Why Adult Swim’s ‘Smiling Friends’ Pilot Desperately Needs To Become A TV Series

 

For nearly twenty years Adult Swim’s programming block has prided itself in its against-the-grain programming. It’s been able to be a home for burgeoning talents who have been able to refine their skills and grow in the animation industry, much like the block’s very own reputation in becoming viewed as a legitimate destination for content that’s not just weird and different, but also incredibly accomplished. It’s been fascinating to see the different content creators that Adult Swim has held onto throughout the years and its periods of transition as certain voices definitely became louder than others at times. Now the network has just as strong of a presence with live-action content as it does with its animated roots and many shows have taken on a more polished and mainstream quality.

There is still tons of gonzo programming on the channel that feels like it literally couldn’t air anywhere else, but during a time on Adult Swim when prevailing voices like Rick and Morty and Tim and Eric can reign supreme, it’s not just encouraging, but necessary, for independent voices to be given a platform for their material, just like when Adult Swim began. This is why it’s extremely important that Zach “psychicpebbles” Hadel and Michael R. Cusack’s Smiling Friends pilot gets the chance to become a full series on the network.

There are few projects that so effortlessly and thoroughly embody the restless spirit and energy of Adult Swim as well as Smiling Friends does. Smiling Friends is a pilot that’s deceptively simple and very easy to replicate in a procedural sense, but it uses that mundane structure as a road map to a universe of surreal and haunting images and ideas. It almost feels like you’re watching a playful Saturday morning kids’ cartoon, but with those special sunglasses from out of They Live, and one of the lenses has been popped out. The ordinary meshes with the disturbing in an unpredictable way. It’s without a doubt the kind of cartoon that David Lynch would kick back to and relax with (and it honestly doesn’t feel that far removed from the director’s own animated experiment, Dumbland).

Smiling Friends follows Charlie and Pim, two employees at Smiling Friends, a company whose sole purpose is to brighten the days of those who are most in need. This is a threadbare premise that allows a wide berth for shenanigans and while there have been other Adult Swim series that have tackled similar territory (even another recent pilot, Dayworld), Smiling Friends immediately sets itself apart from the crowd. Charlie and Pim are on a mission of positivity to spread joy, but the pilot takes them to the darkest of places as they try to talk a worn down man out of suicide. Even when the man does reluctantly find a sense of purpose in the end that brings him a smile and helps turn his life around, it’s an existence that revolves around pain and death. He’s now a contributing member of society who actually looks forward to waking up in the morning, but there might actually be more drastic connotations from the Smiling Friends’ “success” in their debut case.

Smiling Friends is also set in a strange universe where humans coexist with strange creatures and entities without batting an eye. It’s a fun environment that again feels tailor-made for Adult Swim’s aesthetic, but Smiling Friends strives to buck the norm. For instance, the pilot switches animation styles at several points in order to better emphasize the humor in a given gag. Smiling Friends is also contains busy environments where unimportant background characters are performing actions and full of life. It’s as if every element in each frame has painstakingly been given a ton of attention to be perfect, but not in a way where this level of detail is distracting. It feels like the work of a group of animators who truly love what they do, rather than a team who’s become jaded and are just pushing towards a deadline. It just paints a world that actually feels real and lived in, rather than a series of images that happen to take place in a quaint neighborhood.

There’s also a jump scare-level joke that punctuates the episode’s conclusion that feels very emblematic of Smiling Friends. This is a show that’s just as content to scare you as it is to make you laugh. It’s happy to provoke a genuine reaction and it absolutely succeeds in a way where other programs on Adult Swim don’t. They make look attractive or contain plenty of jokes, but Smiling Friends “is a mood,” to say the least, and it achieves that in a mere eleven minutes. Some of Adult Swim’s shows burn themselves out in attempts to be edgy, but Smiling Friends has no agenda at all. It’s content to just be itself. It’s a decision that appears to be having a major effect on audiences and causing a demand for more Smiling Friends shenanigans.

This burst of brilliance comes courtesy of Zach “psychicpebbles” Hadel and Michael Cusack, who both voice Charlie and Pim respectively in the series. Hadel has been cutting his teeth with his own Dadaist brand of online animations for over the better part of the past decade. The content on Hadel’s YouTube channel have amassed millions of views and he’s developed a fervent following online, with his work on Hellbenders and the Sleepycast (a podcast collective of people who work in the field of animation) being some of his more popular contributions. That experience has gloriously culminated into Smiling Friends.

Cusack, on the other hand, made a big impression during Adult Swim’s previous April Fools’ event with his Rick and Morty parody, Bushworld Adventures (and will also have his own series, YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, hitting Adult Swim soon). He channels that same level of insanity here with Smiling Friends. Additionally, the show recruits all sorts of other independent talent from their animation circles for some of the images in this pilot. In that sense, Smiling Friends isn’t just a triumph for Hadel and Cusack, but also the entire community of animators who aren’t that different from them.

Adult Swim has featured a number of pilot showcases on occasion, sometimes meant to be a sneak peek of upcoming programs and other times just to help gauge interest in a property. The latest example of this was on April 1 of this year, when Adult Swim’s April Fools’ joke featured unseen episodes from many new and returning programs. Adult Swim released a press release to help advertise the covert event, but the one program that was left absent was Smiling Friends, the pilot that seems to have made the largest impression on audiences.

The “surprise” addition of Smiling Friends seems to indicate it was a last-minute inclusion to the line-up, or perhaps only recently just finished. Regardless, every other series that aired during the April Fools’ stunt was given a premiere date, while it’s unclear if more Smiling Friends will even be made. In spite of the show’s low-key status, it’s already made a tremendous stir online. Adult Swim’s tweet that the Smiling Friends pilot has been added to their website has garnered over 21,000 likes, while their Rick and Morty season premiere announcement hasn’t broken 14,000. This is the network’s most popular series versus a show that’s only aired one episode once.

Smiling Friends’ pilot hasn’t even been available online for a full week yet and there’s already a robust collection of fan art for the series that would make people think that it’s been on for years. The series has already struck a serious chord with audiences in a very short time, largely due to the communities that Hadel and Cusack have built online with their past works. People have seen their work evolve over the years and they want them to succeed here because they know that they deserve it. The level of fandom that Smiling Friends has already amassed may also have something to do with how Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard (as well as his brother, Nick) provide voices in the pilot. However, their involvement only stems from them also sharing a pre-existing love for “psychicpebbles’” work.

It’s this love and desire to see Hadel and Cusack succeed that has resulted in the show’s pilot being added to Adult Swim’s website, but they’ve put up plenty of old pilots that haven’t gone anywhere. Now is the time to check out this project and make your love of it be known so that Adult Swim can commission more to be made. There’s a level of creativity and absurdity present that needs to be given a chance to grow into something even greater. Smiling Friends is unique, fearless, and has the ability to become Adult Swim’s best and strangest series, it just needs to be given a fair chance.

A guaranteed way to bring a lot of smiles to people’s faces would be for Adult Swim to officially announce that a first season is in production.

The pilot for ‘Smiling Friends’ can be viewed here on Adult Swim’s website