Animated TV shows have a way of sticking around when they get big. Most famously, there’s “The Simpsons,” which has been airing on Fox for 35 years with few signs of stopping. But other popular shows — ranging from kids’ fare like “Spongebob Squarepants” to edgier adult programs like “Family Guy” and “South Park” — have 10 or even 20+ years and counting of new seasons under their belt.
Adult Swim‘s “Smiling Friends,” an absurdist and experimental series that has become an online cult favorite, has over the course of its short run increasingly grown in popularity. The series, which follows the unhinged misadventures of charity workers dedicated to making people happy, is currently airing its third season, and in a sign of confidence from its network, was already renewed for two additional seasons in 2024. Is there a world where “Smiling Friends” runs for 20 years like “South Park?”
“Fuck no,” “Smiling Friends” co-creator Michael Cusack says bluntly in an interview with IndieWire, along with his creative partner Zach Hadel. “It’s renewed for four and five now and we’ll see how we feel at the end of that. It could be a natural wrap-up then. Zach and I change our minds every day on this. We don’t want it to be a show that outstays its welcome and goes on forever. But we’re also very lucky to get this show up, so there’s a nice little middle ground. Zach and I have made a promise to each other where we’ll always be honest and say, ‘Look, do we want to keep going with this, or do we want to wrap it up on a high note?’ So we’ll do Seasons 4 and 5, and see how we feel.”
Until then, Cusack and Hadel have their hands full working on the show; the pair write and direct every 11-minute episode, and voice almost the entire main cast along with numerous supporting or recurring characters. It’s a lot of work, although Hadel describes their creative process as “vibes-based.”
“It starts with Michael and I hanging out, most of the time in an online call. It used to be Skype, you know, whatever the app is, rest in piece Skype, but we used to just go with that and just shoot the shit. And a lot of the time it’s us looking at what we find funny, what we find interesting, what engages us?” Handel says. “We kind of test each other and build up and build out the best version of whatever idea we’re on is, and it’s like Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Skull vodka. It refines through the stones, over and over until it’s purified.”
Once they have their script, Cusack estimates it takes about a year for an episode to get fully produced. Over its first two seasons, “Smiling Friends” became known for its experimental animation, frequently mixing in different techniques like 3D animation, claymation, and puppetry into its 2D world for surreal effect.
“It’s a hard show to make, it’s a show that probably actually needs double the crew to make,” Cusack said. “But, you know, after all the chaos and the hardships going through it, I always look back and I I think, like, no, actually, it’s probably good, that it’s hard, because then it creates something special.”
“If we didn’t have a team around us there’d be like half an episode of the show out by now,” Handel says.
Season 3 of “Smiling Friends” has begun with several memorable episodes, including a premiere that introduces a pitiable CGI character named “Silly Samuel” voiced by Connor O’Malley, or the third episode, which parodies obsessive fan culture with a mole man obsessed with main characters Pim and Charlie. The most memorable episode so far, though, is the second, which departs from the typical formula of the series to focus on supporting character Mr. Frog (voiced by Cusack), a wealthy mega-celebrity humanoid frog who has been the focus of an episode every season.
Cusack and Handel say the character was an immediate favorite upon first working on the show in 2018 and, while they usually want to leave other characters introduced as clients for the Smiling Friends charity as one-offs, they came up with the idea to do a “Mr. Frog episode” every season. This one, “Le Voyage Incroyable de Monsieur Grenouille,” sees Mr. Frog (having become president in a Season 2 episode) go through a spiritual crisis that ends with him finding inner piece and turning into a photorealistic frog. Originally, the episode focused on him going from president to dictator of the world, but Handel says the idea fell through because it wasn’t original enough, so they pivoted into a weirder, more serious direction.
“It also is a thing where the fact that it’s serious is the joke,” Cusack says. “The joke is that it’s Mr. Frog, it’s so stupid, unbelievably stupid that he’s going through this. We never want to be sending serious messages with this show.”
The episode arguably hits peak absurdity when Mr. Frog’s father appears in a live-action sequence to dress down his son, played in a cameo by a green paint-covered Creed Bratton, best known for his work in “The Office.” As Handel tells it, neither he nor Cusack had ever seen “The Office” or knew much about Bratton before he was cast. However, while looking for someone to play the character, they had trouble casting for the profile of an intimidating man in his 60s. A member of the production staff, however, was friends with Bratton, and convinced Handel and Cusack to watch an audition tape he sent over for the small role.
“That is my favorite kind of cameo, where we didn’t get him for any of the cool reasons. It was just like, ‘Oh, he did the part well,’” Handel says. “I think he nailed it, and that’s why he got it was because he did a good job.”
While Cusack and Handel don’t know exactly how long it’ll be before they end “Smiling Friends,” they do know how they want to end it. The two tell IndieWire that a movie spinoff wrapping up the adventures of Pim and Charlie is the perfect way they want the series to conclude.
“We’d love to end it with that, whenever we feel like the show has ended, I’d feel like that be a good way,” Handel says. “And I don’t think we would do it in the middle of the show, like other shows have done it.”
“I like the idea of a movie wrapping up, because we’ve got an 11-minute show, right?” Cusack adds. “It’s hard to do a finale in that format. Doing a movie would be the perfect way to wrap-up the whole series. We’ve thought about that since the beginning, doing a movie like that, and it’d be great.”
New episodes of “Smiling Friends” Season 3 air Sunday nights on Adult Swim.