Rescheduled a month out from it’s original planned airdate, The Always Sunny Podcast finally did their live episode! It was in honor of their one year anniversary, but since it was also timed around the holidays, they decided to make it a “holiday spectacular!”
As a viewer, I think adding the holiday spectacular element to it made it more fun, but really, this podcast is always a joy to listen to. I also appreciate that they kept it to the core group without any special guests. That gave them more of a chance to interact naturally, as they done for most of the past year, but also the chance to interact with the fans taking part in the live aspect of the taping. However, even though they had that opportunity, they didn’t really capitalize on it at all. The most direct interaction they had were reading frozen comments from time to time. I realize the chat functions on most things like that are insane, but still. There were prizes given out, but it might have been cooler to have some fans pop up on screen for a beat or two.
That was what I was led to believe was going to happen. At least in some capacity. In any case, some half a dozen fans or so are going to get some signed merch, and for that, I am extremely jealous. I can only hope this isn’t the last live podcast they do. The only other real input the fans had was throughout the podcast they could vote on their favorite person and the charity that they chose to represent for the evening. The winner was then going to get to donate all funds raised through the ticket sales for the live show (very cool). That was at least something fun for fans to do, even if they did have to work around a site that crashed almost immediately.
The crux of the show was mainly just the quad talking about the holidays and opening gifts from time to time. I enjoyed that the gifts were mainly referencing things that had been brought up in past podcasts. For instance, Rob got a superhero suit and some clubs for his “Rob Justice” alter-ego, and Glenn got some plastic children’s car keys in reference to his hilarious Tesla debacle. I personally really enjoyed that gift because that story made me cackle at the time. Of course, all of this was going on while they were sipping Rob’s whiskey-heavy Manhattans. Megan got some joke gifts for herself from the guys, which is kind of not that fun. I wish she would have told them they were doing gift exchanges, because I would have loved to have seen what they got her.
Aside from the gift-giving, a fun and original thing they did was two sketches in the vein of their Always Sunny characters. The first was that they walk in on Charlie in a tux with no context, which ended up being quite funny. The second sketch was that the three of them ran over a man, but they aren’t sure if they accidentally just ran over Santa Claus. Those were both perfectly viable off the cuff sketches that I could see having been a part of the show. That was truly a unique experience with this live taping. Otherwise, at least the last fifty minutes was spent listening to the four of them answering Sunny trivia. Eh, kinda boring.
Overall though, it was an enjoyable experience and I hope they do it again in the future. Especially if in-person experiences are going to be limited in the future. Now…if only the guys from Workaholics could follow suit and give their This Is Important podcast the live treatment!