists and is worth working toward.

The following are suggestions. They have been selected not because they are perfect, but because they are genuinely good, and "genuinely good" is sometimes exactly what the spirit needs.

• The Great British Baking Show — Gentle. Warm. No one is trying to destroy anyone. People cry because a cake didn't rise and everyone hugs them. Remarkable.
• Any nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough — You will be reminded that the Earth is beautiful and incomprehensibly complex and that you are very small, which is actually quite comforting.
• The first forty-five minutes of Ratatouille — Not the whole movie necessarily, just the part where Remy discovers what food can be. The feeling is pure. Return to it as needed.
• Call your mother. Not to tell her what you watched. Just to call her. She'll be glad you did.
• Read Alma 7 — It's short, it's beautiful, and it will recalibrate your sense of what human beings are actually capable of when they try.
• Go for a walk if it's light outside — Creation is a palate cleanser. It was designed to be.

A Closing Word of Encouragement

The Brethren have long taught that we are to be in the world but not of it. What is perhaps less discussed is the spiritual discipline required to actually do that — to encounter darkness, to understand it, to even find it funny sometimes, and to come back to the light with your eyes a little more open than before.

Watching difficult art critically is a skill. It requires discernment, which is a gift of the Spirit. It requires charity — including toward characters who make appalling choices, and toward yourself for laughing at them. It requires the kind of honest self-knowledge that asks: why did I find that funny, and what does that tell me?

The Gang is not a role model. They are, in the deepest theological sense, a cautionary tale delivered via comedy — people who have cut themselves off from love, community, and accountability, and who suffer for it every single episode, and who never seem to learn, which is perhaps