‘The Simpsons’ Parody of ‘Smiling Friends’ Isn’t Going Over Well With Fans
In this week’s season finale of The Simpsons, Bart and Lisa’s interest in The Itchy & Scratchy Show begins to wane, prompting them to seek out other potential TV replacements. Lisa gets really into Quirk Girl, a not-so-subtle New Girl spoof that actually features the voices of stars Max Greenfield and Zooey Deschanel, who “made it okay for cute girls to be pretty.”
Bart, on the other hand, is watching a new animated series called Screaming Friends, which is full of gratingly loud oddball cartoon characters. “The jokes are great, but what I love is the storytelling,” Bart tells Marge.
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Screaming Friends is clearly a parody of Smiling Friends, the beloved, and intensely bizarre Adult Swim series. But fans of the show aren’t exactly thrilled about the apparently uncomplimentary send-up.
Most of the complaints seemed to suggest that the overly-simplistic pseudo-reference was an example of the show being out-of-touch, criticizing an animated series that’s subversive and fresh, when The Simpsons’ days of being subversive and fresh are in the past.
One person suggested that Smiling Friends fans may react to the Simpsons parody the same way that BoJack Horseman fans reacted to Family Guy’s “Normal words, but a horse guy” joke — i.e. not well.
On the Smiling Fans subreddit, people seem pretty split about how to feel about the unexpected nod. Some saw it as “derogatory” while others were less irate. “It’s too bad it’s so lame but the recognition is nice,” one person wrote. “Seemed fine to me,” another chimed in.
In fairness to The Simpsons, the clip was arguably intended to be baffling and unpleasant because it was viewed from Marge’s perspective. Kind of like how Homer’s experience watching Twin Peaks wasn’t necessarily meant to be a criticism of the classic mystery show.
And the actual creators of Smiling Friends likely don’t mind, seeing as co-creator Zach Hadel shared the Screaming Friends clip on social media. Also, they literally named a character “Marge Simpson.”
