Season Review: Smiling Friends Season Two

Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel’s Smiling Friends has been renewed for a third season already, which is good, but for this series to really flourish it really needs to get additional support from WB Discovery which has had a growing disconnect with supporting their creators and producers. For example, if you go and tell two guys, “make some holiday episodes” and then not air them during the holidays that they were intended, that tells me you’re an Adult Swim network that doesn’t care about its producers. If you’re also going to be an Adult Swim network that allows the release of episodes for airtime that have not very good audio mixes in the form of “Charlie Pim And Bill Vs. The Alien” and “The Magical Red Jewel (AKA Tyler Gets Fired)”, that tells me that SOMEBODY dropped the ball in post-production, but also so did the network for not checking these episodes and letting somebody know before they premiere.

For those that don’t know, Smiling Friends follows the employees of a small company dedicated to bringing happiness to a bizarre yet colorful world. The Cusack/Hadel joint features the co-creators voicing a majority of the characters most notably the employees of the Smiling Friends company which includes the likes of Pim and Allan (Cusack) and Charlie and Glep (Hadel). Zach and Mike cut their teeth in the animation industry making shorts for Newgrounds so it’s no surprise that the duo would bring with them a number of Newgrounds’ most notable alumni which largely comes to pass not just in the main and recurring casts but all over the guest casts as well. Smiling Friends season two is no exception with the likes of Marc M., Oney, David Firth, and a slew of others a part of the fray.

The animation studios behind the series, Studio Yotta and Princess Bento Studio, deserve a big hearty shout out because Smiling Friends’ aesthetic is one of the most frenetic and really showcases a wild-west approach more indicative of Adult Swim’s yesteryear. Most episodes end with some sort of disaster that may or may not kill all of the cast but it’s an episodic series so Mike and Zach continue to go nuts and we’re all better for it, but when you’re on a show airing on a network that is owned by a company that continues to disrespect its creators, how long do you really want to work for that network? Here’s hoping Adult Swim can get its act together and maybe try a little quality assurance for their franchises.