Crises of Faith in Comedy - Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of TV church! In this post, we'll discuss two shows that came out in 2005, and two men in their early forties led to question the beliefs they thought they had held their entire lives.

As a side note, I have a different perspective on these two entries, and the two that we will cover in part 4, from my prior entries on The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Malcolm in the Middle. The prior three shows are episodes that I remember seeing in real time as someone younger and struggling to find her religious identity, whereas everything moving forward is something I watched for the first time as an adult, so it's going to be more of a detached standpoint.

(And it is I... S, M's church-raised boyfriend, here to pepper this entry with the benefit of my own personal experience within the church.)

5. Ronald (Mac) McDonald - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Finding Your Identity in Christ... In a Manner of Speaking)

Rob McElhenney, creator of Always Sunny, plays the character of Mac. Like one of his two fellow co-writers and costars, Charlie Day, he chose a character name that was close to his actual name. (Glenn Howerton refused to have his character have a name similar to his, as he thought the character was a pretty terrible person and needed to have some distance.) And, you have to believe McElhenney brought a lot of personal background into the creation of Mac's character. McElhenney was raised Catholic, but his mother divorced his father after coming out as a lesbian, and his two brothers are also gay. McElhenney's character, also raised Catholic, is all over the map when it comes to religious and sexual identity, but, basically, he just wants an identity. That's probably because

Mac Is In Denial About His Parents Hating Him

Mac is even more loyal to his parents than he is to Catholicism, even though both of his parents have told him they do not love him. His miserable mother spends all her days smoking and watching TV and is mostly nonverbal, but Mac interprets her grunts to be her attempts to say "I love you." Mac also lives for the moment when he'll finally have a "catch" with his frequently incarcerated father, who has literally threatened to kill him.

In one episode, Mac finds out that his roommate Dennis had been throwing away letters his father wrote from jail, and Mac is devastated, even after Dennis tells him the letters were just asking favors and never said "I love you." Mac longs to impress his earthly and his heavenly fathers, wanting so much to be a good, good boy. Like so many a Radiohead before him, he wants a perfect body, he wants a perfect soul. Even if that consists of getting his pump on at the gym and preaching about the sinfulness of homosexuality. And that's because

Mac Makes Christianity About Suffering and Punishment

This is reminiscent of the Reverend Lovejoy/Ned Flanders school of thought that church should not be fun, it should be about focusing on our sins. When the gang is debating over whether to put up a crucifix in the bar, Mac is adamant that they need to and it needs to be as large and as gory as possible.

(In college, I remember taking a Systematic Theology class on the theology of God the Son, which is to say 'Jesus.' At the beginning of every class, my professor would take a small crucifix out of his bag and hang it up on a hook above the whiteboard. When a student commented on it one class, my professor looked back at it, smiled a bit, and said, "It took me a while to find it. I had a hard time locating one that looked pathetic enough." The ultimate point being that it was the suffering and death of Christ that ultimately brings salvation, so he hung that to focus the class on that fact. I find Mac's insistence on a gory crucifix hilariously theologically sound, even if he'd have no idea that was the point.)

In the season 9 episode "Mac Day" (it's important to state what season, because Mac's many crises of faith have a chronological arc that also reflects the show's alienation of and eventual attempt to make it up to their gay fanbase), Mac plans a day for the gang that is structured around the seven days of Creation and also invites his cousin, Country Mac, who is also Catholic and also a self-proclaimed badass.

The thing is, Country Mac is actually having fun the entire day, while Mac is focusing on doing the required tasks to bring you closer to the Lord. Mac brings them to a planetarium to teach them about God's creation of the stars and is appalled when his cousin smokes weed and advises the others to appreciate all the joys and wonders in God's universe. Mac also volunteers the entire gang to grease up some bodybuilders to celebrate the gloriousness of man made in God's image. Country Mac has a great time here, as well, getting lots of phone numbers because he is openly gay.

The gang realizes, for the first time, that religion might actually be okay. That you can believe in God and be a happy person who is also honest about who you are, unlike their closeted and tormented friend. Dennis reflects, "All these years I thought I hate God, but I now realize what I really hate is ... Mac. And all his God shit has not only been ruining my life, it also might be ruining my afterlife."

In the season 11 episode "The Gang Goes to Hell," Mac invites the gang on a Christian cruise. He's horrified by how jubilant the other cruisegoers are. When their musical revue includes the upbeat song "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," Mac says, "The songs aren't supposed to be fun, they're supposed to be bleak and dreary! We need to punish our ears to suffer for the original sin of being born!" 

Later on the cruise, Mac is playing some kinda game (shuffleboard?) with two church guys and misses a shot. He immediately grabs a cat o'nine tails and asks his new friends to punish him so he can be a better boy. 

Church Guy: Mac, missing isn't a sin. We don't punish ourselves.

Mac: If you don't punish yourselves, how do you become closer to God?

Church Guy: By appreciating the game and this wonderful day.

This is circling back to the Ned Flanders vs. Bode ideation in my first entry. But, then things get next level when Mac discovers the two church guys he was hanging out with are a gay married couple. And that brings us to

Mac's First Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality

There are gay people on Mac's Christian cruise, and that is shattering his faith, which did not accommodate someone being Christian and gay. We get the idea that Mac probably joined this church and went on this cruise to pray the gay away, and now he's in crisis. He begs God for a sign, and ultimately decides his purpose is to convert the gay couple to straightness. After five minutes in their cabin, he emerges and announces to the rest of the gang that he is gay and that means there is no God or heaven or hell.

The cruise ship nearly sinks, but the gang is saved, and Mac declares that this means he is not gay. "God answered my prayers and saved us, so that means there is a God, and there's no way in His infinite wisdom He would have made me queer."

This did not sit well with queer fans. Possibly due to the backlash, the writers had Mac come out and stay out in season 12, but that was kind of too little too late and played as kind of a joke. But to remedy the harm done, there is

Mac's Second Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality

Season 13 ends with the episode "Mac Finds His Pride," the most poignant episode the show has ever had (granted, it's a show not known for poignancy). Mac is struggling with his identity as a gay person while simultaneously being Catholic. Frank determines the best way for Mac to feel better is to come out to his currently imprisoned father, Luther.

Mac is struggling with how to come out to his father, as well, and he tries to explain this to Frank.

Mac: It's like there's this storm inside of me, and it's been raging my whole life. And I'm down on my knees and I'm looking for answers and then God comes down to me, and it's a very hot chick, and she pulls me up and we start dancing ...

Frank: Wait wait wait. You're gay and you're dancing with a hot chick who is God?

Mac: Yes.

Frank: The Catholics really ****ed you up.

I cannot speak from experience about this struggle, being a straight person who did not grow up in a church. But I did go to a Catholic high school where it was very clear you couldn't be both Catholic and gay, and I can't even imagine what my queer classmates must have gone through.

Mac ultimately comes out to his dad by performing the dance from his dream for all the prison inmates. His dance with the ballerina he hired to play "God" ultimately becomes a struggle, and at the end, after he pushes her away, she consoles him and tells him that it's okay. It's such a powerful scene, and I get mad at myself for getting tears in my eyes when I watch it, because, come on, it's Always Sunny.

By season 14, we're back to happy Mac who is gay when the script calls for it and Catholic when the script calls for it. In the global warming episode, there's an exchange something like this:

Mac: If God wants to roast us all like turkeys, there must be a good reason for it.

Dennis: So you're saying it's impossible to have a rational conversation with you.

Mac: Yes.

(The fact that Christianity has only gotten LESS rational in recent years is one of the consistent forms of consternation for me. It's as if blind faith has overruled God-given reason as the predominant way of thinking about faith... which is probably why you have a bulk of evangelicals these days voting in ways that are absolutely contrary to Biblical principles. I dunno... maybe Seth MacFarlane was onto something after all...)

But apparently Mac isn't really that settled in his identity as gay or his identity as Catholic, because in season 15 we get

Mac's Third Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality and Really It's Just About Needing to Belong Somewhere

I'll try not to belabor this one, because this is already LONG. Heck, this entire blog series could have been just about Mac. You know what, I'm not even going to cover the second guy until my next entry. I can do what I want. I am the god of this blog.

The gang is in Ireland for the second half of season 15. Mac is Irish, so he's excited! Except the gang knows he will be annoying about his Irishness so they bribe his mom to tell him he's actually Dutch so he can't have any fun. (Mac's family really does hate him.)

But, he can still have fun hanging out with the Irish Catholic priests. In the midst of his identity crisis ("I used to be Irish, but now I'm Dutch, but I was badass the entire time") Mac decides to join the seminary. And that means abandoning his gay identity ("the most important part of my identity isn't being gay or being badass, it's being Catholic"). 

The first priest that Mac is paired up with is too attractive, so he opts for a less attractive priest to teach him God's ways. They get along great, and ultimately Mac is almost ready to open up about his sinful thoughts, because it seems like the priest would understand. Except ... this priest likes men of a younger variety. And Mac is weirded out enough to scrap the seminary plan, and back in identity crisis hell.

Is Religion Really About Being Able to Call Yourself Something, and Is That All the Security You Need?

We're going to get more into this in my next entry, which will not be included in this post (sorry, my yet-to-be-announced fictional dude) because I have too much to say about Mac. But there is a certain security in being able to say that you are something. You're part of a family, it's part of the construction of your identity, it's something you might be persuaded to wage wars over, but at least you know who you are.

I went to a Nazarene college, but I was not Nazarene. Not everyone who went to the college was, but there were plenty, and it was kind of a cliquey thing. Have you heard of the "Nazarene Nap?" It's a thing, I guess, and the pastor at the church I occasionally attended was all about it. Along with food. We're going to focus on the acceptable vices like sleep and food, so we won't need to stray toward the less acceptable ones, and it's going to become part of who we are. I remember one sermon, the pastor was talking about how Jesus ate in front of His disciples and that's how they knew He had truly risen from the dead. "And that," the pastor said, "is how we know Jesus was a Nazarene." There was much laughter.

(I, on the other hand, was raised in the Church of the Nazarene for the entirety of my upbringing. In fact, my mother was also born and raised in the Church of the Nazarene and her parents attended the same Nazarene church for practically their entire lives. I was raised in one of the most conservative districts of that Church in the United States, in point of fact. I'm talking women with beehive hairdos, no jewelry, and skirts consistently down to their ankles [lest they cause the men-folk to stumble in thought, word, or deed, of course] and men who looked like Baby Billy Freeman from The Righteous Gemstones. And there was a persistent obsession with Sunday afternoon naps. Legitimately, I've never understood it. But I do remember a pastor once making a joke that a Nazarene's two favorite words were 'free' and 'food,' so apparently the gluttony was an acceptable vice that became core somehow to our entire denominational identity.)

And, I get it, kind of. I found a lot of comfort when I was finally able to label myself as an agnostic, because it gave me a sense of knowing who I was, and others label themselves similarly, which makes me feel more okay. Will I always be an agnostic? I don't know, but for now I at least have an answer.

I have to think the gang tricking Mac into thinking he was Dutch was an analogy for religious identity. When Mac is trying to draw on innate Dutch knowledge to solve a problem, he says, "I think I'm a problem-solver. I'm going to add that to the identity list. I'm Dutch first, then gay, then I'm a problem solver." The gang then becomes so fed up with Mac's identity crisis that they confess they tricked him into thinking he wasn't Irish so he wouldn't be obnoxious on their vacation.

Mac: You just unraveled my whole identity!

Charlie: We didn't unravel anything! You're still you!

What Is This Show's Stance?

McElhenney brings a very unique perspective, as he was raised Catholic in a family that mostly identified as queer. While Mac's religious beliefs and sexuality are played for laughs early in the show, the most recent few seasons have taken him on a journey that's actually pretty profound. 

What are we to make of the fact that the second stupidest person on the show is the only religious character? (No, Matthew Mara AKA "Rickety Cricket" doesn't count, as he no longer believes in God after the gang talked him into leaving the church and getting into a drug-fueled lifestyle of prostitution.) I honestly think the show was trying to tackle serious issues, but in a way that would be subtle rather than preachy. And still humorous. As they similarly tackled global warming, suicide, and abortion in season 14.

When I think about it, it's rare for a sitcom to tackle religion as much as Always Sunny does through Mac, and his simplistic view is what allows the show to still be funny and appealing to the masses, no matter what their religious beliefs are.

I've already covered The Simpsons and Family Guy, where everyone goes to church and they all go to the same church, but I think that may be more of a plot device to get everyone in town in the same scene, kind of like in Medieval Europe when church was the one time you'd see all your neighbors and be able to catch up because going to church was a given. 

It's a great plot device when you're working with animation, but doesn't make as much sense in live action. It's not like you're going to get all your minor characters and extras in one scene and have them get in an argument about what's happening to this town, so there's no point in having them be religious.

How many live action shows have addressed religion? In Seinfeld, Jerry is Jewish, but that really only comes to play when it can be used in a joke. On The Office, we have token religious stereotype Angela. I haven't seen too many sitcoms from before the 90's. Did the Lassies or the Brady Bunches or the Welcome Back Kotters go to church? I do not know. I do know that All In the Family tackled religion pretty frequently, but that was intended to be a groundbreaking show. (And is Seth MacFarlane's favorite show, which explains a lot about Family Guy.)

I have to come to the conclusion that Always Sunny has an overall positive view of religion. It's not as cynical as the last few entries. While Mac is depicted as, well, pretty stupid, he's not a blind follower. He thinks about this (to the extent that he is capable). His religion is important to him, and his friends accept that, even when they find it annoying. They just want him to be himself, and if his Catholic heritage brings him comfort, they want him to have that comfort.

(More than any show we've covered in this blog series to this point, I think Always Sunny somehow manages to have more to say about the relationship between humanity and religion than any other show we've covered so far. And I think that's pretty incredible, especially given the nature of the show in question, to be frank... but not Frank Reynolds. That might be a bridge too far.)

Anyway, that was the religious life and times of Mac. Don't worry. Our last three entries are shows where religion comes up only occasionally, rather than one of the main characters having a multi-season religious arc.