Creators Teddy Riley, Matthew Hausfater, and Aaron Buchsbaum share some of the fast-paced setups and gags, including funny wall posters and tattoos you’ll miss if you blink – multiple viewings do help - as Dale, Derica, Truman, and Benny’s clout-tastic quest returns with 8 new episodes, now streaming on Prime Video.
Diabolical AI girlfriends, a town divided by a Latrine and Off-Brian war, dodgeball to the death, bathroom fires, dragon riding, skydiving, werewolf Derica, a presumably dead Principal Weston, surprise appearances from Guy Fieri, with a school dance thrown in the mix as well. The 8-episode second season of Fairfax, debuting on Prime Video Friday, June 10, is pulling out all the stops with no holds barred as friends Dale, Derica, Truman, and Benny enter a new year of romantic relationships and sexual discovery.
“With everything in the show, we always came at it from a place of half love, half poking fun,” says Teddy Riley, who co-created the series with fellow executive producers and long-time friends Matthew Hausfater and Aaron Buchsbaum. “And as long as we stay true to both sides, then we usually came out in the right place. That’s the beauty of comedy.”
He continues, “And we all experienced all this stuff, so we have the hindsight of being able to laugh at those awkward moments and touch those places in an animated show that maybe were extra sensitive.”
Season 1 centered around a new kid in town – Dale – finding his people in middle school and the gang embarking on a quest to become clout-tastic influencers. Featuring stranded orcas, concerts dedicated to pollution, a global search for golden Doritos, and ruthless school spirit political campaigns, the first season ended with Dale, Derica, Truman, and Benny coming back from a successful day touring Latrine’s head-of-operations with their hero Hiroki, only to discover the block’s new obsession with “Off-Brian,” a brand created by Hiroki’s former employee Brian.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” says Buchsbaum. “It feels like we're still in our first season release right now. The joy of all of it nicely bled into press for the second season. And it was a wild relief to have a Fresh Tomato on Rotten Tomatoes. We’ve got a scene at the end of our first season where J.B. Smoove says something like, ‘If this isn’t Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m gonna be pissed!’ We really called that out, so thank God it was Certified Fresh.”
Riley adds, “Most of the reviews were either from people who totally got what we were going for or from a bunch of people being like, ‘This is woke leftist bullshit.’ And we’re like, ‘I think we scratched a nerve.’ But it's been awesome. Especially seeing the people who have connected with it all over the world.”
In the new season, a war rages between Latrine loyalists and Off-Brian advocates. Meanwhile the four ride-or-die friends face possible division of their own when Truman’s AI girlfriend threatens to break up the squad.
“Let's be honest, most of our decisions as kids somehow are the result of who we have a crush on and what our crush is interested in,” says Buchsbaum. “For all of this stuff we like to say about ‘the culture,’ the root of it always comes back to those raw emotions you're feeling as a kid. We’re putting just our own little spin on it and letting it really live and marinate in the world of Fairfax. It lets you explore all that stuff and have fun with it and absolutely have a conversation about it, but also just laugh at the fact that, again, this girlfriend is the product of Welch’s trying to market to children.”
The second season also addresses a wildly relevant topic of “performative grief,” when Principal Weston, a normally hated authority figure, is announced to be presumed dead.
“We had a big conversation with our writers about this around the time that Kobe Bryant had died, and it was also on the heels of Nipsey Hussle and David Bowie, just talking about how everyone felt so obligated to post something on Instagram as soon as somebody died,” explains Buchsbaum. “And it was kind of this race to see who could post first.”
Riley adds, “The sadder you got, the more likes you got. There was this very rewarding system that we started to just see and a pattern of behavior, no matter the celebrity.”
Buchsbaum continues, “And it led us to this place of, ‘How does performative grief manifest itself in Fairfax?’ Obviously, Principal Weston is somebody that everyone can agree they hate. He dies and, all of a sudden, it's this race to see who loves him the most or loved him the most and who had the best relationship with him.”
From the beginning, Fairfax – produced by Emmy Award-winning animation production studio Titmouse (Midnight Gospel, Star Trek: Lower Decks) and artist Somehoodlum – has taken comedic jabs at clout culture and celebrates the Gen Z community’s inclusive nature through storylines that are relatable to anyone who has ever been a teenager. So, a school dance had to make an appearance.
“Whether it's Stranger Things, or Euphoria, or any John Hughes movie, there's always a school dance,” says Hausfater. “And it's used because it's a great way to get everybody together to tie up loose ends. So, we started to say, ‘What would a Fairfax dance be like? And how do we put our spin on the school dance episode?’ And it was placed wonderfully at the end of the season so that we could amp up the drama.”
He continues, “We built Season 1 around forming this friend group. So, what better stakes than to rip it apart, potentially? Because we've made you care. And so we found [a school dance] would be a really great way to find ourselves at the end of the season, wondering, ‘Will they come back together to fix a much larger problem?’”
The three creators credit most of the show’s story success to their writers, like Shana Gohd from Archer, Evan Waite from Family Guy, Peter Knight (also an executive producer) from BoJack Horseman. “It's one of the perks of having such a strong writers' room and bringing on writers that are way cooler and way more tapped into the world than we are,” says Buchsbaum, who also praises Fairfax’s artists and consulting producer Somehoodlum for their attention to detail and subtle jokes made with wittingly designed posters, tattoos, signs, and t-shirt graphics.
“We have amazing board artists and background designers and character designers that turn everything up to 11 and make things so funny,” says Hausfater.
Riley adds, “It’s really a show that’s meant to be rewatched and we hope people do. It goes a mile a minute. There are so many visual jokes. There are so many sound jokes. We packed as much as we could into it. The fact that people even spot those little things that come and go in a second, is so rewarding and exactly why we do it.”
However, there are some things Riley, Hausfater and Buchsbaum will take credit for.
“The one thing we knew we wanted when we were designing Young Polluter’s tattoos was that we wanted it to say ‘Diarrhea’ on his back with poop covering a globe,” notes Buchsbaum laughing. “That, we will take credit for. Other than that, Matt is right. Our artists are truly incredible. The only thing we really did was tell them, ‘Yes,’ and ‘More please.’ Even in the fifth episode in Season 2, the characters are in the film room and there are these posters on the wall that are so funny. I won't spoil it now, but each of those posters was carefully thought about for hours by our artists.”
There’s also plenty more Somehoodlum color eye candy for viewers this season.
“In Episode 6, Hiroki’s mind palace is insane and, I don't want to spoil too much, but there's a flea market episode with a huge musical number at the beginning that is so visually cool,” says Riley. “Everybody upped their bar this season. There are just some great visual sequences. Knowing what colors work really well together is one of [Somehoodlum’s] strongest suits as an artist and whether it's as big as the whole world of the show or down to the kind of pink that something should be, he's a great partner.”
Buchsbaum adds, “It's so rare that you find an artist that is so open to collaboration and letting somebody into their world and play with their style and push their boundaries. It's a dream scenario.”
From getting to dive into previously smaller role characters from the first season, to exploring the boundaries of teen angst arcs, Fairfax creators have built up and then demolished plenty of sandcastles in their sandbox of storytelling with Season 2. And, despite working through COVID and having to restructure their production pipeline, Hausfater, Buchsbaum, and Riley say it’s been the chance of a lifetime.
“Making the show has been the best experience ever,” says Riley. “We felt like we knew what we were doing by the end of Season 1, so we felt like, in Season 2, we really got to point at a target and go in that direction. And whether it was the music department or the art department or the writers' room, everybody was just gung-ho about it. Every day was a challenge but, looking back, greatest experience ever.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
