School’s back in session at Abbott Elementary — and there’s a gang of troublemakers being sent to the principal’s office.
When ABC‘s Emmy-winning docu-com set in an underfunded school returns from winter break on January 8, the wacky, well-intentioned teachers collab with the vice-ridden characters of FXX’s long-running satire, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The highly-anticipated crossover of Philadelphia-set comedies was first teased by creator and star Quinta Brunson (who plays the first-rate second-grade teacher Janine Teagues) during San Diego Comic Con in 2024, and she declared it will “change television as we know it.”
Plot details are still mostly under wraps, but we do know that in the episode, titled “Volunteers,” principal Ava (Janelle James) announces the arrival of a group of helpers sent by the school district. Those volunteers are none other than Sunny’s degenerates: Paddy’s Pub owners Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Charlie (Charlie Day), financial supporter Frank (Danny DeVito), and waitress Dee (Kaitlin Olson). Are they doing community service, perhaps?
(Disney/Gilles Mingasson)
To get started on the script for the exciting episode, executive producer Justin Halpern says, “Rob and Charlie came into our writers’ room for a day and worked with us as we broke the Abbott side of it. And then, as soon as we got the Abbott side of it, we kicked the outline over to them, because it was integral to how they were going to break the Sunny side.”
With each show boasting a large ensemble of strong characters, that’s no small feat. “We were very careful about how we chose the pairings,” executive producer Patrick Schumacker adds. In the teaser trailer previously released, it looks like school custodian Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) and Frank will get into it (Frank hilariously calls janitor Johnson “the sheriff of trash”), Mac attempts to flirt with Ava, and well, things will probably get a lot worse before they get better again for the nice folks of Abbott…and maybe even the mostly-unseen camera crews shooting Abbott’s doc. “We’ve really embraced every part of the crossover,” adds Halpern.
And though the Sunny gang might cause problems for the school staffers, it seems like their trip to Abbott might have a serious effect on at least one of the characters. Schumacker reveals that details “that have been baked into Sunny canonically play into the plot heavily with our teachers,” and that the Sunny gang “have crossed paths with at least one of our characters before.”
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This could possibly mean good things for Charlie, who, as Sunny fans know, cannot read. “He’s heavily involved in the A story,” confirms Halpern.
The best part about all of this? When Sunny, which will celebrate 20 years onscreen in August, returns later in 2025 for Season 17, they’ll air their own crossover episode, too. That episode will show the Paddy’s Pub workers’ point-of-view of the events happening in this installment. “One of the cool things about this crossover is that it is not just two independent episodes where some of our characters are in their show, and some of their characters are in our show,” says Halpern. “This is an actual puzzle that has fit together in a really great way.”
Whatever goes down, we have a feeling that it will be very chaotic, but so much fun to watch.
Abbott Elementary—Always Sunny Crossover, Wednesday, January 8, 8:30/7:30c, ABC
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