My favorite decision they made regarding the entirety of the series. Is the Pilot. The premise of Smiling Friends is the idea of a charity whose sole purpose is to help people down in the dumps. What's the penultimate concept that you can execute with that premise? Suicide. If this were any other group of people making this series they would never approach that right off the gate, they would use that as the finale. Only tackling that concept after years of experience in the writing room of the show. However, they decided to go with it right away. Arguably the best episode of the series, very well written. With that concept out of the way, it allows the show to go in any direction it wants. No boundaries. We're seeing the fruit of this with every episode so far. There's no need to hold it down in any form. The animation has been excellent this season.
Smiling Friends is great, because it's not edgy bullshit for the sake of being nihilistic or edgy. It's premise is to make people (the audience) smile (and by extension laugh. The most violence for the sake of violence we've seen is Mr. Frog in the Jimble episode, but his character is already established as a psycho. The Frowning Friends kind of had it coming they were antagonists after all, but even they Grim and Gnarly smiled at the end before the Renaissance men showed up. There's no poltiical leaning left or right, there's no message at the end, which even early South Park had. I'd say it's closer to the early Simpsons than anything else except without the aspect of family to it; but the Simpsons was also going for a deconstruction of the American nuclear family sitcom. Maybe Futurama?
If I were to break down the thesis of the most popular adult animated television shows out there it would be this:
The Simpsons - Early: Deconstruction of the typical sitcom. Current: Derivative, pop culture trash.
Family Guy - Early: Family sitcom with adult jokes, low key Simpsons clone. Current: Edgy offensive humor for the sake of it. No tact or nuance.
American Dad - Political satire of conservative American beliefs that kind of became better than family guy because the writing is better. I haven't seen many of the newest episodes, but it's start was political satire with a sitcom mask.
South Park - Toilet humor revolving around a cast of kids, however at the end of most (not all) episodes some sort of lesson is learned or moral is spoken about by Kyle/Stan. Current South Park is a bit different now, possibly suffering from seasonal rot. However, both still have political and social commentary. Because Matt & Trey usually had a message with their episodes, they took their criticism of just being toilet humor and made that the whole concept for the T&P show. Canada as a whole.
Cleveland Show - This existed
Drawn Together - Animated satire of reality TV shows which flooded television in the late 00s and early 10s. Very offensive humor, which kind of worked for it somehow because not a single character is likeable really. I need to rewatch this since I havent seen it in years.
Rick & Morty - SciFi escepades that started really strong, especially since this was around the second time Futurama ended, however a quickly formed and rabid fanbase ruined the show, and the writing got more nihilistic as time went on, and one of them kept inserting his fetish into the show. Strong start, slow fizzle.
Futurama - Late 90's take on how the future could look like, but it has a lot of aesthetics of 1950s drawings of the future. Fun adventures with a fish out of water perspective in a far more advanced world. Sometimes pushes sociopolitical commentary (robosexual episode) but otherwise funny and sometimes very emotional (that goddamn dog episode).
Smiling Friends - Just be funny, lmao. Preschooler drawings having realistic arguments and ending up in absurd scenarios.
Smiling Friends has a much more succinct concept vs everything else that's popular.