As the nature of internet censorship warps and shifts, artists who thrived digitally are turning to television to find an audience – and doing so very successfully. But as Smiling Friends gracefully exits the stage (for now), its creators have also taught those following in their footsteps an important lesson: adapting to the medium’s production cycle comes at a cost, and so it’s important to quit while you’re ahead.
While animation can be an infinitely creative medium, limited options for distribution meant that – aside for a few notable exceptions, the segment was gatekept by studios. Things that were not deemed ideologically appropriate were frozen out of the mainstream.
The advent of the internet – and online video – changed that. The first two decades of the 21st century saw a boom in independent animation, with platforms like Newgrounds and YouTube allowing developing animators opportunities to build an audience with quick (and often dirty) short films.
I have written about the decline of that space before – as YouTube in particular has used its dominance in free streaming to act as a new gatekeeper. With the privatisation of the digital commons, animated films which once were able – for better or worse – to instantly accrue large viewership have increasingly been pushed away from its top-table. The potent blend of other-worldly characters, visceral special effects, and abrasive or vulgar humour which made many names in the boom of early YouTube swiftly fell out of favour with the site’s advertisers – and censorship and demonetisation has increasingly starved many animators off the platform.
Creators that were once able to draw huge audiences – and ad revenues – with a potent blend of other-worldly characters, high-quality effects, and if all else failed, abrasive or vulgar humour – have been left scrambling for ways to keep the dream alive in this context. Some have managed to make it work through Patreon, others have pivoted entirely from animation to ‘Let’s Play’ videos, which bring in big views, while taking much less effort to create.
Smiling Friends creators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack went through it all before Cartoon Network picked up their now famous show, to air on Adult Swim.
Most episodes centre on Charlie (Hadel) and Pim (Cusack) being sent out by Mr. Boss (Sick Animation’s Marc M.) to help a new client smile through desperate circumstances. Hanging everything on a simple sitcom-style premise like this offers an excellent springboard for the team to work in some characteristically disturbing twists – but also mean that the show isn’t so wedded to the premise that it can’t break out of the formula when needed. And this elasticity has also enabled the show to offer up some unexpectedly sombre moments of existential crisis and detachment (for example, Mr. Frog, a nightmarish, abusive actor-turned-global dictator – who could easily just have remained a throwaway gag about sudden outbursts of violence coming from a childish cartoon – spends one off-beat episode trying to find himself, and reconnect with his father).
At the same time as getting to serve TV audiences this matured slice of internet animation madness, Hadel and Cusack have also used the opportunity to highlight many of the other creators from online content’s filthy, fading golden age. Chris O’Neill, David Firth and Harry Partridge both served as guest animators and voice-actors, while other cameos included Tom Fulp – who founded Newgrounds – and Red Letter Media’s Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman and Rich Evans. And considering the innovation that each of those contributors have contributed to their respective online niches, it is an interesting reflection of rapidly calcifying conservatism of online video platforms, that this move back to ‘traditional’ broadcast media might suddenly be opening doors for them instead.
As this kind of artist is drowned out by slop, or swept from even their subscribers’ feeds by the almighty algorithm, there must be life after YouTube. Could it unexpectedly come from television? Smiling Friends and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared arguably both point toward such an unlikely inversion.
Of course, that still comes with some big question marks. The demand for consistent content, standardised in style and format, provided to deadline, is arguably at loggerheads with the anarchic production cycles of viral animation.
According to Hadel, the first season of Smiling Friends cost the same as one episode of Family Guy, or roughly $2 million. Hadel and Cusack were hands on in all aspects of production, from writing, storyboards, character designs, final animation and sound design – and that huge amount of work is usually spread across larger teams. Working remotely from the US and Australia, however, that amount of input may have contributed to the show’s irregular release schedule (episodes sometimes airing weeks or months apart).
Season three saw a shift in the set-up. The first two seasons were primarily animated by Studio Yotta and Princess Bento Studio, a joint venture between the Melbourne-based media company Princess Pictures and the American animation studio Bento Box Entertainment. 2025’s production was fully moved to Williams Street in-house, however, with additional animation services being handled by Saerom Animation in South Korea and Dinamita Animación in Colombia, with specialty animation done by Cusack, Hadel and Aron Fromm’s ZAM Studios.
And while the third season was still deemed a success – enough for the network to renew for two more seasons – this seems to be where the story ends. Hadel and Cusack announced on social media that after two more sporadic episodes aired, Smiling Friends would conclude. With the pair – and Adult Swim – prone to fake-out episode titles (see Charlie Dies and Doesn’t Come Back) and April Fool’s jokes, the arrival of the announcement in late February was met by some fans hoping it was not genuinely the case.
But the decision to stop now coinciding with the changed mode of production, and Hadel and Cusack siting burnout in their statement seem more than coincidental. And perhaps taking the hard choice to quit while you’re ahead might be the right one.
Walking away from a hit is understandably difficult. Getting parodied by The Simpsons shows that your story has reached a level of popular adoration where it can now be referenced in the cultural mainstream. But at the same time, being parodied by The Simpsons serves as an uncomfortable reminder of what happens when you overstay your welcome – where you keep grinding out the product for the sake of it. Nobody has genuinely enjoyed that showin two decades – and becoming part of that cosy televisual furniture is perhaps as much of a warning as a commendation: you’re becoming stale enough for The Simpsons to associate with.
It was a warning Rick and Morty overlooked. Even before both of its creators managed to disgrace themselves (and making it clear how heavily they leant on the wider team, who they allegedly didn’t want to pay properly, for the show’s humour), its formula had been reaping diminishing returns. The crass humour and arch pop-philosophy aligned itself with the cultural establishment it so often trashed (to the extent it had a ‘growth’ episode where Morty learns that all ecological activists are evil terrorists).
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, by comparison, was determined to avoid such a fate. And after one incredible run on Channel 4, the “don’t expect a second season anytime soon” message from the team’s FAQ web-page seems a pretty definitive suspension of that project – for now at least. As someone who loved the show, that makes me a little sad – but I’d also vastly prefer it to gradually falling out of love with a fatigued story, made by burnt-out artists, declining in quality for the sake of endless quantity.
Smiling Friends did not feel like it had declined in quality yet. The two ‘final episodes’ the show released were not a conclusive end – rather they were billed by the creators as ‘off-cuts’, which didn’t make the grade for the season’s initial run. But if that’s the case, they were really fun off-cuts, which with a little more time and patience probably could have been great.
An episode around AI-psychosis is extremely timely. And while it didn’t hit on any of the grand societal or economic forces driving it, there are plenty of places to get that analysis. What it did do, and what I would wholeheartedly encourage more of, is to publicly shame and embarrass the people who are joyfully seeking to foist the technology on us from every angle, and into every corner of life where it isn’t actually necessary. Meanwhile, an episode where Charlie sacrifices his own happiness to make his grotesque uncle and his irrepressibly violent rottweiler smile, hits on all of the show’s fantastically repulsive, unpredictable potential – to bow out disgracefully.
Again, seeing the end of Smiling Friends makes me sad. But if the show’s main creative forces are exhausted, and production is becoming more industrialised, that’s an ominous sign of what may still come. Stepping away – briefly, or permanently – is the right thing to do in that case, and the memories of the show as it is (rather than harking back 20 years Simpsons-style to what is was) will always put a smile on my face.