Steve Carell calls for end to the Office/It's Always Sunny blood feud

By William Hughes  |  June 29, 2019 | 5:12pm
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Steve Carell calls for end to the Office/It's Always Sunny blood feud
Photo: Dia Dipasupil

When you talk about sitcoms of a recent vintage with staying power, it’s hard to top The Office’s nine-season tenure on NBC—unless, of course, you bring up It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which has survived 13 seasons of chaos, human evil, and even a network change without ever missing a beat. Rob McElhenney, star and producer of the latter show, kicked that comparison into overdrive earlier this week, when he posted a video that purported to show him and the Sunny crew on one of the exterior sets where the older show was filmed, declaring “I guess your show got cancelled or whatever but we’re still doing ours. So we’re doing it here.”

Shots having been fired, a number of members of the old Office crew—including retired Pam Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey—fired back in response to McElhenney’s taunts. But it was Steve Carell who McElhenney formally called out in his video, and so it was on Carell’s head, obviously, to decide whether two beloved sitcom casts would be forced to slaughter each other in the streets—blood flowing in the gutters like coffee through Stanley’s veins—or whether peace would reign.

Carell being Carell, he chose the latter, proposing an end to the blood feud at last. (Okay, technically it’s only been a week, but hey, that’s a long time in blood feud years.) Instead, he proposed a crossover he dubbed “It’s Always Sunny In Scranton”—which, given the wildly clashing tones between the two shows, one about how real affection can undercut years of awkwardness and misery, and the other, uh, not—might be even messier than the whole killing each other in the streets thing.

Of course, given McElhenney’s response, it’s possible that this whole thing was just The Gang going back on the grift yet again:

 
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