Smiling Friends is an adult animated television series created by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack for Cartoon Network's night-time programming block Adult Swim, which revolves around the surreal misadventures of a small company and its four employees dedicated to spreading happiness.
Smiling Friends | |
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Created by |
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Directed by |
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Starring |
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Theme music composer | Chris O'Neill[2] |
Ending theme | "Brown Smile" (composed by Chris O'Neill) |
Composer | Brendan Caulfield |
Country of origin |
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Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 12 |
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Running time | 11 minutes |
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Original release | |
Network | Adult Swim |
Release | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)[3] – present |
Smiling Friends utilizes a variety of different styles and techniques to bring its characters to life. This includes but is not limited to stylized traditional animation, CGI, rotoscoping, stop motion, and live-action.
The pilot episode aired April 1, 2020, unannounced as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools' Day event alongside the premiere of Cusack's other series, YOLO. On May 19, 2021, Adult Swim ordered a full season that was initially set to premiere in late 2021.[4] A panel dedicated to the series was held during the Adult Swim Festival on November 12, 2021, where co-creator Zach Hadel mentioned the show will premiere "within a few months", pushing the release schedule ahead to 2022.[5] The first season contains nine episodes, including the pilot and an 11-minute special.[6][7][8] The first season eventually premiered on January 10, 2022, with Adult Swim airing all episodes of the season, except for the special, in one night despite initial plans for a weekly release.[9][3][a]
The series received critical acclaim, and was renewed for a second season on February 9, 2022;[10] the season premiere aired on April 1, 2024,[11] with the rest of the season beginning to air on May 13.[12][13]
The series follows the day-to-day lives and misadventures of a business dedicated to bringing happiness to its customers. A quartet of employees, optimistic Pim, cynical Charlie, deadpan Allan, and minute Glep, along with their eccentric superior Mr. Boss, try to help out the troubled people who call their company's hotline; this usually proves to be more challenging than anticipated due to the often deep-seated nature of their clients' problems.
Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||
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First aired | Last aired | |||
1 | 9 | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | August 6, 2022 (2022-08-06) | |
2 | 8[18] | April 1, 2024 (2024-04-01) | TBA |
No. overall | No.in season | Title | Animation directed/led by | Storyboarded by | Original air date [19][a] | US viewers (millions) | |
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1 | 1 | "Desmond's Big Day Out" | Jake Ganz | Zach Hadel & Michael Cusack | April 1, 2020 (2020-04-01) (April Fools' Day preview) January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) (series premiere) | 0.31[20] | |
Pim and Charlie are called to help Desmond, a suicidal man who keeps a gun to his head at all times. He cheers up a little when taken to an amusement park but goes on a nihilistic rant causing the optimistic Pim to have a paralyzing existential crisis. Meanwhile, Allan finds the office is infested by small creatures called "bliblie’s". When the Friends come back to the office with Desmond, they find the office overrun with the bliblies crucifying Allan. Desmond kills a bliblie, finally finding joy and inspiring him to start a pest control service. | |||||||
2 | 2 | "Mr. Frog" | Georgia Kriss | David Hootselle | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.31[20] | |
The illustrious career of famed celebrity Mr. Frog is put in jeopardy after he attempts to eat a TMZ reporter. Pim and Charlie are tasked with rehabilitating Frog; first, the two try to get him to quit drugs and have him donate money to the city (which goes awry when Frog accidentally slices off the hands of the city comptroller during the ceremony), then by getting him to use "sleeping pills" given to him by Charlie, only for a lucid Mr. Frog to say something extremely offensive on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, causing his career to be irreparably damaged. Glep is hired as Frog's replacement on his television show, but the show's ratings-obsessed producer finds his ordinary behavior too "toxic" and forces him to tone himself down. The show's audience reacts with disgust to the reboot during its filming. Frog then appears in the studio to apologize and ends up eating the producer for refusing to rehire him, getting the public's love back and becoming rich enough to host the show himself.
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3 | 3 | "Shrimp's Odyssey" | Georgia Kriss | Jakub Zieba | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.30[20] | |
A preview asks the audience to vote whether a new character "Smormu" is added to the show. Pim and Charlie are called to help Shrimp, a reclusive and awkward gamer who has recently broken up with his girlfriend Shrimpina. Charlie attempts to make him look more presentable and believes Shrimp should move on while Pim, having met "Shrimpina", sets up a blind date for her with "her secret admirer". Initially intending to reunite Shrimp and Shrimpina, Pim instead falls in love with her and tries to steal the date, but sees Charlie with a miserable Shrimp and reluctantly introduces "Shrimpina" to Shrimp. However, the woman Pim located was not Shrimpina, and was in fact a complete stranger named Jennyfer. Shrimp and Jennyfer fall in love anyways, leaving a heartbroken Pim with Smormu - who had been voted in by the audience - attempting to cheer him up. A post-credits scene shows that Smormu was later beaten to death.
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4 | 4 | "A Silly Halloween Special" | Georgia Kriss | Michael Dockery & Jason Kruse | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.25[20] | |
Before the episode, a Robert Stack like host comments on the horrors of the unknown. Pim is tasked for retrieving fire wood for the company's Halloween party but gets lost and is attacked by a demonic forest creature. It chases him back to the office where the partygoers mistake its skin tone for blackface and burn it to death while eating its remains, Mr. Boss thanking Pim for "saving" Halloween. The live-action host concludes that the greatest horrors come from the mind, when a cop suddenly arrives telling him to move and revealing he is not wearing pants.
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5 | 5 | "Who Violently Murdered Simon S. Salty?" | Bob Dorian (uncredited) | Mark Sheard | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.23[20] | |
Getting dinner at a Salty's fast food restaurant, Pim and Charlie find founder Simon S. Salty dead in a back room. They quickly call the police, only to be told they had to move the murder investigation division to a separate company due to budget cuts; they then get a call from an on-vacation Mr. Boss revealing they, in fact, were the police's new division. They then interrogate his team of living mascots, all of whom display alarmingly unhinged behavior. Eventually they recover security footage from a discontinued "century egg" mascot, finding that while everyone was recorded having attacked Salty, he had ultimately died in the first place of a heart attack from his own unhealthy food (ironically while eating what he said would be his last burger before changing his lifelong eating habits) and that all of his mascots had separately attempted to kill him for their own reasons, unaware that they were attacking a corpse. The mascots leave the restaurant and immediately begin to cause chaos. In a post-credits scene, the Friends bury the discontinued mascot in China as he requested, only for Charlie to dig him back up when Pim wonders what he tasted like.
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6 | 6 | "Enchanted Forest" | Georgia Kriss | Jakub Zieba | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.21[20] | |
A princess of the nearby Enchanted Forest calls the Smiling Friends to help her smile for a portrait. Pim and Charlie accept, only for them to get sidetracked by a hobbit-esque forest dweller named Mip. Charlie undertakes several quests despite his apathy towards it beforehand, causing Pim to accidentally kill Mip in a jealous struggle. Remorseful, he and Charlie take the box Mip wanted to give to the princess to honor his memory, only for her to reveal Mip was her stalker and that the box is a bomb, which she throws out the window before it would explode and kill them all. Nonetheless, the princess smiles upon learning of Mip's demise. In a post-credits scene, back at the office, Charlie has an allergic reaction to a "potion" Mip had urged him to drink on a quest, claiming it was a cure for headaches.
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7 | 7 | "Frowning Friends" | Bob Dorian (uncredited) | Michael Harris | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.21[20] | |
A rival company called the "Frowning Friends," run by a pair of lookalikes named Grim and Gnarly moves in across the street and is extremely successful at spreading gloom. Grim and Gnarly besmirch the Smiling Friends' reputation when they begin making the town miserable, and Pim and Charlie's attempts to reverse the situation prove feeble. As the company's profits plummet, the Boss has a psychotic break. He attempts to assassinate Grim, causing him to beg for his life in front of his supporters, revealing his nihilistic worldview to be a fraud and causing the Frowning Friends to shut down. The Boss convinces Grim and Gnarly to smile for the first time, only for them to be killed by passing "Renaissance men" on horseback, to the consternation of Pim and Charlie.
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8 | 8 | "Charlie Dies and Doesn't Come Back" | Bob Dorian (uncredited) | David Hootselle | January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) | 0.22[20] | |
On Christmas Eve, Pim and Charlie are tasked with fetching a Christmas tree. They argue about the latter's negative attitude until a Christmas tree falls on Charlie and gruesomely kills him. He awakens in Hell, finding it frozen over because Satan is suffering from a bout of depression. After traveling to Satan's castle, Charlie strikes a deal with him; if he can make Satan smile, he must send him back to Earth. Satan realizes torturing Charlie gives him pleasure and tries to back out on their deal, only for God (Gilbert Gottfried) to save Charlie, reveal the whole thing was a test, and send him back to Earth, nude, during his funeral. An elderly Glep, narrating the episode the entire time, informs his grandson that the story is true and Christian Hell is actually real, wishing the audience a Merry Christmas.
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9 | 9 | "The Smiling Friends Go to Brazil!" | Paul Ter Voorde | Michael Dockery, Michael Harris & Mark Sheard | August 6, 2022 (2022-08-06) | 0.27[21] | |
The Smiling Friends arrive at the Brazilian airport, ready to unload at the hotel, however Pim forgot to book the hotel, thinking it was Allan's duty. He calls the hotel to try and book, but the hotel tells him that they are fully booked as Mardi Gras is currently occurring. The crew get seated at an airport restaurant and try to figure out where to go. They call The Boss to try and get some help, but he has nothing. Ultimately, the gang accepts that they chose a bad time to come to Brazil and head to catch the next flight back home, unaware of a plane that's about to crash into a mountain in the background. This entire aforementioned sequence of events is presented as a single shot.
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No. overall | No.in season | Title [22][23] | Directed by | Storyboarded by | Original air date | US viewers (millions) | |
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10 | 1 | "Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4K (Anniversary Director's Cut)" | Paul Ter Voorde | James Cunningham, Michael Cusack, Michael Dockery & Zach Hadel | April 1, 2024 (2024-04-01) | N/A | |
Pim and Allan try to help washed-up video game mascot Gwimbly by getting his parent company to make him a new game. The CEO refuses and they decide to make the game themselves, leaving him enraged that they are using his intellectual property without his permission. As he hunts them with the company's new game mascot, Troglor (stylized as TΓOGLOΓ), the trio discover that Gwimbly's nemesis is busy with his family life and his sidekick, Mr. Millipede, had died of a fentanyl overdose. James, Gwimbly's violent and burly fanboy, breaks into the Smiling Friends office after the latter accidentally doxxes the building via a Cameo call and forces Charlie to do increasingly degrading things to make him smile, culminating in him tearing Charlie's nose off. As the CEO chases Pim, Allan and Gwimbly into the office, James kills him. Pleased by the murder, James smiles and leaves, while Gwimbly and Troglor join a Super Smash Bros-esque crossover fighting game, with Mr. Boss also joining as a playable character. In a post-credits scene, James laments over driving Charlie away, believing Charlie to be the first person to care about him.
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11 | 2 | "Mr. President" | Tina Tomar | Michael Cusack, Michael Dockery & Zach Hadel | May 13, 2024 (2024-05-13) | N/A | |
Pim and Charlie get a call from the concurrently running and very unpopular President of the United States, the unhygienic and unintelligent Jimble (Mike Bocchetti), asking them for help in winning the new election. He is struggling to run against Mr. Frog, who is launching a smear campaign against him. Pim and Charlie unsuccessfully help him try to win more votes and a higher approval rating, such as helping him set up a speech, where he soils himself on stage. President Jimble proceeds to make it harder for Pim and Charlie as he crashes the economy by trying to help make everyone rich, and by establishing a foreign policy with an infamous dictator that has committed genocide against an entire race of people, whom he was supposed to condemn. Charlie walks out in frustration and accidentally discovers a secret society of worms in the White House basement that are trying to sabotage the vote in favor of Mr. Frog, and accidentally persuades them into supporting President Jimble instead to his discontent. A saddened Jimble admits his shortcomings at the Presidential Debate, nearly winning the election. However, a singular vote submitted by Glep causes Mr. Frog to win the election as the President Elect anyway, causing everyone extreme frustration until Glep explains himself. In a post-credits scene, Jimble relaxes at a beach.
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12 | 3 | "A Allan Adventure" | Paul Ter Voorde | Michael Dockery, Jake Ganz, Paul Georghiou, Paul Ter Voorde & Sheldon Vella | May 20, 2024 (2024-05-20) | N/A | |
Allan is tasked by Mr. Boss with buying more paperclips for the office with promises of a reward. He obtains the paperclips from an electronics store, but they are immediately stolen by DJ Spit, who takes off in a helicopter. The helicopter crashes, and before Allan can retrieve the paperclips from the wreckage, a Sasquatch emerges from the woods and takes them back to his cave. In the process of recovering them, Allan inadvertently awakens the ghost of a pirate, who steals them once again and proceeds to sail away on a ship. Allan pursues them, only to be swallowed by a massive Leviathan before being ejected from its blowhole. He washes ashore along with the paperclips, but opens the box to discover that all that is inside is a ransom note telling him to obtain the paperclips from an address he recognizes as his own apartment complex. There, he meets his landlord, who reveals that he orchestrated the entire escapade in an attempt to get Allan to smoke marijuana and play video games with him, threatening to detonate a bomb that will ravage the entire city if he refuses. Allan complies before using one of the paperclips to turn off the bomb. Ashamed, the landlord fatally stabs himself. Allan returns to the office with the paperclips in tow and is gifted a miniature figurine of Mr. Boss himself. Uninterested in keeping it, Allan gives it to Charlie instead.
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13 | 4 | "Erm, the Boss Finds Love?" | Unknown | TBA | May 27, 2024 (2024-05-27) | N/A | |
14 | 5 | "Brother's Egg" | Unknown | TBA | June 3, 2024 (2024-06-03) | N/A | |
15 | 6 | "Charlie, Pim, and Bill vs The Alien" | Unknown | TBA | June 10, 2024 (2024-06-10) | N/A | |
16 | 7 | "The Magical Red Jewel AKA Tyler Gets Fired" | TBA | TBA | June 17, 2024 (2024-06-17) | TBD | |
17 | 8 | "Pim Finally Turns Green" | TBA | TBA | June 24, 2024 (2024-06-24) | TBD |
Smiling Friends was created by animators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, noted for their individual successes as content creators for Newgrounds and YouTube. Already well-acquainted with each other online, the pair conceived the idea for the show in 2017 whilst dining at Gus's Chicken in Burbank, California, where Cusack, who is based in Melbourne, Australia,[24] was visiting at the time. Hadel stated in an interview that the pair's goal for the show was to base it around "a group of loveable characters, with a simple kind of concept, which we could take anywhere we wanted to." They settled upon the premise of a hotline for people who were unhappy, which became "the connective tissue that made it all click together." However, Hadel stated that although "the company is an important aspect of the show, it's really the springboard. We have episodes where it's not even about the job at all." The pair singled out South Park and Seinfeld as amongst the show's biggest influences. The duo developed the show's art style as a 50/50 blend of their own individual styles, though Cusack noted that his own drawings tend to go through a "final Zach gloss".[25][26] Early in development, the series went under the working title Little Helpers, with an entirely different cast.
Hadel and Cusack pitched the series to Adult Swim which subsequently greenlit production on the pilot in 2018. Hadel had previously attempted to sell his and Chris O'Neill's webseries Hellbenders to the network, but the project was not picked up while an independently produced pilot was shelved during production. Meanwhile, Cusack created the Rick and Morty short Bushworld Adventures which premiered during an April Fools stunt on the network in 2018, and also created the series YOLO: Crystal Fantasy which premiered on August 10, 2020.
The Smiling Friends pilot, which the pair consider the first official episode, aired on Adult Swim on April 1, 2020, to positive reviews[27] and became the most viewed episode of any show on the network's website.[10] The network subsequently ordered seven additional episodes in May 2021. Serving as showrunners, Hadel and Cusack were hands on in all aspects of production, from writing, storyboards, character designs, final animation and sound design, which the duo considered unusual for an adult animated series. According to Hadel, the budget for the entire first season was equivalent to that of a single episode of Family Guy (an estimated US$2,000,000).[26][28]
The show is primarily animated in Australia by Princess Bento Studio, which is a joint venture between the Australian media company Princess Pictures and the American animation studio Bento Box Entertainment. The studio has additionally worked on Cusack's other animated series, such as season 2 of YOLO and the Hulu original series Koala Man.
Adult Swim renewed the series for a second season on February 9, 2022.[29]
On May 18, 2022, Hadel announced on Twitter that a special would be released sometime before the second season.[30] A listing for an episode titled "The Smiling Friends Go to Brazil!" appeared on Rotten Tomatoes on July 21, and was confirmed by Hadel and Cusack at Adult Swim's San Diego Comic Con panel the next day. It aired on August 6, 2022. Lead-in promotion to the episode purposely suggested a more conventional vacation episode than what was actually presented, with a poster of the Smiling Friends relaxing on a Brazilian beach,[31] and a summary suggesting that the episode would be about the gang relaxing in a beautiful Brazilian beach town.[32]
During Adult Swim's panel at New York Comic Con in October 2023, it was confirmed that the second season would premiere in 2024, and would include a variety of animation styles, such as stylized 2D, 3D, stop motion, and live-action content.[33]
The pilot initially premiered on Adult Swim in the United States and Canada on April 1, 2020, during the network's April Fools premiere event.[34]
The series officially premiered on January 10, 2022, at 12:00 a.m. with the episodes "Mr. Frog" and "Shrimp's Odyssey". The rest of the series was then broadcast in an unannounced premiere marathon in its entirety starting from 12:30 a.m. followed by a repeat at 3:00 a.m. The episodes would re-air with two separate episodes airing in the intended premiere slots for the following 4 weeks afterwards, including another marathon on the night of February 13, most likely to pick up viewers tuning away from the end of Super Bowl LVI, as well as to promote the series' availability through HBO Max and the recent news of renewal for the series.[35]
In Canada, the series premiered simultaneously on Adult Swim with new episodes airing weekly. The series later premiered on E4 in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2022, and Adult Swim in France on January 24, 2022.[36][37]
The series was made available to stream on HBO Max in the United States and StackTV in Canada on February 9, 2022.[38][39]
The second season began with the season premiere airing on April Fools Day 2024 during the annual Adult Swim April Fools Day prank, with three episodes from season 1, remade with various types of puppetry, shown prior. The remaining second season episodes were premiered beginning May 12.[12][13]
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released the first season on DVD and Blu-ray on August 29, 2023.[40]
Lex Briscuso of New York Magazine praised the show's tone and animation style, particularly its use of "unnerving close-up cuts and creepy supporting character design".[41] Margaret Lyons of The New York Times praised the show's humor and compared it favorably to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.[42] Noah Dominguez of Comic Book Resources also made this comparison, and additionally praised the show as "unique" and commended its "bizarre humor" and "surrealist tone."[27]
after the special puppet episodes, Adult Swim sneakily premiered the first episode of the new season