What Have We Done To Deserve Such Wonderful Sons?

What does it take to raise three gargantuan, perfect boys? And what kind of crazy mix-ups would those beautiful, gentle giants get into? This is the central theme of Joe Cappa’s Haha, You Clowns, possibly the strangest show in the last year and one of the strongest animated works that Adult Swim has produced since Smiling Friends. Isaiah Colbert and Chris Person sat down and talked about what it takes to raise such wonderful sons.

Chris: I think I became aware of this because Bakoon kept posting out of context clips of it. How did you end up finding out about this?

Isaiah: My first brush with it was a bit less happenstance. What with me being a cat in both worlds of gaming and animation, I wound up getting sent screeners of the show prior to its release in my emails.  An occurrence that's usually random AF and results in me getting spammed with Prime Video shows no one's ever heard of and I will never watch, but I was taken aback by how its character designs all looked like palatable Wojack memes. But, turns out, it’s quite the opposite of that. It's pretty damn pleasant. Downright wholesome.

Chris: I love these boys so much.

Isaiah: The elevator pitch for it is pretty much what you said, so it’s almost hard to describe the show beyond that. But if I were to attempt to do so, I'd say the show is about a family who lifts strangers up as often as they do each other as they learn to live together following the loss of their mom. Granted, it's a surreal-looking show to experience watching, with its characters looking like they wandered out of an MS Paint draft, but its humor is starkly anti-cynical. I think that's the magic of the whole thing.

Chris: Yeah, it's a hard show to explain the premise of without just watching it. I tried showing my dad this show over Thanksgiving. “It’s about three giant boys and their father and looks really troubling. You keep expecting something very bad to happen but if it does it's immediately resolved. By the end of every episode, they all learn a lesson and grow closer.” We watched exactly one episode, my dad laughed, and he said “OK, enough of that.” In retrospect, I was just describing a sitcom. 

Isaiah: Basically, yet I think its look being so off-putting is what's kept it from really being an easy on-ramp show to get folks to watch. When I broach watching it with my friends after twisting their arm to rewatch specific Smiling Friends episodes at my request, they get turned off by the look of it. But after showing my partner the three episodes stretch from episodes 3-5, I think that's when its formula broke my partner down into liking it. In a weird way, the show having swole dudes who look like the friends of a friend you don't want to hang out with at a party acts as a way to deconstruct implicit biases. That even meatheads can be sweet boys. And seeing them make a mountain out of the smallest thing–searching for a lost jacket in a restaurant, comforting their dad on a rocky flight, teaching their younger brother to not be afraid of holding a baby–is almost an act of anti-comedy that comes back around as comedy when put against how intentionally weird looking the show is. It grows on you.

Boo to all those people on Twitter that shat on the show for airing after Smiling Friends as if it were some Walmart double feature movie package deal that nobody wanted. I think they complement each other well, what with one being meaner despite its name and the other being wholesome despite how bowling shoe ugly its designs are.

Chris: Right, and the execution is the point. If you have to pinpoint what is "funny" about the show, it's often just how specific actions are animated or just tiny, uncomfortable turns of phrases. Tristan, Preston and Duncan are all voiced by Joe Cappa and have a diction somewhere between Schwarzenegger and Homestar Runner. I actually think it bizarrely shares a lot in common with the latter, as well as Brad Neely's work or maybe Achewood a little. There's an entire episode about Duncan being afraid of holding a baby that destroyed me just based on single, tiny shots of how strange babies look. Or even just the fact that their neighbor is professional pool player Jeanette "Black Widow" Lee, who is dating Sean Astin. It's just these specific beats in an otherwise wholesome show.

Isaiah: Biblically accurate Sean Astin had me rolling. They got his eye tilt so dead-on from all angles. 

Chris: It's cool that both Lee and Astin signed on for this knowing what it looks like.

Isaiah: I think another thing that probably Adult Swim should get more credit for is that many of its newer animated shows are from folks who just did animation on Newgrounds and YouTube for years as folks to take a chance on to give them these series. Cappa and Smiling Friends creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel are so terminally online have done this as a passion for so long that it really shows in their series. That uncanny ability to spotlight how drawing something like giving your dad a massage or naturalistic, rambling dialogue about something so innocuous and random like male-pattern balding and finding humor in how relatable that kind of banter is.

A secret thing I've been doing in the lag time of new episodes is going back to the creators' old stuff and discovering the genesis for what would be their first drafts of these jokes. For Hadel, a lot of it is random appearances on Oneyplays where his hypothetical inferences, vocal stims, and impersonations find new life in the show. The same can be said for Cappa, because the first drafts of Haha, You Clowns exist on his YouTube account. And honestly, the first one I saw I didn't like as much because it was a bit crass and mean spirited from the good boys I know and love. So witnessing that evolve into the wholesome show it is now has been a great thing to retroactively experience. It's kind of like how a mangaka will have the core premise of their landmark series in a one shot and seeing how relationships and designs carry over and are remixed for the better. Though, I did get a kick out of the YouTube series' running gag being that the mom was, in fact, a ghostly presence instead of being a knockoff Alexa. 

Though I'll take their eyes turning red whenever they inevitably start crying and the after school-ass Yakuza substory piano music that starts playing over it any day of the week. 

Chris: Yeah I think the final show works better because it firmly loves the boys. I remember someone a while back saying the difference between Family Guy and American Dad is that the family in American Dad seems to really like each other and that's why it's a better show. Like it really does grow on you. Cappa's entire account is wild though, his stuff involving really weird practical effects like “Meet The Boys” is great. It all has a menacing Aphex Twin “Windowlicker” tension that is never resolved.

Isaiah: When I read up on him before our chat, I came across his animated short “Ghost Dogs,” which has motion as a Sundance Festival Official Selection and the Satoshi Kon Award winner at Fantasia. Watching it was creepy as hell. But dude's definitely got artistic range. I tend to trust folks who can seamlessly weave their way from comedy to horror, and “Ghost Dogs” is definitely horror. 

Chris: Yeah, like Smiling Friends does a lot with not being locked into a single medium and working with multiple (CG, claymation). I don't think I'd want that for this show, but it helps as an artist and animator to have the range.

Isaiah: I feel forever changed having learned that the animators for Haha, You Clowns draw the first initials of the boys to tell them apart because, despite not being triplets, they have the same fucking face. 

With Haha, You Clowns being the first Adult Swim short to be picked up as a series, I hope it leads more shows of its ilk to get a rocket strapped to its pack and propelled into the mainstream. My kingdom for a full series-funded pick up for YouTube animated shows like Speedoru's Punch Punch Forever or MeatCanyon getting some sort of show. 

Chris: I would very much love it if Adult Swim had free rein to do that. It exists as this strange unicorn when so much of animation is decimated, and it's worrying particularly since Williams Street is a subsidiary of Warner Brothers.

Isaiah: Lord knows, Warner Bros. under Netflix would all but assure nothing is getting past a second season. Good news for that “why bother?” Hogwarts show. Bad news for animation worth a damn.

Chris: I can't imagine that. I want these large lads to have a healthy life. I want to see their adventures for years. I wanna grow old with these beautiful boys.

Isaiah: Haha, You Clowns forever. A hundred years, Haha, You Clowns things, and stuff of that nature.