Fans of Adults will likely never forget the raunchy and shocking opening scene to the series — and now Us exclusively learned why first-time viewers tuning into the FX series will be greeted with a brand-new, equally hilarious, though notably tame prequel episode instead.
“The question that we and the cast get asked the most is, ‘How did these kids meet?’” Series creator — and writer of prequel episode “Marathon Day” alongside his wife and collaborator Rebecca Shaw — Ben Kronengold told Us exclusively ahead of the season 2 premiere. “We dropped audiences right into the middle of this friend group on a normal day, but we had always had this idea of, well, we know how Paul Baker met this group, [and] once the opportunity came about to tell that story and give an extra episode, a gift to the fans we had and roll out a welcome mat to new fans, we just jumped at it.”
According to the New York Times, the network found that many viewers were tuning out of the series during one scene in particular from the original pilot: the racy cold open, which shows Issa (Amita Rao) masturbating on a subway car to — errantly — protest a man publicly pleasuring himself across from the group.
The network’s solution to the public’s response was to reintroduce the sitcom with a new pilot, or “prequel,” an “experiment” to try to boost and retain viewership. The original pilot still exists, and it definitely sets the tone for the show’s risqué sense of humor, but the new episode now sits in front of it.
“We stayed in Toronto for two more very cold weeks, but it’s been awesome seeing fans respond to it,” Kronengold told Us of the new episode, which follows the group’s attempt to help Anton (Owen Thiele) pretend he is running the New York City marathon, which leads them to meet fan-favorite Paul Baker (Jack Innanen). “We’re really proud.”
While the new episode is certainly a more PG-friendly introduction to the friend group, which also includes Billie (Lucy Freyer) and Samir (Malik Elassal), by no means are Kronengold and Shaw toning down the raunchiness for season 2, which premieres on Hulu on Thursday, August 27.
“We are perpetually shocked at what we get to get away with on this show,” Kronengold told Us. “This season, there’s a whole episode where Anton has a slip-up at work, let’s say, that is shocking that we’re able to put it on television.”
Said slip-up is Anton’s casual use of the word c*** in the workplace in episode 7, titled “C Alert.” Anton’s solution was to reclaim and normalize the word with the help of his roommates.
“What we love to do, and what Nick Kroll, our amazing executive producer has taught us so well, is that it’s one thing to shock, but if you can within that shock make viewers feel something and say something surprisingly sweet and tender, then that’s always worth running at,” Kronengold told Us.
Shaw added: “The benchmark we always use is if it feels like a story your friend would tell you at a party and be like, ‘Oh my god, I screwed up so badly this week,’ that’s probably the kind of thing you want to tell in a story like this. We want the show to have the feeling of watching your friends make an embarrassing mistake, but one that deep down you know they’re going to recover from eventually.”
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