Did anyone at adult swim or hbo listen to the podcasts these guys made before giving them unlimited money to make a tv show that looks absolutely shit? Seriously they were friends with shadman, how are you supposed to watch a show that’s message is “be kind” and “don’t be an asshole” when they made their careers off of being edgy. Some dipshit c suite exec who they’re probably related too took one look at them and thought “maybe we can get the Rick and Morty demographic and get chuds to riot in a McDonalds over chicken nuggets”. Also the mixed art style makes it the cartoon equivalent of Fortnite, no substance, no identity. A bland product that can be sold and commodified. I really fucking hate this show.
The show is really good actually and the animation is cool as well. It’s basically one long love letter to early internet animation so if you know you know.
But the creators do have a right-wing cultural slant that shows up in their work. I don’t support that of course.
I like it. Idk the history or background of the American guy but if he’s like a Filthy Frank style edgelord I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing he’s grown up and moved away from it.
As for the show itself, some of the messages aren’t exactly bad. The video game executive that’s sitting on an IP to not make new games with until nostalgia gets to the point where they can make them a DLC character for the Fortnite/Smash Bros stand in gets murdered on screen and that’s the good ending. The TV executive that micromanages a TV show to maximise appeal and profit gets murdered in live TV and the entire crowd cheers. There’s a scene of a worker with 6 arms stocking shelves while his boss is a guy with no arms, calling him slow and useless and threatening to fire him despite the fact that he’s the only employee and does all the work.
If anything the show makes fun of edgy people, possibly as atonement, to the point where the antagonist of the week, the edgy nihilists, get humiliated in front of a crowd and get murdered. Another episode has this evil scientist who thinks the world is fucked and he can replace people with his own homunculi to create a better world and he’s shown to be a socially inept NEET who lives in his brother’s house rent free.
Edit: also, as for the McDonalds Rick and Morty viral video, that was staged. The guy hates Rick and Morty fans with a passion so he threw a public tantrum under the guise of a Rick and Morty fan to make them look bad. It’s still cringe, but in a different way.
As for the show itself, some of the messages aren’t exactly bad. The video game executive that’s sitting on an IP to not make new games with until nostalgia gets to the point where they can make them a DLC character for the Fortnite/Smash Bros stand in gets murdered on screen and that’s the good ending. The TV executive that micromanages a TV show to maximise appeal and profit gets murdered in live TV and the entire crowd cheers. There’s a scene of a worker with 6 arms stocking shelves while his boss is a guy with no arms, calling him slow and useless and threatening to fire him despite the fact that he’s the only employee and does all the work.
Cool, the Simpsons did all that thirty fucking years ago, except they were also funny.
I get it if you don’t find it funny, but solutions to like 50% of the episodic villains in Smiling Friends tend to be defeated by being murdered on screen, and it’s shown to have no drawbacks whatsoever and way more effective than working within the system. It’s kinda not really seen in a mainstream TV series. It’s not even like the Rick and Morty “oh Rock avenged his wife by beating her killer to death with his bare hands, but now he feels hollow and sad”. It’s “oh, the antagonist was brutally killed? The problem is solved”.
TV executives ruining an otherwise good show to maximise appeal and profit? Eaten alive. Video game CEO ruining a beloved franchise? Knife through the skull. Eldritch abomination trying to kill you? Drawn and quartered. Creepy incel stalker? Disemboweled. Terrible landlord? Driven to commit literal seppuku with a katana. Demonic succubus possessing your boss and making your work life even worse? Defenestration.
Half the episodes are played kinda straight, but the other half is literally “violence is sometimes the answer”. One of the only 2 episodes this season where they don’t resort to violence is the one where the protagonists lose. The episode in question is where the POTUS is a bumbling, incompetent idiot but his opponent is a comically evil psychopath TV billionaire who pours radioactive waste into rivers for fun. They work within the system to get him re-elected because the other guy is way worse, and the psychopath ends up winning anyway.
ok first of all, doing the whole “here is why my media property is actually revolutionary and leftist” is always a whack and cringe thing to do. it’s a fucking cartoon.
also, everything you’ve just described about the show in an attempt to make it seem revolutionary or leftist actually makes it reactionary as fuck and as far removed from any sort of leftism as it could possibly be. murder and violence are not “working outside of the system”. murder and violence are the system, the capitalist state is nothing but violent and cops murder people all the time. “violence works” is the message of every piece of conservative media ever produced.
murdering people in power isn’t “leftist”, since it’s the capitalist system that binds us and not the individuals who are merely interchangeable pawns. there is a giant difference between random violence (bad) and revolutionary violence (good), because one is aimed at getting senseless revenge at individuals and the other is aimed at destroying the actual capitalist power structures that actually cause all the bad stuff to happen.
Is there a single part in the show where the random violent murder causes any sort of solidarity (class solidarity or otherwise) to form, or where there the capitalist state strikes back at the working class? Because that might give some credence to this show being anything other than a random cartoon where random people get murdered because randomly murdering people is a fun thing to do in a cartoon.
Murdering a CEO doesn’t abolish copyright, murdering a stalker doesn’t stop the patriarchy, murdering a landlord doesn’t make you own the building (the landlord is a terrible example anyway, since a) he doesn’t even get murdered, but instead commits suicide, b) isn’t portrayed as the leech that he’d actually be but instead a crazy weirdo who only wants to smoke weed and play burnout 3 takedown with his tenants and also c) just gets up again at the end of the episode) (i literally just watched this episode to see if there was anything to the show and it was not very good or funny and certainly not leftist)
i think its kind of cool ig, but like not enough to be bothered to get into a struggle session about it
I like the show smiling friends or the people behind it.
Hey, I saw the avi of Shadman. Fucking yikes. Is there a place to know about his background and/or the creators of Smiling Friends?
Earlier this week, I talked to a friend about the lack of complex women on the show.
It’s not much on its own, but I think it’s interesting that the makers of an Adult Swim show couldn’t get a woman on board. Then again, with the way these workplace cultures work, it’s probably for the best.
Shit, now that I think about it, the show does a lot of punching down and inappropriate jokes. Making fun of addiction, mental illness, different body types, disabilities, etc.
