Smiling Friends

Smiling Friends
Genre	Black comedy Surreal humor Absurdism
Created by	Zach Hadel Michael Cusack
Written by	Zach Hadel Michael Cusack
Directed by	Zach Hadel Michael Cusack
Starring	Zach Hadel Michael Cusack Marc M.
Theme music composer	Chris O'Neill
Ending theme	"Brown Smile"
Composer	Brendan Caulfield
Country of origin	United States Australia
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	8
Production
Executive producers	Mike Cowap Emma Fitzsimons Ollie Green Walter Newman
Producer	Laura Dimaio
Editors	Scott Henry Lukas Xuereb
Running time	11 minutes
Production companies	Goblin Caught on Tape Williams Street
Animation studio	Princess Bento Studio
Original release
Network	Adult Swim
Release	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) – present (present)

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 a small charity dedicated to making people smile.

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: Crystal Fantasy. On May 19, 2021, Adult Swim ordered a full season that was initially set to premiere in late 2021. 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. The first season contains 8 episodes, including the pilot. The first season eventually premiered on January 10, 2022, with Adult Swim airing all episodes of the season in one night despite initial plans for a weekly release.

Smiling Friends has received acclaim from both audiences and critics for its characterization, humor, writing, and integration of mixed media including 2D animation, 3D animation, stop motion, and live action. The series was renewed for a second season on February 9, 2022.

Premise

Smiling Friends Inc. is a small charity, headquartered in a city resembling Philadelphia, whose mission is to bring happiness to the world. The series follows the day-to-day lives and misadventures of its representatives—cynical Charlie and cheerful, optimistic Pim—as they try to help out the troubled people who call their charity's hotline, though this task usually proves to be more challenging than anticipated due to the often deep-seated nature of their clients' problems.

Cast

Main

• Michael Cusack as Pim / Alan / Various
• Zach Hadel as Charlie Dompler / Glep / Various
• Marc M. as Mr. Boss

Recurring

• David Dore as Party Bro / Forest Demon
• Mick Lauer as Bug / Guy at the Gym / Crazy Cup / Elf / additional voices
• Erica Lindbeck as Assistant / Jennifer the Barista / Mustard / The Princess
• Chris O’Neill as Smormu / additional voices
• Hans van Harken as Jimmy Fallon / Priest / Hell Faces / additional voices
• Rodrigo Huerta as Guy In Line / Jacob the Goblin / additional voices
• Joshua Tomar as Centaur / Grandpa Glep / Cop / additional voices
• Harry Partridge as Smormu Announcer / Grease / 3D Squelton

Guest

• Mike Stoklasa as Desmond / himself
• Finn Wolfhard as Man Living in Wall / various Bliblies
• Nick Wolfhard as Graham Nelly / various Bliblies
• Tom Fulp as Alpha
• Jane Badler as Celebrity Show Host
• David Firth as Shrimp
• Dylan "Chills" as Patron
• Perry Caravello as Simon S. Salty
• Monica Franco as Charlie's girlfriend
• Jim Knobeloch as Mystery Show Host
• Clyde Boraine as Policeman
• Lyle Burruss as Mr. Man
• Gilbert Gottfried as God

Episodes

No.	Title	Animation directed/lead by	Storyboard by	Original air date	US viewers (millions)
1	"Desmond's Big Day Out"	Jake Ganz	Zach Hadel & Michael Cusack	April 1, 2020 (2020-04-01) (April Fools Day) January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10) (official)	0.31
Pim and Charlie are called to help Desmond, a suicidal man who keeps a gun pressed to his head at all times. He eventually cheers up a little when taken to an amusement park, but he goes on a depressing ramble that causes the optimistic Pim to suffer a paralyzing existential crisis. Alan finds his piece of cheese missing and follows a trail into the wall, where he is met with an infestation of small creatures called "bliblies." Upon returning, the Friends and Desmond find the office overrun, and Desmond experiences pleasure when he kills a bliblie, inspiring him to start an extermination service and boosting his spirits. The episode ends with a random CGI alien bursting through the television quickly shouting "hello, thank you for watching!" as Alan and Charlie scream in a panic.
2	"Mr. Frog"	Georgia Kriss	David Hootselle	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.31
Famed celebrity Mr. Frog's career is put in jeopardy after he attempts to eat a TMZ reporter. Pim and Charlie try to help him by getting him to quit drugs, but he ends up saying something extremely offensive on Jimmy Fallon while high that irreparably damages his career. Glep is hired as his replacement, but the show's producer finds his ordinary behavior too "toxic" and forces him to tone himself down. The audience reacts with disgust to the new version, as Frog suddenly appears in the studio to apologize, but ends up eating the producer, getting the public's love back and becoming rich enough to host the show himself.
3	"Shrimp's Odyssey"	Georgia Kriss	Jakub Zieba	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.30
A preview asks the audience to vote on whether or not the character "Smormu" is added to the Smiling Friends. Pim and Charlie are tasked with helping Shrimp, a reclusive gamer who has recently lost his girlfriend Shrimpina. Pim goes to set her and Shrimp up on a blind date at her place of work, but ends up falling in love with her. Meanwhile, Charlie tries to help Shrimp look more presentable for the date, but to little avail. Pim tries to take the date for himself, but feels guilt when he sees Charlie and a miserable Shrimp nearby. He shows Shrimpina to Shrimp, only to realize that she is not actually Shrimpina, but she falls for Shrimp regardless. Smormu, revealed to have been added, dances for Pim to try and cheer him up. A brief post-credits scene shows that Smormu has died.
4	"A Silly Halloween Special"	Georgia Kriss	Michael Dockery & Jason Kruse	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.25
In a live-action sequence, a man commentates the horrors of the unknown. At the company Halloween party, The Boss sends Pim into the nearby woods to collect wood, only for him to be attacked by a forest demon. It chases him back to the building, where the partygoers mistake its skin tone for blackface and brutally attack and kill it, The Boss using its body for the wood he needed. Back in live-action, the man concludes the greatest horrors come from the mind, only to be told to move by a cop and revealing he is not wearing pants.
5	"Who Violently Murdered Simon S. Salty?"	Not Credited	Mark Sheard	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.23
Getting dinner at a Salty's fast food restaurant, Pim and Charlie find founder Simon S. Salty dead in a back room. They interrogate his team of mascots and eventually 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.
6	"Enchanted Forest"	Georgia Kriss	Jakub Zieba	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.21
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 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 at the window before it can 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.
7	"Frowning Friends"	Not Credited	Michael Harris	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.21
A rival company called the "Frowning Friends," run by "Grim and Gnarly" dedicated to spreading gloom, starts to besmirch the Smiling Friends' name when they begin making the town miserable. As the company's profits plummet, a psychotic Boss attempts to assassinate Grim and causes 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.
8	"Charlie Dies and Doesn't Come Back"	Not Credited	David Hootselle	January 10, 2022 (2022-01-10)	0.22
On Christmas Eve, Pim and Charlie argue about the latter's negative attitude until a Christmas tree falls on and kills him. He awakens in Hell, finding it frozen over because Satan is suffering from a bout of depression, and 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 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.

Production

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, 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, and attributed its use of naturalistic, conversational dialogue to Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Home Movies. For the show's art style, the duo described it as a blend of their own individual styles, though Cusack noted that his own drawings tend to go through a "final Zach gloss".

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 fellow animator 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 critical acclaim and became the most viewed episode of any show on the network's website. 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.)

Adult Swim renewed the series for a second season on February 9, 2022.

Broadcast

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.

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.

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.

The series was made available to stream on HBO Max in the United States and StackTV in Canada on February 9th.

External links

• Smiling Friends at IMDb
• Smiling Friends at Adult Swim