A few weeks before tonight's debut on the hilarious Gen Z hangout comedy Adults, FX and Hulu did something unusual. They dropped a bonus episode, set prior to the events of the series premiere. To be fair, parts of this weren't that odd. This was the second time FX had released a bonus prequel episode as a teaser to a new season of one of their shows, with The Bear standalone story "Gary."
There's also a tradition of TV shows doing prequel episodes as parts of regular seasons. Friends did a bunch of them (many of them contradicting one another about how Chandler and Rachel met). Firefly did one about how the crew came together. The Shield made one literally called "Co-Pilot," set in the weeks leading up to the show's actual debut. And there's an even longer tradition of TV shows filming multiple pilot episodes before they get it right (which I'll be writing about next week).
This new Adults episode, called "Marathon," is still in an unusual position. It was filmed long after the first season both completed production and aired, but if you go to watch the show on Hulu or On Demand, it has now superseded the original series premiere, "The Window," as the very first episode listed. I've never seen that done before.This means that anyone who already watched Season One may not even notice that "Marathon" exists as they begin to dive into Season Two this week. You have to already know it's there in order to find it.
But "Marathon" wasn't designed for people who already know and like Adults. It's meant as a cleaner entry point for people who are new to the series, created by writers Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, about five friends and housemates in their 20s. "Marathon" offers more exposition about how Billie (Lucy Freyer), Anton (Owen Thiele), and Issa (Amita Rao) came to live in the Queens childhood home of Samir (Malik Elassal) while his parents are on a never-ending vacation. It's more clear on the interpersonal dynamics among that original foursome. And it shows how everyone met Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), a latecomer to the group who moves into the house in "The Window."