The two sitcoms that take place in Philly are about to run into each other head-on in the two-episode crossover event.
The gang crosses over into another comedy show in this new teaser for the sitcom event of the new year. The Emmy-winning cast of Abbott Elementary comes face-to-face with the politically incorrect, morally confused Paddy’s Pub staff from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which includes Danny DeVito, in the new trailer for the big crossover two-episode special. The teaser bumps to the soundtrack of “It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock as we get snippets of the worlds colliding in the ABC series. The event kicks off on January 8 with the ninth episode of the season, titled “Volunteers.”
Deadline shares the commercial, courtesy of the YouTube channel TV Promos, and the description on the video reads, “Ava announces the school district is sending a group of volunteers to help out at Abbott; however, when they arrive, things don’t go as planned. The cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia visit Abbott Elementary for a can’t miss crossover event, January 8th on ABC.” Abbott Elementary is exploring gentrification in their Philly neighborhoods in this current season’s plot. While the first episode of this two-parter starts with Abbott Elementary‘s mid-season entry, part two of the crossover will air as the premiere of It’s Always Sunny‘s seventeenth year on FXX.
Quinta Brunson, the award-winning star of Abbott, has expressed how excited she is about this crossover when she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Brunson also explained how the episode was conceived. She would tell the host, “I was very inspired by watching a lot of shows over the pandemic. I was binging Family Matters and Full House and stuff like that, and I was shocked at how shocked I was when Steve Urkel showed up on the Full House set. I was screaming at my TV.”
She continued to say that she and It’s Always Sunny‘s star and co-creator Rob McElhenney would connect after social media compared the Philly-set shows. “Something came up online, and he was like, ‘Someone said this seems like a Sunny episode, this seems like an Abbott episode,’” Brunson explained. “And then we kind of connected over that. And then we really connected in person, and I just get along with him and his team so well, that we felt like we could actually do this.”
