Mac and Dennis are one of the most iconic pairings in the show. The subject of many fan-favourite plots, close friends since high school and roommates for well over twenty years now, it’s no wonder that when Mac came out of the closet and made his romantic (and sexual) feelings for Dennis clear, the pairing became the most popular ship in the fandom. However, despite the fact that the two have had multiple sexual encounters with each other, roleplayed as a married couple more than once, and have even acknowledged their codependency and broken-up (only to get back together), there still seems to be a significant portion of the fandom that wants and claims that Mac and Dennis should be “canon” by now.
This claim has confused me for awhile, but it stumps me even more hearing the continued demand for Mac and Dennis to “become canon” in Season 17, considering their current relationship and, most recently, the events of Frank Vs. Russia (in which Dennis reveals he has been in a relationship (albeit dubiously one-sided) with Mac for many months). What does “canon” mean, if Mac and Dennis are not that? And what do people want from Mac and Dennis when they request for their pairing to be “canon”?
In an attempt to get an answer to my queries, I circulated a poll amongst the fandom (on Tumblr and Twitter) asking a series of questions related to Mac and Dennis as a canon ship. First, asking whether or not the respondent believed the pairing to be canon, then asking for the Respondent’s definition/understanding of what canon means for a platonic ship, and then asking a series of questions pertaining to “Macdennis” and what does, or would, make them canon.
Over the span of a week, I received 246 complete responses. For some perspective as to where these opinions are coming from, I asked for some demographic information. More than 70% of Respondents were young adults between the ages of 20 and 35, and over 80% identify as part of the LGBT community. Additionally, considering this poll was run in the middle of a long hiatus, I asked for Respondents to disclose which Season of Sunny was the first they began watching “live”. Just over 50% have yet to experience watching a Season premiere or began watching with Season 16, while roughly 20% have been watching since or prior to Season 12, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle. While I personally think the data is well representative of the active Tumblr and Twitter fandoms for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it is clearly just that, and very likely not reflective of the show’s general audience.
As to my first question, whether or not the Respondent believes Macdennis to be canon, I hypothesized that the majority of the fandom would not consider the ship to be canon, simply based on a few years of seeing and engaging with posts, memes, replies, likes, and ideas I’ve seen circulated in the fandom. Interestingly, it was actually almost evenly split!
Out of 246 Respondents, 119 consider Mac and Dennis to be in a canonical, non-platonic relationship.
Now for some sense of a control (wondering, are some people answering yes or no based on what they want?), I asked Respondents to disclose whether or not they personally liked the idea of Mac and Dennis as a non-platonic ship. Only 16 people responded no, which admittedly isn’t a huge sample size, however the sample does seem to affirm that shipping the pair does not have an effect on whether or not they’re seen as canon:
Of the 16 Respondents who do not ship Macdennis, 9 do not see the pairing as canon while 7 do. So it’s safe to say that there is some minor validation that Respondents voted based on how they interpret the on-screen relationship between Mac and Dennis, in conjunction with their own definition/understanding of canon, and not what they want to see.
Speaking of the definition of a canon ship, that was the first follow-up question for both yes and no tiers of Respondents. As this was an open-response question, there isn’t data I can directly represent in a graph, but I spent time combing through, noting, and grouping significant key ideas and words in everyone’s responses:
As a basic definition of the word “canon,” it is to mean something that is genuine to the text (i.e. actually existing). When it comes to a ship, especially something like Macdennis which dabbles in some of the murkiest water you can find on television, the question of whether the non-platonic elements that clearly exist are genuine or not seems to be what’s mostly in debate (and in media, this is often even harder to decipher when it’s queer).
For those who believe Mac and Dennis are [already] canon, their definitions heavily revolve around the concept of the creators/writers intent being genuine. To the “Yeses,” an overwhelming number of Respondents explained that a ship falls into their definition of canon if the writing (and acting) of interactions between the pair is deliberately clear to be something non-platonic, either sexual or romantic. If sexual/romantic elements between a pairing are observable beyond reasonable (platonic) doubt, clear to the casual viewer, and/or past the point of a surface-level joke, Yes Respondents believe that makes a ship canon (often noted: on the condition that there is at least one character who has expressed actual desire, but mostly without the necessity of that expression being mutual).
The parenthetical condition, while not unimportant, is easy to blow past, because there’s absolutely no debate as to whether or not Mac is canonically into Dennis. So, that leaves us with the general idea that almost half of the fandom, today, view Macdennis as canon because they believe the show (RCG/creators, writers, actors, etc.) is writing the pair in such a way that their plots/interactions are intended to be read as non-platonic.
So where and when is this witnessed in Sunny’s text?
To find an answer to that, I asked the Yes Respondents to pin-point a season in which they first view the pairing as canon, and expand more specifically on when and why that season “solidifies” their status as canon. Across the 16 Seasons we have to-date, the responses were a bit across the board (hence a little busy to read), but over ⅓ of Respondents claimed Season 5 portrays canon Macdennis:
As you can see, many Respondents also view Macdennis as canon from the get-go/Season One, or just prior to Season 5, and then the next highest chunk isn’t until Season 12. To better make sense of Respondents’ explanations for their choices and they explain that the show’s intent in its storylines when pairing the two together makes Macdennis definitionally “canon”, I consolidated the data into two categories: earlier seasons and later seasons:
It should be no surprise that, for those who chose an earlier Season, the overwhelming majority cited Mac and Dennis Break Up as their reasoning for believing the pair are canon. The general explanation for this provided by Yes Respondents was that the writing (and/or episode commentary) makes it clear that Mac and Dennis’ relationship is more than that of roommates or friends; it’s intended to be read as romantic. In a similar vein, quite a few people responded Mac and Dennis: Manhunters as their reasoning for believing Season 4 is when Macdennis became canon, which speaks to the sexual nature of a pair being written as non-platonic.
As to the later seasons: The Gang Dines Out was the reasoning for most of the Season 8 responses, claiming that establishing Mac and Dennis go on actual dinner dates canonizes a romantic element between them that is undeniable. And a little further along, The Gang Tends Bar in Season 12 echoes this same sentiment, however additionally cites that an openly gay Mac makes his gift to Dennis damningly romantic and impossible to refute. For the Season 16 responses, Frank vs. Russia was the reasoning for everyone who offered one, which, similar to Manhunters, speaks to the idea that Mac and Dennis engaging in a sexual relationship makes them canon.
Any of these episodes “canoninizing” Macdennis for the Yes Respondents makes sense: they all heavily corroborate the idea that a ship becomes canon when it’s clear that the writers are intending for viewers to read certain scenes as non-platonic. Essentially, “Macdennis” is canon because the audience has to witness and/or read the relationship between Mac and Dennis as something non-platonic in order for many of the plots to work, comedically and/or narratively. What seems to be the major factor in determining when Macdennis became canon for Yes Respondents comes down to if non-platonic elements can be explained away as “just a joke”.
Since Sunny is a comedy, through and through, whether or not a moment or running bit is a joke (or what the joke actually is in many instances) can be debatable, but being a joke does not make certain elements of what's being said any less real. Mac being gay, for example, was “just a joke” (one that many general audience members couldn’t even pick up on) in the beginning, but the constant continuation of the joke made it clear that the show intended for the audience to understand that Mac is gay, and therefore convinced more and more gay Mac was canon well before Mac said the words “I’m gay.”
In comparison, MADBU is written off as pairing Mac and Dennis together as “just a joke” for many Yes Respondents, but the joke of the two of them acting like a married couple continuing through The Gang Dines Out, many seasons later, ends up putting heavier weight on the intention of the joke. It goes even further than a bit when the impact of Mac giving Dennis the RPG in The Gang Tends Bar relies on the audience knowing what Dennis means to Mac (and vice versa), and jokes continue to be reliant on viewing the pair as an old married couple in The Gang Inflates when they dig at the two’s terribly managed (and shared) finances. As Mac and Dennis’ relationship continues to be portrayed as something non-platonic across an extensive period of time (especially beyond the point of when it’s convenient for the comedy) and is, in-fact, reliant on the audience viewing it as such, it comes to a point where many see this "joke" the same as Mac's refusal to come out — the intent is more than clear, and that makes the pair canon to almost half of the fandom.
So, if there is solid proof that it is the intention of the writers for Mac and Dennis to be read as non-platonic, why does a slim majority of the fandom still not see the two as canon (especially when they reportedly like the pairing together)? Well it’s actually a pretty simple reason: their definition of the word “canon”, as it relates to a ship, is quite different:
For those who believe Mac and Dennis are not [yet] canon, the definition of a canon ship hinging on the idea that the intent of the writers is to convey genuine romantic/sexual elements (while mentioned a few times) seems relatively unimportant. Instead, the proof must be in the pudding, so to speak. The idea of a ship being genuine, and hence canon, to the “No Respondents” means a [consensual] expression of sexual or romantic interest on-screen and/or the relationship being labelled/mutually definitional.
Essentially, the No Respondents believe that Macdennis is not canon because they do not believe that the characters see, define, or acknowledge their relationship as anything non-platonic.
Now, given the nature of the show and all of the characters’ perpetual states of living in denial and delusion, the concept of Mac and Dennis seeing or defining their relationship as anything beyond what they’ve always known is a loaded idea. Considering all they’ve done to each other and all they’ve “lied” about being to each other (see: The Gang Exploits the Mortgage Crisis and Dennis’ Double Life), what at this point, twenty years in, needs to (or, can) happen to properly “define” Mac and Dennis’ relationship and make them canon?
In order to simplify responses to this concept, I listed seven hypothetical events and asked which of theses, if they occurred, would be the “bare minimum” for the No Respondent to reclassify Macdennis as canon. (In all of these stated events, the Respondent was to assume that the moment was at “face value,” in that Mac and Dennis were both themselves (no schemes/fake identities) and any acts were consensual.)
As you can see, responses were spread evenly right across the board between the seven (7) listed ideas. Three of these relate to Dennis expressing his feelings for/about Mac and four of them relate to Mac and Dennis “getting together”, so for a broader look at the data, I grouped the 7 hypothetic events into these two ideas:
Again, the divide on what needs to happen in order to “define the relationship” is split, almost exactly as even as the divide between those who do and do not consider Macdennis to already be canon. While some would call Macdennis canon the moment Dennis expresses clear, mutual feelings for Mac, regardless of what that leads to (speaking more to the idea of intent, though on the characters’ side as opposed to the show’s), many need the pair to actually get together in order to label them canon. In a sense, you could say conclusive canon Macdennis shares the same definition as pornography: you’ll know it when you see it.
However just seeing it, in the case of Macdennis, might not even be enough for some...
In an attempt to find out if there were any carve outs to the condition that a canonizing event for Macdennis be at “face value”, I recounted certain existing plots in Sunny that occurred between other characters and asked No Respondents to pick which (if any) of those plots, if they happened to Mac and Dennis, would make them canon:
And found that a little over half of the No Respondents would consider Macdennis canon if they had sex like Charlie and Dee, absent of (admitted) feelings:
The next highest response being no, none of these events would “make” Macdennis canon, seems to indicate that at least a third of the No Respondents require clear mutual feelings for the pair to be considered canon, even if they get together physically. Meaning, there’s no “one or the other” for a chunk of the fandom—their relationship has to progress in a typical romantic fashion to be considered canon (and a few on the condition that the pair be “endgame”).
As should be expected, No Respondents who offered additional explanations for their choices in these two polls expressed conflicting opinions and feelings on the topic due to the nature of the characters and/or show:
For a few of the No Respondents, it seems like they’re right on the fence with classifying Macdennis as canon to the definition of the Yes Respondents, but from what they’ve seen thus far, the show simply has not yet convinced them that “the joke” is anything more than that. It's not that they're necessarily holding out for the romantic sitcom arc you could get by watching any other show, but that they're waiting for a Macdennis canonizing moment that's as damning as Mac coming back from a gay bar covered in green glitter when it came to establishing that he's clearly gay.
On the complete other side of the fence, a few No Respondents believe that Mac and Dennis have to express their feelings for each other in an honest way and be in an official, defined relationship with each other for [the rest of] the series to be considered canon. Of course, no one should be watching Sunny expecting any relationship to be typical (nor seriously romantic, really), but for some No Respondents, that is the condition of a ship being canon, and hence would have to apply to Macdennis.
So, the fandom is not only split on whether or not Macdennis is canon due to the definition of canon being somewhat arguable, but even further split on how Macdennis can meet the definition of canon, because of said definition and because of the nature of the show. Unfortunately, the responses here seem to indicate that the fandom will probably never unanimously agree if Macdennis is canon, however it is clear that in looking at the Yes Respondents, Season 16 pushed a few people over the fence and into agreement that the ship is canon, so is it possible Season 17 gives us a moment which turns the Yes Respondents into the majority? That remains to be seen…
And all of this being said, I do now wonder: what percentage of the fandom believes Macdennis is intended by the creators to be read as non-platonic, regardless of whether or not that makes them canon?
You can view the raw data asked for and collected from this survey here.
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