Always Sunny Hot or Cool?

The popular FXX T.V. show its Always Sunny in Philadelphia also known as Always Sunny is going to be examined in this blog as ether a hot or cool type of media. This classification process of "hot or cool" is coming from McLuhan's interpretation of (hot) being high-intensity, low participation and (cool) being low intensity high participation. McLuhan also states cinema as being in the hot category due to the quality of the medium and the dimly lit setting of the cinema, this makes one more focused and engaged in the high quality images and audio produced at the theater with a very minimal amount of participation needed. Television shows such as always sunny are considered cool due to the home setting of the media. This setting provides opportunities for a social gathering like having friends over to watch the show or having a snack and being more engaged in the participation aspect of the medium. These two aspects can become easily blurred by many factors such as the individual watching the show; the viewer could be fully engaged in the show and not so much engaged in talking during it due to the fact that he/she wants to know what’s going on. This, I feel is going to happen more often in a series because of you miss one episode your lost for a good portion of the next or even some later down the road. Another example of this hot or cool media getting blurred is the television shows increasing their picture quality to HD. In some instances high definition television can look almost identical to the cinema quality. In my opinion the newer episodes of always sunny are right up there with cinema quality images but not quite, also I don’t think I would classify this show as hot or cool because when I watch it I’m not in a dimly lit theater with audio that you can feel and images that look real. Then again I am also not constantly talking to people or socializing during this show mainly due to the fact that I mostly watch it on Netflix and there are no commercials. Therefore I would classify this show as both hot and cool with some underlying cool properties due to the commercials cause lets face it no one is going to sit on a couch and not talk during a commercial your going to get up and eat something like everyone who watches T.V. That being said I feel commercials are a real game changer for this hot and cool scale, a game changer that places always sunny more on the cool side of the spectrum while still a little on the hot side due to the hilarious engaging plots of the episodes.