Review: Smiling Friends “Brother’s Egg”

Don’t look now but we’re halfway through the second season of Adult Swim’s Smiling Friends and this week we fuck around with the one and only Jared from Subway…kinda…but not really.

So, who is the one person on planet Earth that could possibly be the brother of a character named Professor Daniel Psychotic? Welp, that answer is Canada’s own Joel Haver who guest stars as “Doug Psychotic” and does so as a rotoscope-animated character opposite the more horrific-looking Daniel. Watching these two fight it out amongst themselves for a few minutes may seem like something to take for granted, but to actually animate that sequence looked really challenging. Fortunately, Cusack and Hadel stick the landing here even if there were a couple of flaws both in the aesthetic and even in the sound-mixing, the fact that they even pulled that sequence off was truly impressive.

Small potatoes really when you consider some big ideas happening this week. The TV show playing in the background needs to be explained quite a bit more, and I’m conflicted whether or not I prefer Boss as a dog or as a human. I would’ve also liked to have spent more time with the homunculus and whether or not there were any ramifications for bringing whatever the hell that thing was to life. Perhaps in a future episode??

Regardless, Smiling Friends continues a strong second season and the technical flair that these guys are showing off on a weekly basis is getting to be quite a bit more adventurous. Granted, the results aren’t always home runs, but these guys keep swinging and I’m not even sure Mike or Zach even like baseball.