By ANDY GILCHRIST
Staff Writer
Last week, the wildly successful FX network launched a spinoff to focus on their comedy programming. The new channel, called FXX, will now air all of FX’s sitcoms and comedy reruns. By launching alongside three of their strongest shows, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, FXX is able to draw hundreds of thousands of viewers and quickly establish itself as one of the best networks for comedy programming.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows the lives of five “friends” living in Philadelphia, running an unsuccessful Irish bar called Paddy’s Pub. All five are greedy, selfish, and willing to do anything to end up on top. There’s the butt-of-all-jokes and failed actress Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and her egotistical and entitled brother Dennis (Glenn Howerton), wannabe tough guy Mac (Rob McElhenney), the neurotic Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day), and Dee and Dennis’ father Frank (Danny DeVito), who thinks he’s a business genius.
Every episode sees The Gang getting into pointless, embarrassing, and sometimes violent situations, based on each member’s attempts to one up the others with nonsensical plans and schemes. The series is known for lampooning everything, such racism, the education system, gun control, gay marriage, religion, and evolution.
The League also follows a group of “friends,” six of them this time, living in the city of Chicago and competing in the same fantasy football league. Like Sunny’s protagonists, these six will gladly stab a friend in the back and laugh at them while they’re down in order to win The League. There’s the husband and wife team of Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) and Jenny MacArthur (Katie Aselton), slacker and prankster Pete Eckhart (Mark Duplass), ruthless and paranoid lawyer Rodney Ruxin (Nick Kroll), the always gullible plastic surgeon Andre Nowzick (Paul Scheer), and ladies’ man/clueless pothead Taco (Jon Lajoie).
The show thrives on its extreme profanity and sexual humor, with Seth Rogen regularly guest-starring as a porn filmmaker named Dirty Randy.
But the show is just as funny due to its bizarre recurring objects and characters, such as the Shiva and Sacko trophies, the crazy-expensive fantasy draft, Jenny and Kevin’s foul-mouthed eight-year-old daughter Ellie, Ruxin’s pampered five-year-old son “Baby” Geoffrey, and Ruxin’s perverse and psychopathic brother-in-law Rafi (Jason Mantzoukas).
Finally, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell is a political comedy one-man talk show. Every episode, San Francisco-based comedian Bell highlights the absurdities and bizarre nature of American political figures and policies in his opening monologue before moving into a pre-recorded segment where he leaves the set and ventures outside to interview people connected with a developing political issue. Finally, he sits down to interview a seemingly random celebrity, ranging from politicians to actors to scientists to fellow comedians.
If this sounds like a rip-off of The Daily Show, take a breath. Bell does all the on-camera work, reading the monologue, heading out to the streets, and interviewing the guest, all by himself.
In addition to that, he serves as a writer and executive producer, firmly establishes the voice of the show as his own, rather than multiple personalities spread throughout the episode.
Over the past decade, FX has established itself as one of the premiere networks for original programming. While its drama series, such as The Shield, Justified, and American Horror Story, regularly got critical acclaim and large followings, its comedy offerings never seemed to catch on as easily.
This resulted in the network’s comedy series becoming cult classics, maintained by a tight-knit group of obsessive fans who gave the shows just enough viewers to warrant a new season.
But within the past few years, critics and audiences have begun to catch on to the fact that FX’s comedies are just as good as their dramas. In addition to the three series mentioned above, Louie C.K.’s Louie, Jim Jeffries’ Legit, and the existential/absurdist comedy Wilfred have pushed the network’s list of comedies into the very good graces of critics, which in turn has led to increases in overall viewership across the board.
The reason these comedies, all now on FXX, have proven so popular is because they’re giving viewers humor that’s truly unlike anything else on TV.
While Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory consist almost solely on sex jokes and raunchy humor, they air on the major networks and therefore cannot be explicit. FXX’s comedies don’t have that problem; because they air both on a cable network and after 10 PM, these shows are allowed to say anything except the f-word and show anything except full-frontal nudity.
As one can imagine, the humor hits new levels of vulgarity and hilarity every week, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable not just on television, but in comedy in general.
As FX launches their new comedy-centric channel FXX, they are also debuting the new seasons of three of their strongest comedies: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. By launching the network simultaneously with new episodes of three popular shows, FXX is well on its way to announcing its presence as one of the best networks for comedy.
