Following Season 2, Episode 2 of Smiling Friends, fans got a frustrating update on when they can expect new episodes for the season to drop.
The show, another perfectly zany animated project from Adult Swim, follows a group of four people who run a company whose sole purpose is to bring happiness to its customers.
For the first season, besides the first episode, the entire season dropped all at once on January 10, 2022, for fans to binge. However, it's now confirmed that the release schedule will be different this time around for Season 2.
[ Smiling Friends Season 2 Release, Episode Updates & Everything We Know ]
Smiling Friends Season 2 Will Be Weekly
A new promo for Smiling Friends Season 2 Episode 3, which dropped following Episode 2's debut on Adult Swim, confirmed upcoming episodes will start being released on a weekly basis, starting with the next installment on May 13.
Sadly, that means audiences won't be able to binge the entire season until the finale airs on June 24, 2024. This is understandably frustrating for fans who expected to be able to experience these new episodes as they did for Season 1—all at once.
The promo, which is brief, also teases the next entry which sees Mr. Boss claim to have the perfect job for Allan Red.
The video can be seen on X, formerly Twitter, thanks to user @Badgerclops:
The air dates for the rest of Season 2 can be seen below:
- Episode 3 - "A Allan Adventure" - May 20, 2024
- Episode 4 - "Erm. the Boss Finds Love?" - May 27, 2024
- Episode 5 - "Brother's Egg" - June 3, 2024
- Episode 6 - "Charlie, Pim, and Bill vs The Alien" - June 10, 2024
- Episode 7 - "The Magical Red Jewel AKA Tyler Gets Fired - June 17, 2024
- Episode 8 - "Pim Finally Turns Green"
Is a Weekly Release Better Than Binge?
While the preference between binge and weekly models differs per person, there are some undeniable drawbacks to the binge model, especially nowadays.
When projects are dropped all at once, conversation about it tends to spike for a handful of days before steeply dropping, leaving the show in the metaphorical dust.
With a weekly release, the general conversation surrounding the project happens every week for multiple weeks, keeping the show in the public's eye that much longer. This boost in relevancy and popularity probably plays heavily into why Smiling Friends chose to switch up its release schedule from binge to weekly.
While the binge model has obviously worked in the past (like for Stranger Things or many of Netflix's earlier shows), plenty more have dropped all at once and were swiftly forgotten by the masses. Amazon Studios' Fallout is a recent example of a show outside of Netflix which broke that trend.
Weekly releases for Smiling Friends is healthy for the show, and its audience, as the weekly conversation will keep up its popularity and hopefully get it closer to being renewed for future seasons.
Smiling Friends airs on on Adult Swim every Monday (which the network technically classifies as Sunday night) at 12:00 a.m. ET, with episodes on Max the next day.
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