Was This Glenn Howerton’s ‘Always Sunny’ Farewell? ‘It’s A Little Complicated,’ He Says 

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Was This Glenn Howerton’s ‘Always Sunny’ Farewell? ‘It’s A Little Complicated,’ He Says

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just concluded its 12th season — an absurd lifespan (even with shorter cable seasons) for any comedy, much less one that remains as vital and funny and inventive as this. Season 12 was a particularly momentous one for the Gang, as we saw (SPOILERS) Mac finally come out of the closet, life from Cricket’s perspective, and, in tonight’s finale, Charlie finally convince the Waitress to have sex with him (for the purpose of giving her the baby she’ll never otherwise have) and Dennis, after being confronted by the son he fathered (after the events of season 10’s “The Gang Beats Boggs”) and the boy’s mother, having an epiphany about his own awfulness and leaving town by declaring, “I can’t do any of this shit anymore.”

It was a remarkably emotional moment for a series that has made it through a dozen years without anyone in the Gang growing or learning much of anything from their many terrible misdeeds — and exceptionally well played by Glenn Howerton (who, shortly before

cast) — but one I assumed would be undone shortly into the start of season 13. So when I got on the phone with Howerton this afternoon to discuss both the finale and this wonderful dozenth season of the show, I asked if he was leaving the show entirely from a sense of journalistic thoroughness, rather than any belief that the answer would be yes.

That’s when things took a very surprising turn — albeit one that made a bit more sense an hour after the interview ended — which you can read about just as soon as I fake my death in an alley…

I have to start off with a question I’m pretty sure I know the answer to, but just in case: Are you leaving the show?

So… it’s a little complicated. I may seem a little bit evasive here, and I don’t mean to. It’s not entirely certain whether I am or am not. I might be. I might be, but I might not be. That really is the truth. Just to be clear, to dispel any potential weirdness, it has nothing to do with my relationship to anyone on the show or Rob or Charlie or anyone like that. It’s partially a creative and personal decision. We may be taking an extended hiatus between season 12 and season 13. So I’m certainly staying open to the possibility of doing more, but there is a possibility that I will not.

(An hour or so after we finished speaking, clarity appeared in the form of reports in the Hollywood trade press that Howerton has signed to do an NBC comedy pilot with Patton Oswalt. These things are usually verboten to discuss before they become official, and as the

report suggests, this would be a slightly different situation than Kaitlin Olson pulling double duty with

, since FX and Fox are corporate siblings (and thus more amenable to share their stars than NBC would be if it had Howerton on a series regular contract), and since Howerton is a writer and executive producer on

, while Olson just acts. So it sounds like his availability for future seasons will depend on whether the NBC pilot goes to series, and/or whether

season 13 is delayed long enough to create a hole in Howerton’s schedule that lets him do both.)

So that brings us to what happens with Dennis at the end of the episode. How did you decide that, if you’re going, this is the way you wanted to go out?

You know what’s funny about our show is we’re on such a weird schedule. We used to air in the fall and now we air in January, but we still write it on the same schedule, so the conversations that happened about how to leave the show, what’s going to happen with Dennis at the end of this season if Glenn is not going to be coming back, they happened so long ago — almost a year ago, I’d have to go back in my mind to try to remember exactly how we landed there. We knew we wanted to leave it open-ended. We didn’t want to do something where Dennis died or anything like that, anything hokey. For my part, I’m just a big fan of subverting expectations whenever possible. It just makes for interesting drama, comedy, whatever you have it in entertainment. And in comedy, I have a great affinity for trying to surprise people and do the exact opposite of what people expect. In my mind, I like the idea of taking a character who we’ve built up to be potentially a serial killer and realize that it may be the exact opposite. He may be an extraordinarily fragile and emotional person who has created a shell around himself to try to protect himself.

As an outside observer, it seems that one of the ways you’ve been able to sustain the show creatively for so long is by keeping the Gang oblivious to their many terrible flaws and crimes and failings. Then suddenly, Dennis has this huge moment of self-awareness as his son says “Bye, Dada” to him.

I think the truth is, what we’ve always tried to do on the show is take a certain mentality that exists in the real world and amplify it. A certain attitude towards an issue. That’s the main vein of social commentary that I’ve tried to tap into: take a mentality that I see existing in our culture and giving that mentality to our characters, and watching it play out to its extreme. That to me is the best way to satirize the ridiculousness of taking a hard stance on anything where there’s nuance. And all of that is to say, I think it’s accurate to say to a certain degree, I think the characters are oblivious a lot of times. But I think even the most oblivious person registers things at the very least on some subconscious level.

It’s just a matter of, for us, we satirized the opposite for so long, the idea of being completely oblivious. I think that now I find it interesting the idea of hitting a point where a character realizes, “I can’t hide from this anymore. I can’t pretend. There’s a lot of wreckage and carnage I can leave in my past,” but there’s an interesting emotional truth to the idea of having a child and realizing, “I don’t think I can hide from this.” And recognizing the damage that was done — it’s weird to get this deep about a show like

— but for me, there was something really interesting and poignant about Dennis having a moment of realizing, maybe his childhood was fucked up, and that he doesn’t want his kid to have a fucked-up childhood, too.

This is the most dramatic moment of the season, and probably the entire series, but there have been other interesting epiphanies this season. Mac finally came out of the closet. How often had you discussed having this happen in seasons past, and why did it finally happen now?

We never really entertained very seriously the idea of him coming out of the closet, and the reason we didn’t is, to me, there’s nothing more sad and poignant, and quite frankly funny, in the way we portray it, in the dark humor that I really love, that there still are so many people who have this hyper-masculine view of themselves, and the one thing that does not, absolutely cannot fit into that hyper-masculine view of oneself is admitting that you’re gay. Obviously, anybody with half a brain and half a heart and half an understanding of science understands how fucking ridiculous that is. That’s what makes it so sad, and also funny, to have a character who is so clearly gay, and be surrounded by a group of friends who could not fucking care less.

And I thought that was a funny joke… when you always see supportive friends trying to get a friend to admit the truth about this, they go, “Don’t worry, we’ll always love you and support you.” And our version of that is, “Dude, we support you coming out of the closet because we’re going to hate you either way. The things we dislike about you is whether you’re gay or not. It’s everything else about you, so just come out of the closet.” For a long time, I never wanted him to come out of the closet, because he represents a certain thing that still sadly exists. But 12 seasons in, I don’t think anyone expected we would be on this long, we finally got to a point where we were like, let’s have him come out of the closet just so we can explore some new storylines and do some new shit.

"Was This Glenn Howerton’s ‘Always Sunny’ Farewell? ‘It’s A Little Complicated,’ He Says"

I’m kind of devastated by the idea of sunny without Dennis/Glenn…I’ve been watching this show since college…at the time there were two seasons and we used to just watch them on a loop…in a world where these things are almost always spoiled, this came as quite a shock

I would definitely prefer a longer hiatus and have Dennis return than the alternative…what is your best guess on what will happen here, Alan? When do you think we might hear?

So you have spoiler in the text but felt it was OK to put a giant spoiler in the headline. Came to site to read a review of another show – never occurred me to me I could be spoiled by a headline. So I watched the Sunny episode knowing there was a possibility of Dennis leaving. It changed how I watched the episode. Disappointing.

For what it’s worth, in a different interview (with The Wrap) Howerton said that the NBC show will have no bearing on whether or not he comes back. He insisted that it’ll be a totally creative decision once they start working on the new season. I’m not entirely sure that I buy it, but that’s what he’s saying.

What the hell. Why would you post this article title 5 minutes after the episode ended, when SO MANY PEOPLE haven’t seen it yet? Several other news outlets posted similar stories and managed not to reveal a pretty major series changing spoiler. What is wrong with you?

We all got fucking uproxxed again. The title of this post was not a spoiler necessarily but it absolutely changed how I watched this episode. Fucking assholes.

and one more for good measure.. nice spoilery headline you fucking cunt.

Everyone’s right to be pissed about the headline, but unless Alan has a contract in which he writes his own headlines (which almost no journalist does, let alone cares to…it’s often the most junior job around), he’s not responsible for the ineptness of others…so let’s direct (respectful) shit where it belongs.

And let’s not let it detract from how articulate and caring Glenn Howertown comes off in this exchange. Be glad we’ve had 12 years of someone like this in charge of a show like this

No reason to spoil this in the headline, you’ve done tons of post-show interviews and I’ve (almost) never gotten spoiled by them. Especially with a show like Sunny, which usually doesn’t revolve around plot (thus making the shock bigger), this is very disappointing, Alan.

When they were panning past the gang doing their respective trademark dances, I honestly thought to myself it felt like a finale sequence. Here’s hoping his Pilot doesn’t get picked up (It is NBC after all, so it’ll get canceled 4 episodes in anyways) or there’s a good enough schedule to allow him to shoot both.

Wow, the two biggest reveals of the season and UPROXX has spoiled both of them in headlines. Fortunately I saw this one live, unlike Mac’s reveal which was spoiled for me. All that said, this is one of the best shows on television but I can’t imagine it working without Dennis. The beauty of this show is how their personalities play off of each other and I just can’t see it working with out him. Hopefully he comes back and if not, hopefully they make it work. At either rate, it’s been an awesome 12 year run to date.

If this post didn’t go up until after the episode aired, then none of you have anything to complain about. If the show has aired, it is not a spoiler. If you haven’t had a chance to watch the show, maybe don’t go on an entertainment website that might talk about it. Show some self control and watch the show beforehand.

The plot has never really been my main reason for watching Sunny so the spoiler doesn’t bother me as much. Nevertheless, boy are there some nasty people around here.

Can Howerton create new magic on a completely different network with most likely much stricter creative boundaries and execs poking their noses into his show? Probably not. I love these guys and gal but they’re kind of one trick ponies except for Charlie Day IMO. I suspect Glenn’s NBC show will be forgettable quickly (sorry, Glenn!) and he devote energy back into Sunny again soon. The real threat to leave in the next few years could be Danny DeVito.

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