The Poison Is the Experience

I don't need the shows I love to agree with me. I watch plenty of TV that makes terrible people look fun. That's what comedy does, and I'm not asking anyone to clean it up.

But I watched two of my favorites in the same stretch, and they took aim at the same target. I can't shake it.

The target is the nonalcoholic drink, and by extension, anyone holding one.

"The poison is the experience"

In Your Friends & Neighbors, the Jon Hamm series on Apple TV, Nick Brandes, the former NBA All-Star played by Mark Tallman, has partnered with a nonalcoholic spirit. He opens a bottle for his friend Barney: you get the experience without the poison. Barney spits it out. The poison, he says, is the experience. Then he tells Nick to get out of the deal.

It's a good line. That's the problem. It's short, it sounds smart, and it'll outlive the episode. It says out loud what alcohol advertising has implied for a century: the drink isn't about the taste, the ritual, the glass in your hand or the people around you. It's about the ethanol. Take that out and there's nothing left.

That's the effect-only view of drinking: a drink has one job, changing your state, and if it doesn't do that it's pointless. But we hire drinks for a lot of other jobs. Marking the end of the day. Going with a meal. Giving yourself permission to be off duty. None of those need ethanol.

Anyone who's poured a good NA spirit into a real glass on a Friday night knows that isn't true. A punchline doesn't have to be true, though. It only has to land.

Paddy's Pub declares war

Then there's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. "The War on Alcohol" is episode 6 of season 18, which aired on FX on September 14, 2026.

It opens with the gang happily working through a round of beers, loving every sip, until they find out there's no alcohol in them. Then Dee chases the sales rep out the door, wielding a broken bottle as a weapon.

From there the episode goes all in. There are speeches about alcohol as the glue of friendship and good for you as a person. Dennis, Dee and Frank go after office workers for happy hour while Mac and Charlie go after factory workers, all to get people back in the bar. And the one person who chooses not to drink gets his beers spiked without his knowledge.

I want to stop on that one, because it isn't a quirky bit. Putting alcohol in someone's drink without their consent is drugging them. The person who said no might be in recovery. They might be pregnant, on medication, driving home, or just done for the night. Played for laughs, it teaches the audience that saying no to a drink is a problem for the group to fix.

And then there's Dee, who gets drunk and sexually assaults the intern. I know these are outrageous characters, and Sunny has always pushed lines. This one went too far for me.

"But the gang are the idiots"

I know the defense. RogerEbert.com called the episode arguably the season standout and read it as the characters fighting to live in the past. I get that, and I don't think the writers are shilling for anyone.

Maybe that's even the point of the Dee storyline. Maybe it's the most extreme example they could find of what alcohol does to people, a warning dressed up as a gag. If so, it should have painted a clear picture: drinking made this happen, and it isn't funny.

But satire only works when the audience knows who the joke is on. When the sales rep runs, the abstainer gets spiked, and alcohol gets the big speech, the laughs line up behind the drink. The assault gets swallowed by the chaos. At the end of the day, the average viewer's takeaway won't be that alcohol goes wrong. It'll be that NA beer is a joke. Even another reviewer noted the episode had the potential for sharp commentary but mostly drifted into other jokes.

Why now

In Temperates, I walk through how movies and TV taught us that drinking means being cool, being included, being a grown-up. That was the old script: alcohol as the ticket in.

What's new is the second act. The shows aren't just selling the drink anymore. They're mocking the alternative.

And it isn't just these two. In October 2025, Saturday Night Live ran a fake commercial for "non-non-alcoholic beer," with a suburban husband pitching a non-alcoholic beer that's over 96% alcohol. Same punchline: nobody really wants the NA version. Three major shows in about a year, all landing on the same joke.

The timing makes sense. NA is the growth story in the beer aisle. IWSR reports US beer volumes fell 3% in 2024, while no-alcohol beer volumes jumped 23%, making it the only US beer segment besides stout to grow. NielsenIQ puts US off-premise NA beer, wine and spirits sales at $925 million, up 22% year over year. Athletic, the wave of NA spirits, the big brewers launching their own zero versions: this category has moved off the novelty shelf and into real share of wallet.

I'm not claiming anyone in a writers' room took a call from a brewer. I don't know that, and I won't say it. But when something threatens a habit this old, culture pushes back, and comedy is where you see it first. Once a category gets big enough to notice, it gets big enough to mock.

Who's actually drinking NA

Here's what the jokes get wrong. NielsenIQ found that 92% of NA buyers also buy alcohol. This is about more choices, not quitting.

The person with the NA beer isn't a scold or a buzzkill. It's me, most nights, with an Athletic from my own fridge. It's the designated driver, the parent with an early morning, the friend who feels better when she skips one. Nobody's taking the booze out of anyone's beer. We're just picking a different drink tonight.

Temperates Takeaway

I still love both shows, and I'll keep watching. But I'm watching differently now. The old story said you need a drink to belong. The new story says the person without one is the joke. Neither one is true. An NA drink is a real adult drink, and ordering one doesn't require a speech, a defense or a sense of humor about yourself. Order what you want.

Not sure which job your drinks are doing for you? Are You Secretly a Temperate? will tell you.

More on how TV and brands sell the drink: Landman Never Argues for Drinking. It Doesn't Have To., The Super Bowl's Smartest Drinker Ordered Zero and Love Is Blind Sold a Wine. The Sober Guy Got Cut.