Review: Smiling Friends “The Magical Red Jewel (AKA Tyler Gets Fired)”

Overview

The Boss and Pim fight for their lives in a mysterious world called Spamtopia. Meanwhile, Charlie confronts Allan over something serious.

Our Take

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the penultimate episode of Smiling Friends’ second season and I gotta tell ya, this season FLEW by. Yep…seems like just yesterday the first episode of the season had premiered though that was back in April so clearly I’m delusional.

In any event, you may recall my last week’s review mentioning audio mixing issues for Smiling Friends as it aired on Adult Swim. These issues were later confirmed by the show’s creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel, further confirming that not only were these issues valid but the fixed audio was featured in the streaming MAX debut. Unfortunately, this week, I felt like those audio issues were continuing, more specifically in the Spamtopia sequences where it sounded like everyone was being mixed lower and lower as the episode wore on so I’m assuming the same rules apply this week in that maybe just watch the episode on MAX because for whatever reason these audio issues keep on keeping on.

That’s not to say that this week’s episode didn’t have a multitude of plusses because boy did it. Spamtopia was an outrageous animated experience, one that I wish we could’ve spent more time in. Ill-timed transitions, the simplicity of the character designs, and the horrifying depiction of Oscar all made for a fun evening. I was less interested in babysitting Mr. Boss’ kid mainly because I don’t even like this thing, and the basic plot was more-or-less standard Smiling Friends only this time Allan was a part of the plans.

I was going to score this week a bit lower because of the ongoing audio issues and the subpar B-plot, but the ending sequence fantastic. In fact, the last scene in each and every episode of Smiling Friends (not counting the post-credits scenes) are routinely becoming my favorite part of the show as it helps devolve whatever way we felt about the episode as a whole up until that point and THIS week’s example of this does just that.