Charlie is the only one of the Gang who displays any real work ethic, being the only one willing to take on less-desirable work around the bar, work referred to as 'Charlie Work' by the rest of the Gang. In 'Charlie Work', Charlie is the only one to show a true interest in passing the bar's routine health code inspection. Episode Details. On It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 10 Episode 4, 'Charlie Work,' Charlie frantically gathers the gang to prepare for an insepction. Charlie Work is an instant hit as Charlie turns a more than disastrous situation into a masterfully orchestrated performance. The episode opens with a frantic Charlie calling the gang at the pub to warn them that Paddy's will be subject to a random health inspection that very day. 'Charlie Work' (Season 10, Episode 4) Despite this mostly single-shot episode serving as a theoretical hat-tip to Birdman, 'Charlie Work' was actually written and filmed before Birdman.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Does fortnite work for windows 7. is a depraved piece of artistic genius, a show about five friends owning a bar that has developed into five separate case files of highly disturbed individuals. Some—like Mac and his repressed homosexuality—seem harmlessly quirky, but twins Dee and Dennis will creep you out more than Cersei and Jaime (but without the sexual chemistry, which makes it WEIRD!) And then there's Frank, the fund roller and possible Charlie's father (which was startling, since he was also Dee and Charlie's mom.)
They are horrific to each other, but in a way that seems more life-affirming than dreadful. As Emily Nussbaum put it 'The gang is certainly cruel and ridiculous…But they're also touchingly naïve….(and) while it cannibalizes genres, it doesn't have the abstraction of, say, NBC's Community.'
Last night's episode, 'Charlie Work,' seemed to be a very specific homage: with a third act that appeared to be a continuous, seven minute tracking shot, punctuated with a jazzy drum riff and a running joke about a room full of chickens, how could it NOT be a parody of Birdman? I contacted director and Always Sunny EP Matt Shakman for confirmation… but he told me the episode was written and shot well before the Academy Award-nominated film was on the radar. In fact, the tracking shot was inspired by the now infamous one on True Detective last season, just minus the Wu-Tang score. And if you think having a camera following continuous movement for an entire act is difficult, just wait till you hear what they had to do to the set to prepare for it.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsKmO4_VXOg%5D
Matt Shakman: So onstage we have the bar set, the back room office and the keg room that connects—you can actually walk between them on-set. But the bathroom has always been a separate set; and the front of the bar is an exterior in downtown LA. So is the alleyway behind the bar.
So for this, we had to build a new bathroom that connected to the bar, and it was built into a fire lane, so we had to be able to swing the fake walls open quickly in case there was a fire and people needed to get through.
It was incredibly time-consuming, but we knew that in order to make the 'shot' work, all the sets that could be together needed to be together. The basement, because you'd never be able to build it connected to the bar, you'd have to dig a hole in the stage, had to remain a separate set.
We built part of the back alley on stage as well, but the first time you see Charlie go out there, it's the real alley in downtown LA. We wanted audiences to feel like 'Oh, this is real, we've seen 360 degrees.' It's in a continuous tracking shot, because we needed to see DeVito running away down the alley. But the next time he goes out there, when Charlie finds the delivery guy arguing with Dee, that's set on-stage. And then again when they come out with the health inspector, that's on-stage, too.
But because the audience has seen this set once for real, they don't really notice the change.
Observer: That's some David Blaine-level optical illusion. Isn't this actually harder to pull of than just doing a long tracking shot like True Detective?
MS: Exactly… we did it like Birdman, even though we didn't know about Birdman, because they didn't have sets that connected either, so we both used visual effects to blend it. If you notice, whenever Charlie is walking out the door, we lose him for a second, and we use the door and the mullions on the window to link up the door on the exterior location with the door on the stage.
Even the beginning is an optical trick: We see Charlie walking down the street and into the bar, which literally, we cannot do. There is no set on location. But the goal is to have you think 'I assume these things connect, why should it be any different?'
When we go into the basement we do that old trick of going down into black, through black, and now you are in another pool of light, but it's a different set. And when you come up the stairs, there's a green screen, which we panned off into and used to blend with a plate of the keg room to appear to be one continuous shot. We did it all without having it actually all connect.
Observer: Isn't the scope of this rather… ambitious for a comedy? Tracking shots are notoriously hard to pull off for sustained amounts of time, because you need your camera guy in total sync with all the action, which is basically being performed as a live play, since anytime something messes up, you've got to go back and do it again. And the costs… I know FX has got mad money y'all, but to pull this off all in one episode… it involves some real grand scope.
MS: Well it wasn't as ambitious as season 4, when we had the team going back in time to 1776. But this was similar to 'Nightman Cometh,' which I also did…
[vimeo 18483905 w=500 h=375]
Charlie Work Episode
Observer: Wait, 'Nightman Cometh?' You mean the greatest piece of musical theater created on the history of television? Difference between final cut pro and imovie. You mean the one I am literally going out and getting a commemorative tattoo with my sister this weekend, based on Charlie's lyrics to 'Dayman': an ode to his true love, the waitress.
MS Dragonvale breeding guide 2019. : Cormac Bluestone, who provided the score for 'Nightman' also provided the drumming you hear on 'Charlie's Work.' All the actors have theater training: Glenn went to Juilliard, Charlie used to take theater… Kaitlin was a Groundling. And we wanted to get that sense of live theater back. And what better way?
Observer: It just seems like so much work to create these elaborate sets and everyone has to move at exactly the right time. Like Rube Goldberg devices. You've got these optical illusions about how the rooms are and aren't attached, but everyone need to be on their marks, ready to go. If someone messes up, it's back to the beginning.
MS Fill gaps between walls. : And it's a lot of game energy. We'd been really impressed with that long tracking shot on True Detective, which became sort of the inspiration of the episode and why Denis keeps saying 'All right all right all right!'
| 'Charlie Work' | ||
|---|---|---|
| It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode | ||
| Episode no. | Season 10 Episode 4 | |
| Directed by | Matt Shakman | |
| Written by | Charlie Day Glenn Howerton Rob McElhenney | |
| Production code | XIP10004 | |
| Original air date | February 4, 2015 | |
| Episode chronology | ||
| ||
| It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (season 10) | ||
| List of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes |
'Charlie Work' is the fourth episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's tenth season. Featuring an uninterrupted seven minute long shot, the episode garnered critical acclaim from critics and fans and is considered one of the best episodes of Always Sunny. Contrary to popular belief, the episode is not a tribute to Birdman, but in fact, pays homage to HBO's True Detective.[1]
Plot[edit]
Charlie gets tipped off that the health inspector is coming to do a surprise inspection of Paddy's Pub, alerting Frank and rushing back to the bar, only to discover the gang is in the midst of an ill-fated chicken and air mile steak scam.
Dennis is painting a sign for Carmine's: A Place for Steaks and Dee and Mac are attempting to wrangle chickens for the fraudulent scheme. Charlie deduces that the gang plans to contaminate steaks with chicken feathers by rubbing live chickens all over them. While the plan is underway, Frank reveals he flushed his shoes down the toilet.
Charlie begins barking orders to the gang, demanding they move all of the chickens into the back office. Charlie works on digging Frank's shoes out of the toilet and hides the glory hole in the men's bathroom. The bar suddenly loses power due to the vacuum sealer being used for the scam. Charlie tells Dennis to use the machine to package lemons and limes. Charlie and Dee go to the basement to test the carbon monoxide detector. To Dee's horror, it begins going off — Charlie explains he blocks the vents to fill the basement with hazardous gases to clear out the rodents.
Charlie Work Episode Number
The steak delivery truck arrives and the gang learns that Dee has inadvertently ordered considerably more steaks than they had planned. Charlie has Dee pretend Paddy's Pub is a real restaurant, orders Mac and Dennis to remove the Carmine's sign and gets Frank to move the truck out of the way while the delivery man is distracted. Charlie leads the delivery man to the back alley under the conceit that it's patio seating.
When the health inspector arrives, Dennis poses as a bartender while Charlie confidently gives her a tour of the premises. Through a series of quick-thinking gambits, he's able to successfully pass off the bar as being in a clean and orderly condition. The rest of the gang was also able to successfully get the delivery driver to take back the chicken feather-filled steaks. Charlie is excited about getting a passing grade, but the rest of the gang reveals that they care more about the scheme than passing.
Always Sunny Charlie
Production[edit]
The episode was written by Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton and Rob McElhenney. Howerton said the production team was 'pretty inspired' by the bravado of True Detective and found an episode that's served by the approach.[2] The episode's similarity to Birdman with jazz score and continuous tracking shot was entirely coincidental. 'We did it like Birdman, even though we didn't know about Birdman,' director Matt Shakman observed.[1]
The ten minute continuous long shot took a lot of preparation and technical effects to pull off. 'It was a huge logistical challenge.It's a lot of visual effects to kind of merge things—the front of the pub is a location in downtown L.A., the interior is a set on stage at Fox and some of those sets don't even link up,' Shakman explained. 'So we had to come up with some trickery and we redesigned our sets so that certain things could be done in the flow.'[3]
'The sets on stage are only one level, so every time we go to the basement, there is a camera trick.' Shakman noted. 'Some are simple–where we pan past the brick wall and hide the cut or go through a pool of darkness–or where we are more ambitious and use green screen (coming back into the bar from the basement for instance was a blend of a shot that panned into a green screen with a shot of the keg room that continued the motion),' Shakman noted.[4]
'The stage sets that are contiguous are the bathroom, main pub interior, back office, and keg room. The bathroom wasn't originally connected but we made it connect for this episode. For this episode we also built a partial back alley on stage. There's a back alley location in downtown L.A. that we usually go to. We used the real downtown location for when the delivery guy is first seated and Charlie sees DeVito running away. I wanted that to be the actual place so the audience wouldn't doubt the veracity when we used the stage set for later scenes: Charlie arguing with Dee about moving the dumpster and checking in with the inspector in the alley. Going from the interior bar set to the real alley required some green screen and a few camera tricks–going into a wall as Charlie passes, and then coming off the wall on location to reveal the real exterior alley, etc.'[4]
Reception[edit]
'Charlie Work' is considered to be one of the best Always Sunny episodes. As of September 27, 2017 the episode held an IMDB user rating of 9.8, the highest for the series.[5]
Migic 1 0 download free. 'On a technical level, it's a marvel, as well as a creative look at the genuine odd jobs that Charlie does behind the scenes to protect his friends' livelihoods.' observed Rolling Stone's Noel Murray.[6] Matt Fowler of IGN gave the episode a 10, saying 'Charlie Work' 'was one of the best episodes the show's ever produced. A fast, frantic laugh-fest featuring outstanding work from Charlie Day.'[7] Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club also praised the episode, saying that 'Charlie Day's ability to let Charlie's demons peep through his excitable dialogue is one of Sunny's chief assets, and Day's performance here is pure exhilaration as he wrangles: crates of chickens, 4000 steaks, a clogged toilet, a disabled carbon monoxide detector, a hungry and confused truck driver, a repeatedly blown fuse, a painted Frank blowing a recorder, Mac grunting and apologizing at just the right time, and two separate carjackings to make everything turn out all right.'[8]
References[edit]
- ^ abGrant, Drew (2015-02-05). 'Bird(man) Law: 'Always Sunny' Director Matt Shakman on Inspiration for 'Charlie Work''. The New York Observer. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
- ^''It's Always Sunny' takes cue from 'True Detective''. Associated Press. 2015-02-04. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
- ^Matt Shakman Talks 'Always Sunny' and That 'Charlie Work' Episode. YouTube. Box Angeles. 2015-03-24. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
- ^ abSepinwall, Alan (2015-02-04). 'How 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' made its unintended 'Birdman' homage'. Uproxx. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
- ^'26 Of The Highest-Rated TV Show Episodes On IMDb Ever'. BuzzFeed. 2017-09-26. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
- ^'20 Best 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' Episodes'. Rolling Stone. 2015-02-20. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
- ^Fowler, Matt (February 4, 2015). 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: 'Charlie Work' Review'. IGN. Retrieved 2018-09-28.
- ^Perkins, Dennis (February 2, 2015). 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: 'Charlie Work''. The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2018-09-28.
External links[edit]
- 'Charlie Work' on IMDb
