As Universal Basic Guys Season 2 draws to a close, the FOX animated comedy is finding new ways to be weird and funny at the same time. The escapades of brothers Mark and Hank Hoagies, as well as their fellow factory workers, continue to stretch logic at every opportunity. But under that, as the title indicates, this is a show about two ordinary guys who just want to enjoy life.

Series creators Adam Malamut and Craig Malamut joined TVBrittanyF.com for an interview, looking ahead to the Universal Basic Guys Season 2 finale. The duo also discussed some of their favorite episodes across the season, and how they maintain the show’s balance between crazy ideas and story that people can relate to. Plus, where did they originally come up with this seemingly endless premise?

Brittany Frederick: How did you find the original idea for Universal Basic Guys? What was it about this concept that made you want to hopefully do several seasons in this world?

Adam Malamut: Mark Hoagies was a character that I’ve had in my head for a very long time, growing up listening to Philadelphia sports talk radio where everyone thinks they’re a genius and knows more than the coach. [It’s] especially relevant, I think, these days, where everybody thinks they’re an expert on everything, and this whole “do your own research culture” and stuff like that. So it was the perfect character for us to come about, which is Philly-talking guy who knows everything about everything. Can do everything better.

We knew this voice. We knew the Hank voice. We had those characters in our head—but for a long time we struggled to figure out what to do with them. What job should they have? What should they do? And that’s when we got the second part of the idea.

Craig Malamut: We were in the thick of the pandemic, and we were working from home, trying to think about this concept. Our wives were kind of like, what are you guys doing—and we were like, that’s it. That’s the concept. What are we doing? [Laughs.] But Andrew Yang was talking about UBI and it was kind of in the zeitgeist. And we were looking at automation.

Adam: Everybody was making their own bread and finding new hobbies during COVID.

Craig: We were on YouTube watching random videos and being like, it’d be fun to try this or that. [It’d] be cool to have a pet monkey. What would that be like? And then we’re just like, what if this is what our characters were doing?

It’s a thing I think a lot of people now are familiar with from that period—when you have nothing to do, how do you fill your time? And if you don’t have a job, how do you define yourself and find purpose? And so we just felt this was an endless engine, with these characters who are constantly on this quest and never quite able to figure that out.

The monkey plotline in that first episode sets the tone for Universal Basic Guys. How do you do a show where a monkey can be trying to rip a face off, yet you want people to also get invested in the characters?

Craig: We like to find that relatable, familiar way in, and then just have it go into some crazy direction. So much of how we think about things is, we’ll just be thinking about some common problem we’re dealing with, and then just speculating what if things went nuts? Maybe that’s our anxious brains running, but that’s just how we think. And also it ends up with really funny scenarios when we say them out loud.

Adam: For the most part, our formula is you want to settle into something that feels relatable in some way and then at some point, our characters have a choice—which is to either learn the lesson, or double down in the wrong direction. And when they double down, that’s when things get really weird or crazy, because they take that idea to the extreme, and then the effects are very extreme of that.

It is animation, and we want it to go big, but we have very natural-sounding characters, which makes you think a different way. It’s not a joke machine show, where you’re just watching for the jokes. It’s all character-driven. And so we feel like if we’re going to go big, you have to earn it. You want people to understand why it goes big. It feels more satisfying that way.

The Universal Basic Guys Season 2 finale, “Crowmaster,” has a plotline in which Mark trains crows to steal for his sports card collection. Where did that idea come from, and what can fans expect?

Adam: I was obsessed with cards when I was younger. All kinds of cards—sports cards and then I got into Marvel cards… I think those were stolen from me at some point, or I lost them, but I like to say [they were] stolen from me. [Laughs.] More dramatic and I don’t have to blame myself, I had boxes and boxes of all these cards when I was growing up, and they’re worth nothing.

We grew up in the era where everyone has a story about how their parents threw away their baseball cards, and they’re worth so much. And so I saved all mine, because everyone did, and now they’re worth nothing. So that was sort of a relatable story. Mark has this big trove of cards. He thinks it’s going to pay for Darren’s college.

As you look back on Season 2, do you have favorite episodes? Or ones that you would recommend to anyone who hasn’t checked out the show yet?

Adam: We love “Two Marks,” the clone pisode, because it is an episode that seems so ridiculous. It’s actually the opposite in that one, where it starts off ridiculous and then becomes a heartfelt story about family. That’s our sweet spot, to me, which is doing something absurd earnestly—and then being unexpectedly interesting, or heartfelt. And so we both really like that one.

I personally love “Golden Beans.” I love how that one kind of takes a weird turn… I love when things get really trope-y, so that’s another one of my favorite. I also like “Down the Shore” a lot, because I just find that episode to be very funny. And I think Sheri Oteri is so funny as the sister.

Craig: One that I liked, that scratched an itch I had for a while, is the “Markumentary” one. It’s just very satisfying. It explains a lot of the lore of the show and the origin story. And so it felt good to put that one out. And that was an idea we had in our heads since the show’s conception, and we’re just trying to figure out a way to retroactively, talk about. It was cool to change the style of the show into a documentary format. So that one I’m proud of.

But Adam mentioned a bunch. I like the jet pack one [“Skyboys”]. It’s just [got] some good Easter eggs in there. And Chris Meloni is awesome.

Universal Basic Guys airs Sundays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on FOX. Photo Credit: Courtesy of FOX.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.