on smiling friends

At halfway through season 3, we're also, more or less, at the mid point for the run of Smiling Friends.^[1] We're also at a point where it's become clear, based on the sheer volume and tempo of the promotional material and bumpers being pumped out, that Adult Swim now considers Smiling Friends their 'flagship'^[2] show for the 2020s, filling the same space Rick & Morty and Aqua Teen Hunger Force filled in the 2010s and 2000s, respectively.^[3]

It's everywhere. You've seen the gifs, the still frames as a sort of shorthand. You kiss your dad on the mouth?; you hear it in Charlie's voice. Why is it the [AS] flagship show for this decade? How is it still so funny, so familiar? How does it still manage to catch us off guard? What makes it work?

A good place to start, I think, is what we've seen of season 3. For shows that have made it this far, now is typically around the time showrunners and writers have found their footing, gotten to know their characters. It's an inflection point; by now (hopefully) the show has matured, grown into itself, past the sketchy outlines of its original concept. It's also around the time where showrunners should probably start asking themselves: well, alright, where do we go from here?

I think that Season 3 so far has indicated that Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack have thought these questions through carefully, and that they know where the heart of the show lies, and how to keep it beating. What is the heart of the show, anyways?

Well, let's

take a look:

The transition of South Korea-based Saerom Animation from additional animation to primary animation (with ZAM providing additional animation/composite/post-/production) has felt impressively seamless; a testament, I think, to how precise and consistent Hadel and Cusack's vision is, and to the strength of the visual direction and coordination from the top down.

But in everything this season, from the props to the lighting, the meticulous attention to detail in every element of production, is on full display. Silly Samuel's animation^[4] is the heart of his episode; it's bouncy and dynamic and just straight up fun, overflowing with energy and detail, the kind of meticulous character work at the heart of Smiling Friends. And the live-action elements are, as with the previous seasons, well-cast and -directed; Creed Bratton, in shorts and green body paint, delivers a compelling, persuasive performance as Mr. Frog's father. Smiling Friends tends to lean into the juxtaposition between bouncy, richly detailed 3D/stop motion (Silly Samuel, Rotten, Mother Nature, 3D Squelton) and live-action against the flatly colored, simple designs of the Smiling Friends. After all, Smiling Friends' humor is built on these absurd, drastic, and, well, silly contrasts.

Part of what makes Smiling Friends work is that Hadel and Cusack have a musician's ear for the rhythm of comedy: they know when to hold a beat until it gets unbearable (e.g. Mr. Frog pulling Pim's eyeball out; the post-credit scene in "Mole Man"). Cusack and Hadel's comedy has a manic, punchy quality to it, a tendency towards extreme juxtapositions. It comes through in the animation: going back to this idea of contrast, between the simple style, the frenetic motion, animated on ones with no in-betweens, and fluid, gorgeously rendered animation.

The standard production pipeline for animated comedies is: writer's room comes up with a script; then animators figure out how to board and execute it^[5]. Cusack and Hadel are, before everything else, animators: they write with a clear vision for exactly how they want a joke or scene boarded. This is the magic of Smiling Friends: an understanding that the animation is inextricable from the comedy, that they are best built in tandem.

You might have noticed by now a certain pattern to the comedy in Smiling Friends. It tends to be: insane escalation, followed by an immediate pulling back to realistic dialogue/response (see, for example, Professor Psychotic's monologue followed by his brother bursting in; Troglor shooting a hole into the floor; the Princess of the Enchanted Forest throwing the bomb out the window, etc. etc. etc.) This sets up a certain rhythm and a certain anticipation. It catches you off guard, keeps you wrong-footed; and this is what shocks and delights us, what makes us laugh. This is what I mean when I say Cusack and Hadel have a musician's ear, or maybe more specifically a jazz musician's—a certain intuitive sense for how to play with dissonance; how to leap between key changes and time signatures; how to improvise.^[6]

David Firth (Shrimp, Fillmore) returns to voice Moleman in episode 3 ("Mole Man"). The desperate, feverish pitch of his delivery is perfect. It's a demonstration of Firth's range, especially compared to his pitchless monotone as Shrimp, but also the exacting voice casting and direction that makes these absurd characters in this absurd world feel so human. The incisive, attentive way Hadel and Cusack write dialogue, the little verbal tics and the awkward, fumbling, imprecise way people talk to each other, set against this bizarre world, these strange creatures: that's the contrast; that makes it all work.

Contrast: Allan and Glep being thrown into walls, sledded down stairs, grotesquely inflated via garden hose; beautifully, fluidly animated, against the frenzied energy in the kids' movement, animated with minimal if any in-betweens. And the live-action elements; both the Jesse Ventura puppet and his live-action counterpart, are well-executed, charming and idiosyncratic and fun the same way the 3D elements are, especially when set against the usual style. The character animation/acting is fantastic, especially when Pim and Charlie are recoiling from Moleman, his casual, grotesque violations.

a question

Hadel and Cusack, you may have noticed, are careful to avoid taking any sort of legible stance on anything. See, for example, "Frowning Friends" (S1E6): you might start out thinking the show is skewering Grim and Gnarly's nihilism in an uncharacteristically direct way, similar to Rick and Morty's critiques of Rick's nihilism. The hypocrisy at the heart of it: nothing matters and we're all going to die, Grim and Rick claim, until they're faced with the prospect of dying, at which point all of a sudden they start crying and pleading and bargaining for a life they just claimed was worth nothing at all. Grim pees his pants. It seems like a pretty straightforward critique, all the way up to the point where Grim and Gnarly suddenly get shot and killed, just as they're learning to appreciate living: ironically, cynically proving their point.^[7] It's a rhetorical tightrope that Hadel and Cusack walk with remarkable ease.

"Mole Man" follows a similar pattern. At first blush, it's a straightforward critique of the strange, intense, voyeuristic—yes, 'parasocial'—way we watch people we imagine we know, that we imagine are our friends.^[8] We can see Them; They can’t see Us. And when They do see Us, we need them, desperately, to validate what we see as the most hideous parts of ourselves.

Their treatment of Mole Man is unsparing: he's grotesque, twisted by his obsession, utterly deranged and pathetic in his desperation for Charlie and Pim's approval, his attempts to replicate and insert himself into their dynamic; he has a disgusting penis.

But he ends up with a family and a beautiful wife who adores his penis, which, as it turns out, isn't disgusting at all; Allan even thinks it looks delicious. You thought there would be a coherent message at the end? Think again. If there's any point to a Smiling Friends episode, it's that there's no point at all.

Cusack and Hadel are allergic to Making any sort of Statement. Their resistance to judgment, you might think, is impish, teasing, them dangling the answer just out of reach; just another way of pulling back, of playing with our expectations. See what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, whatever you think we're saying, we are; the joke is on you.

Actually, they don't have anything to dangle, at least not the answer to the question at the heart of Smiling Friends, at the heart of everything: can we find joy, meaning, anything at all, in this stupid car-crash world? Nobody has the answer. Their aversion to any kind of moral or message, in this light, is honest (not to mention convenient). The only statement that Smiling Friends has to make is basically a shrug: we don't know what this all means; it's not our job to tell you; you'll have to figure it out yourself. All we can do is make you laugh.

"Mole Man", in other words, is another 'standard' Smiling Friends episode. By standard, I mean a theme that at this point is starting to feel familiar: lonely, isolated, obsessive young men, usually mirroring in some way Pim/Charlie's implied insecurities, angry at or resigned to a world that's left them behind, men who get miraculously saved [or otherwise taken care of] by circumstances invariably out of everyone's control, a function of the chaotic, bizarre world they live in. ^[9]

You might feel a bit of deja vu, watching this episode: A/B plot that converges at the end; pathetic, disgusting guy (voiced by Firth) meets a beautiful woman (voiced by Erica Lindbeck) whose only real narrative purpose is to be inexplicably and irresistibly attracted to him, neatly solving all of his problems within the last minute of the episode.

The pattern is hard to miss. Women in Smiling Friends are Snapchat Bitmoji. Their narrative function is narrowly defined: they are the reward at the end (Shrimp, Mole Man); the setpiece, illustrating just how pathetic and/or insane these men are (Mip with the Princess, Professor Psychotic with the waitress); the impersonal, malignant force (Satan's daughter, the Witch(es)).

Is it deliberate? Cusack's other work, YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, indicates he's more than capable of writing women thoughtfully, genuinely—that he's more than capable of writing women as, well, people.^[10] And given Hadel and Cusack's precise control over every other contrast in the show, it's reasonable to assume this is intentional, too.

There's also Hadel's tendency towards intentionally stupid and corny endings. It's a meta-function of the short runtime, but also (of course) in that anticlimactic Norm MacDonald-y way, where you laugh less because the punchline is funny, and more because he seems to take so much pleasure in it, in all that setup, building all that anticipation, for this? Yes; you're the punchline.

And the heart of the show is, after all, Pim and Charlie, and the lonely, angry men they're trying to help; we see everything from their vantage point. It's Hadel and Cusack poking fun at the obsessive, maladjusted men they seem preoccupied with, who think the Perfect Woman will fix everything. That's the joke.

Though, to be clear, it's mostly a matter of convenience. Hadel and Cusack voice something like 80% of the characters themselves. The world of Smiling Friends is, practically speaking, a world of men, because it's easier, cheaper, and, frankly, more fun for them to voice men. It's a world that reflects where Hadel and Cusack came from, the sweaty, desperate Newgrounds guys that surrounded them, that Hadel spent years living with.

So the shallow treatment of women is baked into the show's DNA. It's a function of its creators and where they came from, their nostalgic affection for a deeply male world. Which is not to say they pull their punches when it comes to their portrayal of these hideous, pathetic, lonely men. Just the opposite, actually. The men in Smiling Friends are written incisively, carefully, ultimately empathetically. The implication behind Smiling Friends' treatment of these men is that their flaws and problems are interesting, their pathologies worth examining; they're repulsive; they're human beings. It's not a treatment they extend to their women. Maybe the disgusting freaks and one-dimensional women of Smiling Friends are a thoughtful, genuine critique of the way these guys view women and the world. Maybe it's a side effect of where Hadel and Cusack came from, the boy's club of Newgrounds, that they're more comfortable writing men, plus also a certain fondness for the neurotic freaks they love to make fun of. Maybe it's just cheaper. Or maybe they straight up just hate women. Which one is it? Well, how generous are you feeling?

But why keep coming back to this refrain? Why the preoccupation with these hideous men? Some kind of pro-/anti-incel agenda? Any kind of agenda at all?

Because we can't escape them; because Hadel and Cusack can't escape them either; because these men are the world we live in now. The United States Government is currently being run by Poasters. And not even particularly good ones. Hadel and Cusack's interest in disenfranchised men^[11] is our collective interest; if Rick and Morty was a reflection of the cultural zeitgeist of the 2010s, an examination of a certain Reddit pop-atheism/-nihilism^[12], Smiling Friends is a reflection of the strange new world we live in now, where political, social, and economic power is consolidated in the hands of a group of neurotic, pathetic, sniveling men who never managed to escape the lockers they were once shoved into; whose humor is informed by Reddit reposts of decade-old greentexts (that were already corny when they were first posted in 2014); who radiate a stunted, repulsive desperation to make up for lost time, to be cool—to be liked.

Smiling Friends doesn't mock these guys, not the way South Park would, anyways. And it doesn't approach it the way Rick and Morty does either, i.e. the universe doesn't care about your pain. Smiling Friends takes a different tack: it doesn't pull its punches in its depiction of these grotesque men, but there's a strange tenderness, too, a certain mercy, in its treatment of them. Most of them get saved at the end. Mole Man gets a happy ending. The affection seeps in; of course it does; they can't help it. These are the men they know.

Empathy and revulsion. It might be all we have. The insane, chaotic world of Smiling Friends is, in the end, a reflection of our own. And these lonely, angry, desperate men that we share it with, men on the knife's edge of violence. Can we reach them? Can we help them? Is it even worth trying? Smiling Friends refuses to make that call. And they don't have to. After all, we find ourselves living in a world where everyone has a Statement to Make; where logic and justice don't apply; where nothing makes any sense. Can we at least make you smile?

something different?

Episode 4 ("Curse of the Green Halloween Witch") is the best episode in the season; it might be the best episode in the show. And it's not because they're finally getting Serious.

Or that it's a departure from precedent; in fact, "Curse of the Green Halloween Witch" is a reprise of their first Halloween episode ("A Silly Halloween Special", S1E4): Pim-centric; no discrete B-plot to distract from the horror played straight; and an intense, unbearable commitment to frying Pim under a magnifying glass. Because he's the heart: his innocence, his kindness, his relentless optimism in the face of it all. He just wants to give the witch a dime; he just wants to hold the flashlight; he just wants to help. And the world bearing down on him for it.

Where we depart from the previous Halloween episode is that everyone else is implicated, pulled into the vortex, the dominos are set up efficiently, elegantly: Allan ignoring him, Charlie taking credit for his pizza suggestion, The Boss body-checking him—nobody respects him—nobody —

And then it all goes wrong, and stays wrong. There are brief, sparing moments of levity, like Mr. Boss selling his mother's estate for a gaming PC, Pim opening the door on some guy shitting, Pyramid Head creeping into view—but the tempo of this episode is relentless. Hadel and Cusack don't pull back, don't let you breathe, not even for a second.

The horror of Charlie melting in the bathroom: the gorgeous, fluid animation^[13]. That small, subtle detail of Charlie's hand faltering towards his head in shock; Hadel's incredible, desperate delivery. And Cusack's performance as Pim. I don't have the words for it. Just go listen to it for yourself. You can feel the sheer joy of it, the heady pleasure of finally getting to go all out. Everyone, boarders, animators, VFX, sound designers, voice actors, ringing together like a tuning fork, sounding a perfect tone.

If Hadel, Cusack, or anyone on the team had let up for even a moment, this episode wouldn't have worked. It would have been an edgy, cute riff on creepypastas, Pim.exe or something, don't worry, we know that none of this is real, that nothing will change, that it'll all go back to normal the next episode.

But they don't let up. None of that sly, scared hedging, the falter at the cliff, the wink-wink-nudge, isn't this silly, that these blobs are killing each other. That old reliable crutch of ironic distance we've gotten so used to, the twee, Joss Whedonish unseriousness, these days deployed by writers incapable of the vulnerability that quality writing demands: that defensive reflex, recoiling preemptively from the quote retweets, the sneering mockery, because, deep down, they know their writing isn't strong enough to hold up the weight of its own sincerity.

Hadel and Cusack don't fall into this trap. They don't flinch. This episode is a demonstration of their absolute, unwavering belief in the team they've cultivated and the strength of their writing. It wouldn't work any other way. The qualities that make their comedy so good—an ear for timing, a keen, instinctive sense for when to escalate and when to ease off—transfer to horror with remarkable ease.

After all, horror and comedy, you know how it goes, are two sides of the same coin; the boundary between them is always thinner than you think. And the comedy, from the very beginning, has always been the contrast between bizarre, silly scenarios and the characters that are thrust into them: characters that are uncomfortably, painfully human; characters whose neuroses, fears, desires are taken seriously, written with intimate attention and care; this is what makes them feel familiar.

It's why we feel a low tug when everyone ignores Pim, talks over him, when The Boss shoulder-checks Pim, when Charlie snarls in Pim's face. So when Pim chokes Charlie out—when he staggers back against the wall in horror, the camera swooping dizzily along with him—and when his hysterical laugh rings in the room, in our ears—it's catharsis; it shocks us, it delights us. That frisson.

And Pim killing everyone: the way he stomps with childlike glee on the little Allenlings, that perfect perversion of his affection and care for tiny things; the brutal, terrible crack of him snapping Glep's neck with deliberate care; him dashing up to Mr. Boss with the barest amount of in-betweens, an effect we've been trained to associate with comedy; the way he laughs over Charlie's lifeless, melted body, and keeps laughing, as the building collapses on both of them, burying them together.

Take a look at the scene where Pim is standing over Glep, who is taped to the table, defenseless. For a minute Pim stares at him, his expression slack; for the first time he looks uncertain, almost scared. And then Glep vomits at him, and Pim snaps back into his grin: he's been given an excuse to kill him. The remarkable thing is that Pim still needs a reason to hurt Glep.

What makes the horror and the comedy work, despite the fact that all of this is happening because of a witch's curse, despite the serialized nature and bizarre world of Smiling Friends, despite us knowing what's going to happen at the end, is that Hadel and Cusack never compromise who we know these characters to be, not for anything, not even for a second. That's the thread that runs through everything; the emotional core that makes it all possible. The contrast, by which I mean the comedy, has been here all along: because by now we know these characters, we know the show. Set this episode against the others. That's the absurd contrast Hadel and Cusack delight in; that's the fun.

The end of episode 4, when we learn that it was all just a vision by the witch to scare them into giving her a dime—and the ridiculousness, not just of her doing all this for a dime, but her returning to her husband in their normal suburban house afterwards, sobbing into his arms, and him hesitantly asking her if she wouldn't mind still giving him that blowjob she promised him earlier. It's a release of pressure, them finally turning the valve, taking a breath. That release is only as pleasurable, as funny, as the tension that led up to it. And we feel that tension because we care about these characters; because in them we find something human, familiar.

There's a moment in Hadel and Cusack's interview on The Create Unknown, recorded shortly after the airing of the first season, when they're asked where they see the show going from here. Hadel responds simply, predictably, that their goal is to outdo themselves every season, to get sharper, funnier, better.

So far, they've succeeded. Will they go on to stick the landing?

If they do, this season will be an inflection point for more than Smiling Friends; it might be an inflection point for adult animation as a whole. The success of Smiling Friends is proof that independent animation is still alive, that it's still worth taking a chance on; that there are still new, exciting, incredible things to do with the medium; that there is still somewhere for independent artists and animators; that even in the endless, cynical churn of slop, there is still demand for art made with joy and passion and love; that the golden age of animation is still here, it's been here all along, it'll be here as long as we're still drawing; you can join us, if you'd like.

I don't know where Hadel and Cusack are going to take it from here, though it's a safe bet that it won't be where we expect. I can't wait to find out.

—

footnotes