Smiling Friends: A Shift in the Adult Comedy Landscape

Image: flicks.co.nz

Desde su estreno en 2020, Smiling Friends ganó su propio nicho con un episodio piloto que tomó al internet por sorpresa. Creada por Zach Hadel y Michael Cusack, ambos conocidos animadores en Youtube, Smiling Friends llegó como su primer proyecto en la televisión. La serie ha sido aclamada por su humor oscuro y absurdo, personajes desbordantes de personalidad, un estilo visual distintivo y su enfoque irreverente hacia temas contemporáneos.

Since its debut in 2020, Smiling Friends has carved out its own niche with a pilot episode that took the internet by surprise. Created by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, both well-known animators on YouTube, Smiling Friends was their first television project. The series has been praised for its dark and absurd humor, characters bursting with personality, a distinctive visual style, and its irreverent take on contemporary topics.

Charlie and Pim are two employees of Smiling Friends, a charity whose sole mission is to make people happy. Along with their boss and other employees, they are tasked with helping the quirky characters who need cheering up, which leads them to unexpected and often absurd situations.

The series' premise is as simple as it is flexible, following the creators' wishes. The initial concept was that of "a group of lovable characters with a simple premise that we could take wherever we wanted," according to Hadel and Cusack in an interview.

What makes Smiling Friends so unique is its great and varied graphic style. Mixing different animation styles simultaneously, the design of each character varies from simple, cartoonish humanoids to grotesque and expressive faces and bodies, rendered in two and three dimensions, stop-motion animation, live actors, and much more.

Zach Hadel y Michael Cusack, creators of Smiling Friends.

A significant part of the series' comedy lies in how the characters either acknowledge or ignore the absurd occurrences of the world around them and the people in it. For instance, in one episode, a character spends the entire time with a gun pointed at his head, yet no one mentions it, creating a bizarre normality in the face of moments and characters that are anything but normal.

Although each episode leads us to outlandish scenarios, Charlie and Pim often speak with surprising normality during their adventures. The comedy in Smiling Friends shines brightly through its dialogue construction. Sometimes it's just about small mutterings, stammers, strange gestures, and misunderstandings in casual conversations that seem unrecognizable compared to real-life interactions. This is where the voice acting truly shines, with most performances done by Hadel and Cusack themselves, who bring an enormous variety of personalities, tones, attitudes, and memorable lines. And when they're not involved, other animators and well-known YouTube personalities lend their voices or even appear directly in an episode.

What has helped Smiling Friends build such a large following is the background of its creators, who have worked with online platforms and communities. Animation on YouTube and Newgrounds as spaces for free expression and creativity were crucial for Hadel and Cusack. The series' unique personality, enhanced by its quirks, stems from its originality.

The familiarity Smiling Friends has with the internet world is something the show embraces, making nods to memes and popular culture references, such as creating a foreign country designed with the aesthetic of spam or centering an episode around the cast traveling to Brazil because it's a reference to a recurring meme on the internet.

Smiling Friends feels different from its contemporaries in the adult animation subgenre. The series uses themes sparingly that today seem like overused clichés in adult-oriented stories, such as sex and the frequent use of profanity as a shortcut to comedy. When writing characters, Smiling Friends moves away from the recent trend of creating shows around cynical, love-to-hate protagonists like Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty. Instead, it opts for endearing protagonists who always finish their work with a smile.

Picture from: pastemagazine.com

The series possesses a strange, sometimes twisted, but heartwarming sense of comfort. Charlie and Pim do their job of making people happy, and most of the time, they succeed, with the majority of episodes—no matter how absurd or strange—ending with a happy conclusion. When the series comments on current culture and social issues, they feel like nods, references, and parodies rather than moral lessons. This works within its own comedic style, which is not critical but fresh and unconcerned with delivering lessons or making judgments.

The success of Smiling Friends lies in its creative direction, unique visual style, and approach to contemporary comedy, deeply rooted in internet culture. Its uniqueness has made it a favorite among audiences so far. With a third season confirmed for the future, this project demonstrates how adult animation can be a space for creativity and ongoing experimentation, leaving a lasting mark on the comedy landscape in today’s streaming media.