On the day in April of 2020 that people clown and dupe in absurd fashion, it was only fitting that Adult Swim would come out with the wackiest piece of media I have ever seen. In a time when people were stuck in their homes facing impending danger due to COVID-19, television animators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack determined that people needed a distraction from it all. They ignored all of the common television sets and tropes and norms; no current events, no political jargon, just absurd and senseless comedic animation for people to forget everything they know about reality.
Known as the “Smiling Friends,” the titular pair of office workers are tasked with trying to elicit smiles out of depressed and down-for-their-luck individuals. In the first episode, their boss, one of the freakiest of them all (in his first scene, he’s assigning the Smiling Friends their first job while milking an unknown creature, and not with a bottle!), is shown as an enigma of a character. The Smiling Friends find someone in need of a smile, only to run into an older gentleman known as Desmond with a gun pointed to his head. They venture out to make him smile, taking him out to see their families and inviting him to a theme park. In the meantime, one of their co-workers, a green alien-like critter named Allan, yearns for a piece of lost cheese, only for him to accidentally release a horde of smaller green aliens looking to sacrifice him for taking back their cheese. The Smiling Friends and Desmond run into Allan struggling for his life and, instead of pulling the trigger on himself, Allan kills one of the creatures, bringing out a light chuckle and smile to his face. While the Smiling Friends succeeded in their adventure, they are still two, dichotomous and incompetent fellows who don’t fit in society.
Sober, watching this show is an experience in and of itself, forcing you to question what the actual heck you’re watching and why someone would come up with this and who in their righteous mind would think of such outrageous events. If you ever decide to watch this show with a little change of wavelength (not promoting anything), your jaw is going to be left gaping wide open at the sheer absurdity of every scene. It’s not the construction of the jokes or the dialogue but the editing of scenes and background figures that weirds you the hell out. I was laughing out loud with my roommate wondering if any television show has ever done something like this. In just eleven minutes, “The Smiling Friends,” doesn’t fail to make you question where this was all your life. It’s not the greatest thing in the world, nor is it groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination, but for a show that has absolutely no business being philosophical or rational, it does make you think.