Charlie! Smiling Friends (2022- ) season 3 is coming out!
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Big laughs, strange vibes — Smiling Friends is anything but ordinary.
If you have ever heard of a YouTuber who goes by the name “psychicpebbles” (known in the civilian world as Zach Hadel), who has been active as a creator and animator since 2011, you probably already know about the Adult Swim series Smiling Friends (2022- ). However, for those who do not, Smiling Friends (2022- ) is the product of the sick and twisted minds of Hadel and his Australian co-conspirator, Michael Cusack, which follows the employees of a charity whose singular mission is to make others smile.
Hadel and Cusack both got their start with Newgrounds, a website founded in the mid-1990s that would become a collaborative hub for art, animation, memes, films, and game design. In interviews, they have shared that they are heavily inspired by the comedy of other well-loved animated shows like Beavis and Butt-Head (1993-1997), South Park (1997- ), and SpongeBob SquarePants (1999- ), putting that inspiration into action after years of work on various TV shows, web series, and even video games.
Putting their voices and animation experience to work, Hadel and Cusack have conceived, midwifed, and co-parented a freakish cartoon brainchild, the likes of which the animation world has never seen. Concocting a mix of “traditional animation, computer animation, rotoscoping, stop motion, flash animation, and live-action” that brings to life the adventures of our beloved main characters, Charlie Dompler and Pim Pimling (voiced respectively by Hadel and Cusack), Smiling Friends (2022- ) sucks watchers into an experience that I think is best described as hallucinogenic.
Charlie and Pim are a charismatic duo whose rapport is reminiscent of a Spongebob-Squidward dynamic: a loveable curmudgeon whose seemingly indomitable pessimism is balanced out by the starry-eyed optimist making his way through the world by the light of an unshakable faith in the goodness of others. These two are often accompanied by their friends and coworkers, including the persnickety Allan Red (who, in a favorite episode of my friend’s, gets to have an adventure of his very own); the inscrutable Mr. Boss, who, you may have guessed, is in charge of the charity; and their little green friend Glep, punctuating the bizarre world of the show with his enigmatic charm.
My best friend introduced me to the show, and after my first episode, I had to ask both her and myself, “What was that?” But I knew instantly that I was in love—Smiling Friends (2022- ) has a real dedication to a rare brand of uninhibited weirdness that is just irresistible. And the creators themselves affirm that the show’s absurdist humor is its most important dimension; in an interview with IndieWire, Hadel said, “To us, ‘Smiling Friends’ is literally just a callback of like ‘90s ‘Beavis and Butt-Head,’ ‘South Park,’ ‘SpongeBob.’...Not in terms of style, but in the sense that it’s pure, stupid comedy. It’s not complex, it’s not gonna change your life. It’s not supposed to! It’s just supposed to be stupid, funny, and that’s it.”
Smiling Friends (2022- ) is written and animated in such a way that allows the show the creative space to ostensibly act out whatever the whims of Hadel and Cusack may be, while still maintaining some loose rules and historical landmarks to support the world’s narrative framework. Hadel elaborated, “We have ‘rules’ of what we know happens in the world. Like we know who was elected president in this fake world in 1960, but that’s never in the show…that’s another reason we do the whole mixed media thing, it lets us do whatever we want.”
To sum up the show’s structure, “It’s designed to both have no rules at all, so that you could have a talking shrimp next to a pink guy next to a live action guy, so it all makes sense, but also have some rules.” This formula delivers something that anyone who is a fan of the weird, the whimsical, or the downright outrageous can enjoy; it offers viewers a healthy dose of surrealism and characters that are easy to love.
After two seasons of the Smiling Friends’ selfless commitment to their organization’s eloquent and profound mission statement — “the smiling friends musssttt dooo whateva thee client asks until they smile!! :-) – NO exceptions" — Charlie, Pim, and friends are officially coming back for a third season October 5, 2025 on Adult Swim, with streaming available on HBO Max the following day.