Smiling Friends S1E3: Shrimp’s Odyssey
What’s the correct way to deal with heartbreak—especially when you didn’t appreciate what you had until it was gone? Do you accept apparent destiny and move on or do you try your hardest to win them back? Season one of Smiling Friends tackles this deeply personal issue with ridiculous comedic flair in “Shrimp’s Odyssey.” This time, the screenwriters fill the 11-minute runtime with satirical personalities, absurd plot twists, and light-hearted lessons on romance.
“Shrimp’s Odyssey” kicks off with the Boss energetically answering a distressing call after getting high on Allan’s special worms (yes, worms can be narcotics in this universe), prompting him to send Pim and Charlie to cheer him up. The duo arrives at a worn-down and unkempt shared housing complex to find Shrimp, a meek anthropomorphic shrimp who stays inside his wasteland of a room playing video games all day. In a memorably monotone voice, he explains that he’s been dumped by his girlfriend Shrimpina and needs help getting over it. However, Pim and Charlie have very different perspectives on how Shrimp should deal with his break-up.
This episode perfectly exemplifies the power of using voice as a means of characterization, something Smiling Friends does consistently well. Viewers can envision characters perfectly just by listening to one speak as their voices align with who they are personally and physically so well. With Shrimp, his robotic speaking and shuffled pacing of words are just as quirky as his frail appearance and modern-day wreck persona. Rarely is he showing any sort of emotion using his voice; instead of sighing and screaming to express his grief, he literally says the word sigh and flatly pronounces “ahhhh” to mimic a scream. The only times we hear his emotion are when he screams in physical agony from being exposed to sunlight and collapsing under 400 pounds of gym weights.
Pim and Charlie’s clashing approaches to helping Shrimp only amplify the comedic tension as the seemingly separate storylines are laced with dramatic irony. Pim, forever the optimist, tries to bring positivity and hope, while Charlie’s more pragmatic approach comedically juxtaposes Shrimp’s passiveness. However, the ingenious way these two characters are balanced makes their actions necessary to contribute to the resolution; Pim and Charlie really are the perfect smiling friends.
