Man-on-the-street interviews have become a defining part of online culture, with short-form series such as Track Star, Gaydar, Are You Okay? and Subway Takes turning quick encounters with strangers into viral entertainment. In Adults Season 2, these popular shows take over the FX sitcom for one of its funniest episodes yet.
Paul Baker embraces his “man-on-the-street face”
In Season 2, Episode 7, “C Alert,” Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) complains that he has what he and his friends call “man-on-the-street face” — an expression that makes him an easy target for New York City’s street-interview creators. Thanks to his Canadian politeness, Paul can never bring himself to turn them down.
By the end of the episode, however, Paul embraces his interview-friendly face to help his housemate and will-they-won’t-they love interest, Anton (Owen Thiele). Anton has gotten into trouble at work for saying “cunt,” a word whose positive associations in queer ballroom culture have fueled its broader reclamation, particularly online. Despite that resurgence, the word still carries significant baggage in the United States, prompting Paul’s campaign to normalize it through street interviews.
Adults then launches into a cameo-filled montage of Paul stumbling through appearances on real-life man-on-the-street programs, including Gaydar, hosted by Anania; Are You Okay?, then hosted by Brianna “Bri” Morales; Recess Therapy, hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum; Street Hearts, hosted by Tiffany “Tiff” Baira; and Track Star, hosted by Jack Coyne.
The sequence provides a hilarious conclusion to the episode while also highlighting the reach and influence of the creators behind the genre.
How the “C Alert” street interviews came together
Adults creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw said the idea of featuring street-interview hosts in Season 2 began when the show’s writers took walks around New York City in search of inspiration. During one visit to Washington Square Park, they saw several interviewers pulling people aside to film their segments.
“One of the writers was like, ‘isn’t it funny that we haven’t seen that on TV yet?’” Shaw recalled in a video interview with Mashable. “It feels like such a present part of New York culture right now.”
To capture that part of New York culture — and the digital culture it becomes once posted online — Adults contacted several New York-based street-interview creators about appearing as themselves.
“To be honest, I was skeptical at first,” Track Star host Jack Coyne told Mashable over the phone. “I thought Track Star sounded like it could be the butt of the joke.”
Coyne created Track Star as a “reaction” to the more aggressive and inappropriate man-on-the-street interviews that have become notorious online. Adults pokes fun at that confrontational style through fictional programs such as Milk or Dare and Gay Granny’s Trivia Crashout. Executive producer Nick Kroll also makes a voiceover cameo as a sleazy host who asks Paul to rank the women in his family by attractiveness.
But the final montage turns the joke back on Paul and becomes an affectionate showcase for the real creators appearing in the episode.
“We’re such fans of this genre, and we think it’s so cool the way these younger creators have managed to really carve out these very funny, specific, voice-y names for themselves in this space,” Shaw said.
Adults typically films in Toronto, but the production sent a small crew to New York City to film Innanen’s segments in the creators’ own environments.
“We wanted to do it on their terms and on their territory, and we really let the hosts lead with their voice, their improv, their writing,” Kronengold said.
Real creators bring their own formats to Adults
The hosts received an outline but could improvise and approach the fictional segments as they would any regular shoot. For Bri Morales, the internet personality and former host of Are You Okay?, that meant deciding whether Paul was actually okay. He was not.
For Anania, the host of Gaydar, the question was whether Paul was gay, straight or a homophobe. In keeping with the show’s established lore, Paul is fluid. On Street Hearts, Tiff Baira sat with Paul at the program’s recognizable matchmaking table to investigate why he was single.
“Paul Baker was just a real person in that moment,” Baira told Mashable over the phone.
Over a single day, the Adults crew traveled across New York, filming Gaydar near a Midtown Container Store and Recess Therapy in Prospect Park. Each segment followed the style of its respective show, including its cameras, lighting, framing and microphone setup. The post-production team also recreated the programs’ graphics and rapid editing styles.
“Being so onboard with having our format inside of the episode makes it a very valiant effort on the showrunners’ part,” Anania told Mashable in a phone interview.
“You don’t often see that from brands,” added Amelia Montooth, creator of Gaydar and CEO of Mutuals Media. “Usually, you’re battling with them to try to keep your authenticity.”
That authenticity also meant treating online creators as stars in their own right. Caleb Simpson, known for his house-tour videos, originally auditioned to play one of Paul’s bro-y friends in the Season 2 premiere. He later returned as himself in “C Alert,” filming a video about Samir’s (Malik Elassal) home.
For Simpson, the appearance reflects Hollywood’s changing view of internet creators.
“I started making content on the internet 11 years ago, and the industry didn’t take it seriously,” Simpson told Mashable over Zoom. “About three or four years ago, I started taking acting and stand up and improv seriously, and then you get cast to play yourself in a show, and you do exactly what you would do when you film your content.”
Why man-on-the-street shows fit the Adults audience
Adults’s embrace of online creators reflects their growing presence in Hollywood. Alongside the street-interview hosts, Season 2 features internet personalities such as Jake Shane, while Innanen also began his career as a content creator.
The approach also gives the show’s Gen Z audience a sense of recognition by meeting viewers in the online spaces where they already spend time. Shaw described the programs as “generational access points.”
“What is the Maddy quote from Euphoria, where she’s like, ‘is this fucking play about us’? That is the goal for these young adult shows to really ring true to their target audience,” Morales told Mashable over the phone. “It would maybe be funny if [Paul Baker] went on The Today Show, but it’s so native to the demographic that of course he’s going to do Are You Okay?, or course he’s going to do man-on-the-street shows, because that’s where everything is right now.”
That “everything” extends to the Adults press tour. During Season 1, Innanen appeared on Are You Okay?, while Amita Rao and Owen Thiele appeared on Gaydar. In Season 2, Paul’s many street-interview appearances also gave Innanen opportunities to appear on those programs as himself.
In a short montage, the show’s fictional world mirrors its marketing campaign, bringing its relationship with online culture full circle.
“The fact that Adults is putting a show like [Track Star] in their script and on TV and understanding it’s a big part of the cultural conversation is just the beginning, honestly,” Coyne said. “I think you’re going to start to see a lot more of this stuff in culture broadly, because people are spending as much time watching content on the internet and on their phones as they are watching Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and FX.”
“It is the future,” said Baira. “Short form and traditional, the future is going to be blending the two.”
Adults Season 2 is now streaming on Hulu.
