Blu-Ray Review: Smiling Friends Season One

If you haven’t read our review of the Smiling Friends season one, you can do so here. But, for anyone who is not familiar with the franchise, Smiling Friends is an adult animated comedy created by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack which revolves around a small company that is doing its best in spreading happiness. For employees Pim and Charlie (voiced by Mike and Zach respectively), though, the profundity of the clientele’s problems are always way beyond them.

The Blu-Ray home release comes with nine episodes of uncensored animated goodness that will most likely be a benchmark for Adult Swim’s future. Already, the success of the show has afforded Cusack additional seasons of other series like YOLO and maybe more seasons of Koala Man for Hulu. That said, I always find it odd when companies like WB Discovery maybe don’t invest a tad more in the budget for home releases of freshmen series, and this new Blu-Ray is a perfect case of that. For $25 (at the time of this writing), you get the aforementioned episodes with commentaries, everything uncensored, however the lack of additional special features leaves a lot to be desired. No giveaways, no featurettes, or animatics, and I think you need to have that kind of stuff to REALLY make a home release like this something you HAVE to get. Recently, Warner Home Entertainment released new Blu-Rays for Metalocalypse and Venture Bros., both have fabulous offerings as part of the home release. For Smiling Friends season one, not a whole bunch.

Definitely watch Smiling Friends however you can because the show is excellent. If you’re of the variety that likes to buy the episodes individually on Prime Video or something like that, you do save a few bucks and get the commentaries which is nice, but if this price goes any closer to the MSRP of $29.99, you might be better off just buying the season outright from an e-tailer which right now is going for $15 on Prime. Is the extra $10 worth the episode commentaries? It’s really a dead heat.