We’re closer than ever to knowing a premiere date for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” Season 17. Series co-creator and star Rob McElhenney told TheWrap that the FX comedy’s crossover with “Abbott Elementary” will premiere “sometime in June.”
“I think it’s going to be our premiere episode, just because we want to get it as close to when the ‘Abbott’ episode premiered, which was a couple of weeks ago,” McElhenney explained.
The showrunner also teased what to expect from the episode. The crossover shows two sides of the same story across these two very different sitcoms as the gang stops by Abbott Elementary to fulfill their court-mandated community service requirements.
The “Abbott” version of this story was fittingly wholesome for the ABC comedy. The Season 4 episode saw Dee (Kaitlin Olson) flirting with Gregory (Tyler James Williams), Frank (Danny DeVito) tackling a raccoon infestation with Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis), Mac (McElhenney) sucking up to Ava (Janelle James) and Charlie (Charlie Day) finally learning how to read.
The “Always Sunny” version of events won’t be nearly as cute. McElhenney assured TheWrap that the episode will “most definitely” show what Dennis (Glenn Howerton) was doing during that first installment. In the “Abbott” episode, Dennis — perhaps the member of the gang with the longest rap sheet and certainly the member who has committed the most sex crimes — repeatedly dodged the documentary cameras after saying he knows quite a bit about “filming and consent.”
“It’s the same story just seen through the prism of the ‘Sunny’ characters and the found footage that they weren’t allowed to use while making the show,” McElhenney teased.
Fans can also expect the Abbott Elementary faculty and staff to get a bit raunchier than usual in the upcoming episode. “We had to play nice on their show, and we got them to play bad on ours,” the actor told Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night.
