Any various comedy fan is aware of that Grownup Swim‘s April Idiot’s Day programming is must-see tv. The unabashedly bizarre late night time community has turned messing with viewers into an annual custom, typically dropping buzzy new premieres in surprising methods (like airing the complete “Aqua Teen Starvation Pressure” film in a intentionally unwatchable picture-in-picture format) or changing its present programming with nonsensical content material (like a 2021 stunt through which it satirically rebranded itself as a pre-school channel referred to as Grownup Swim Jr.). Followers have come to count on lots of Grownup Swim on the web’s least favourite vacation, and 2024 noticed the community ship one in all its most viral triumphs thus far.
One of the vital anticipated exhibits on Grownup Swim’s upcoming slate is Season 2 of “Smiling Mates,” Zach Hadel and Michael Cusak’s animated collection about two mid-level staff at an organization that guarantees to cheer up any unhappy clients who name into its hotline. The present gained a cult following after premiering in 2022, and there was a palpable sense amongst followers that the brand new season was imminent.
Grownup Swim stoked these rumors throughout its social media channels final week, encouraging viewers to observe on Sunday night time with a cryptic collection of “Smiling Mates”-centric posts that included a doctored photograph promoting the present on the Las Vegas Sphere. However when viewers tuned in anticipating new episodes, they acquired one thing they couldn’t have presumably recognized they needed.
Slightly than new “Smiling Mates” tales, the viewers had been handled to shot-for-shot puppet recreations of three present episodes. The reskinned episodes featured the identical voice appearing and hand-drawn backgrounds from the animated present, with hand puppets taking the place of the unique characters. The prank concluded with an airing of the primary episode of Season 2 and an announcement that the present would return on Could 12. The gag went viral within the following days, having been seen over 25 million instances on the time of this writing.
The stunt was orchestrated partially by Jacob Escobedo, Grownup Swim’s SVP of Artistic who’s chargeable for sustaining the model’s offbeat aesthetic exterior of its scripted programming. One among his first duties upon returning to work after the vacations every January is sitting down with a crew together with VP, On-Air Packaging & Social Media Michael Cahill and VP, Artistic Director Gil Austin to plan the yr’s April Idiot’s Day festivities.
When the trio settled on the “Smiling Mates” thought, they initially needed to recreate the complete first season with puppets earlier than paring the plan down to 3. They used completely different puppets for every episode, outsourcing the primary set to an expert studio earlier than enlisting Grownup Swim staff of all stripes to make the opposite ones by hand.
“The general thought was there can be a development, a sort of stepping down in high quality of puppets over the course of the night time,” Escobedo advised IndieWire over Zoom after the shock episodes aired. “So it sort of began off with a bang with these felted Muppet-style puppets for the primary episode. The second was extra of a sock puppet with reside motion characters, and the third was our handmade papier-mâché puppets that we hand-puppeted ourselves.”
Whereas Escobedo and his collaborators hoped that making the puppets themselves would decrease the stunt’s manufacturing worth, he shortly discovered that his crew of novice puppeteers was higher suited to the job than he ever imagined. Plans to amuse viewers with intentionally poor craftsmanship gave method to one thing much more particular: Amusing them with puppets that genuinely resemble the charmingly lo-fi cartoon.
“We sat in a room and ordered a shit ton of artwork provides and sat in there for weeks and simply made ourselves snicker,” he mentioned. “What’s humorous is, once we first got down to do it we had been like ‘All people, you have to make actually shitty puppets.’ And we now have lots of inventive individuals who simply couldn’t make shitty puppets. All of the puppets turned out actually extremely, so our unique idea of stepping down the standard of the puppets didn’t actually take as a result of the in-house crew did such a great job.”
The truth that an unannounced TV occasion airing at midnight might resonate with so many followers is a testomony to the distinctive area that Grownup Swim occupies within the cultural panorama. Shifting client conduct has prompted many legacy cable networks to de-prioritize their linear channels, which are sometimes decreased to little greater than brand-building workout routines that direct viewers to streaming merchandise. Grownup Swim has taken the other strategy, persevering with to embrace its standing as Cartoon Community’s after hours programming block and utilizing the reside broadcast format to shock its loyal viewers.
Escobedo defined that Grownup Swim’s continued embrace of linear broadcasting stems from the identical precept that drives its dedication to handmade puppets and animations. Each selections are a results of the idiosyncratic community’s insistence on staying true to its core values, no matter which method the leisure trade shifts.
“It’s form of the core of who we’re, simply having a voice in that area. And being so completely different in that area is tremendous vital,” he mentioned. “I feel what has saved us alive so lengthy and the explanation it’s such an fascinating model nonetheless is that there are individuals behind the model touching the whole lot. As individuals transfer away from handmade issues, we’re hand-making most the whole lot on our air. The standard of that actually comes by, and the appeal of that’s actually vital.”