I was going to name this one Let Me Be Frank, but then I realized that was also the title of that one YouTube video of Frank Underwood washing the dishes. I say Frank Underwood, since it wasn’t really Kevin Spacey talking in the video; it was him as his character from House of Cards, talking about how he was cancelled out of the series after his past deeds became public knowledge. That was a rather surreal series of events to watch, a man going from an acclaimed actor to trying to save whatever prestige he had by vowing revenge on those who had wronged him. By wronged, of course, I mean those who exposed him.

Kevin Spacey had a certain reputation even before the whole debackle. To my mind, he always played the same role; a sinister smart-ass authoritarian figure. Such roles include performances like the aforementioned House of Cards, Baby Driver, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Se7en (I still insist on pronouncing it “Sesevenen” in the hopes that replacing letters with numbers can some day be removed from the film industry the same way Nicolae Ceaușescu was removed from the Romanian government hierarchy). My point is, an actor like Kevin Spacey could play Barney the Dinosaur and still come out as unnecessarily evil because of his actorial stigma.

Incidentally, I have been watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia lately. I’m only halfway through the series as it stands now, but already I’m absolutely in love with it. To begin with, I love a setting where there are no morally good characters. As Rob McElhenney put it, the maxim of Friends was “I’ll be there for you”, whereas IASIP’s is “I’ll never be there”. The show is themed around the ignorance of white Americans, which as a white European, I find unendingly amusing. These are the kinds of characters you love to watch and hate their actions at the same time, a really refreshing turn after Friends, How I Met Your Mother and similar sitcoms. Barney Stinson, a fan-favorite character played by Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother, was an irredeemable womanizer and carried much of the show in the early seasons, but quickly lost steam after the writers started to add misplaced depth and humanity to the character. IASIP leans to the horrible natures of its characters and the viewers love to both watch the hijinxs the characters get to and the morally educative comeuppances that follow.

One specific aspect of the show I want to talk about is the character Frank Reynolds, a terrible father figure to two other main characters and co-owner of the bar where the series is set. Frank is played by Danny DeVito, who looks exactly like he did in Taxi back in the late 70s. My earliest exposure to Danny DeVito that I can remember would probably be watching Matilda, a film he both directed and acted in. I love the movie, and I should’ve guessed his first performance I would ever see would carry a long way. In Matilda DeVito plays a dishonest businessman and an awful father who neglects his daughter, constantly trying to sway her decisions towards the worst. Now, you could take all those characteristics and apply them to Frank Reynolds, and they would fit perfectly.

After watching episode after episode of IASIP, I must say Danny DeVito has started to slip retroactively into the Kevin Spacey school of actors in my mind. I look back to all the times I’ve seen DeVito on screen and I’m starting to notice similarities with his Frank Reynolds with increasing ease, such as in his roles in Batman Returns and The Rainmaker, and even in his short appearance on Friends, where he played a washed-up stripper for one episode. If I watch that episode again now, all I see is Frank Reynolds posing as a stripped for his newest scheme to bang engaged women.

The thing is, an actor being typecasted can work for the better. DeVito’s wonderful performance in IASIP has only enhanced my experiences with him, whereas I do not care if I see Kevin Spacey on the big screen ever again. The show is yet to show signs of declining in quality, like other sitcoms of its kin, and I will definitely watch it to the end. Maybe they’ll keep things fresh by doing something wacky, like introducing Ryan Reynolds as Rob’s long-lost cousin. I do not mind, at this point I have a lot of confidence in the creators of the show, and what comes to DeVito, maybe I’ll start going through his earlier works that I have missed, even if it means enduring Matthew Broderick in Deck the Halls.