Smiling Friends

Smiling Friends is back in action with Season 2 of the animated series, and the Adult Swim original has taken the top spot on Max's Top TV Shows chart with its latest episodes! Smiling Friends was one of the most anticipated returns of the year for Adult Swim fans, and this was proven following the debut of the new episodes earlier this Spring. Each new episode of the season thus far has gone viral in one way or another, and it seems that this has further fueled both older and newer fans to check out the series as it airs.

Smiling Friends Season 2's new episodes hit Max the day after their initial broadcast with Adult Swim, and it seems like the new series is taking over as it has reached the number one spot on Max's Top TV Shows list over the likes of recently premieres hits like The Jinx Part Two, Hacks Season 3, Fallen Idols: Nick and Aaron Carter, 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? and more. Smiling Friends co-creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel celebrated the news with a special sketch you can check out below.

smiling friends just hit #1 on @StreamOnMax! thank you to our incredible hardworking team and everyone for watching our silly little cartoon

-michael & zach

Adult Swim SVP of Creative Jacob Escobedo spoke with IndieWire about the network's latest April Fool's Day stunt and his ongoing commitment to handmade art.

“The overall idea was there would be a progression, a kind of stepping down in quality of puppets over the course of the night,” Escobedo told IndieWire over Zoom after the surprise episodes aired. “So it kind of started off with a bang with these felted Muppet-style puppets for the first episode. The second was more of a sock puppet with live action characters, and the third was our handmade papier-mâché puppets that we hand-puppeted ourselves.”

“We sat in a room and ordered a shit ton of art supplies and sat in there for weeks and just made ourselves laugh,” he said. “What’s funny is, when we first set out to do it we were like ‘Everybody, you need to make really shitty puppets.’ And we have a lot of creative people who just couldn’t make shitty puppets. All the puppets turned out really incredibly, so our original concept of stepping down the quality of the puppets didn’t really take because the in-house team did such a good job.”

The Renaissance Men are coming. Smiling Friends S2 double-premiere May 12 @ midnight - next day on Max

Smiling Friends premieres begin globally starting May 12th!

Watch Smiling Friends in the US on Adult Swim every Sunday starting May 12th at midnight, next day Max.