>>1471683
>background knowledge
https://www.youtube.com/@OneyPlays

>>1471685
Any video you recommend from the channel?

>>1471686
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJcCqb0EyY

The pilot is gold. I watched 3 episodes after that and they just sucked. It's the new Rick & Morty I guess.

This guy got it right pretty much,
>>1471685
>>1471688

If you want more elaboration/spoonfeeding, one of the creators, writers, and lead voice actors is Zach Hadel, who was a big animator on Newgrounds, a guest on Sleepycast, and a co-star on Oneyplays, Oney (Chris O'Neil) being another Newgrounds animator.
He's popular because he has a nasally voice and can do absurd and ridiculous impressions and screams. On Oneyplays, he also frequently would come up with absurdist 'hypotheticals,' typically aimed the relaxed, bearded, Jewish voice actor Joshua Tomar, whose responses would be humorous. Essentially, he's a chaotic character who mixes well with a straight man like Tomar and another chaotic character like Chris to egg him on.
Smiling Friends, made by him, started out with just a pitch Premier that was actually really good. I don't know if they didn't expect it to be actually picked up, or didn't have any plans for if it were to, but it was, and pretty much all the other episodes aside from one were kinda bad. They overly rely on recycling the various 'hypotheticals,' which to some fans makes them clap and point because they recognize them, but to others it's just the same thing they've heard before only in a worse atmosphere; what made the 'hypotheticals' on Oneyplays funny was that it was genuine friends with obviously good chemistry relaxing and shooting the shit on the couch. It doesn't work as well for some gag crammed into an episode of a cartoon.
The other problem being that Zach, known for his crazy impressions, voices, and screams, chiefly voices one of the two main characters who's really just a relaxed straight man. It's a real waste of potential. The only other episode of season 1 I found good, Frowning Friends, has Zach voice other wilder characters and may be why it's better than the rest.
Cont.

>>1471730
I only watched to episode 6 of season 2, because aside from the Premier again being pretty good, and maybe the Allen episode, it was even worse in my opinion. The recycled 'hypotheticals' have became more prominent, more jokes rely on the different animations styles, which was a novelty at first but has since become forced and old, and even more jokes rely on the 'realistic dialogue,' again, initially a novelty that's become overplayed.
The UFO episode downright put me in a bad mood and I dropped it.

I feel like the love of the show is just people who love Zach's material on Newgrounds, Sleepycast and Oneyplays blindly supporting it because he made it, and not because of it's actual quality.

>>1471732
I can only speak for myself, but I never watched anything by anyone involved beforehand and I still really enjoyed it. But I really enjoy surreal humor and stuff like that, it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

>>1471683
You'd like it more if you had a parasocial relationship with the people who made it or were prone to getting wrapped up in twitter hype. On its own it;s just kind if a middling show with some occasional cool stylistic animation choices.

>>1471730
>>1471732
From what I gather, they seem to enjoy the funny drawings and the voices more than the jokes and content itself. Like, they'll laugh at everyone looking dumb and stupid and I just don't get it. Sure, they look grotesque and odd but is that really the humor?

Like, I can *kinda* see the humor in things. The president episode had moments of "oh, that's funny" but I didn't really laugh and the last episode with Bill Nye dying suddenly nearly got me but overall it just doesn't seem to funny at all.

It's a unique show in every other aspect though, I find a lot of the concepts and locations actually interesting I thought the Alien episode and the glitch world episode to be entertaining because of the location and scenario over anything else.

Am I just never going to get it without watching tons and tons of content that this show references?

>>1471683
You don't need to know that stuff. The idea of the show is "relatively grounded characters in a wacky world" and genuine internet style humor. If you don't like that kind of stuff, then I guess it's not for you.

>>1471871
It's also supposed to subvert expectations of modern adult cartoons.

>>1471683
>I feel like there's a lot of background knowledge of the artists previous work that they all watched years ago that I just somehow missed it and want to know what exactly all of that is to just understand it.
You don't need to know anything about anyone to understand it or find it funny, in fact that's one of the stated goals of the creators.
But if you do know them, you'll have an additional layer of enjoyment, you'll know more or less how some jokes came to be*, or you'll recognize an Internet artist's or personality's contribution.

But if it's not your type of humor, that's ok. Not everyone has to like it.

*for instance, the joke about the forest demon being torn apart by a crow who thinks he's wearing blackface originates from a story from one of their friends who was dressed up as a Smurf when he was a kid, but the faded photo of it looks like he's wearing blackface, and from an animation idea one of the creators mentioned in a video, about kids tearing apart a monkey and eating it during birthday party. You don't need any of it to get the joke, but if you are familiar with these two stories, you'd recognize the roots of it.

>>1471683
You are over thinking it, it's a show where random funny things happen. I started watching it before I knew about Oneyplays and Sleepy Cast, and I enjoyed it fine.