Hulu’s True ‘Freaks and Geeks’ Successor Officially Debuts With 100% Rating for Season 2

Hulu has another critically adored hangout comedy on its hands. Adults Season 2 officially debuted on August 27, 2026, and the FX comedy has opened with a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, while early Metacritic reception sits at an impressive 79/100. Created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, Adults follows five twenty-somethings sharing Samir’s childhood home in Queens: Samir (Malik Elassal), Billie (Lucy Freyer), Issa (Amita Rao), Anton (Owen Thiele), and Paul Baker (Jack Innanen). They have jobs, bills, sex lives, health scares, and enough questionable judgment to keep actual adulthood permanently around the next corner.

That combination makes Adults feel like a spiritual cousin to Freaks and Geeks rather than another Friends retread. Both understand that young adulthood is frequently embarrassing, friendships can become surrogate families, and growing up rarely follows the instruction manual. The difference is generational: Freaks and Geeks captured teenage alienation at the turn of the millennium, while Adults tackles Gen Z stumbling into independence with social media, precarious employment, healthcare headaches, and modern dating thrown into the blender.

Adults Season 2 Grows Up Without Going Straight

Credit: FX

Adults Season 1 established the household and its peculiar rhythms, but Season 2 appears to be where Adults finds another gear. RogerEbert argues that the show has grown into one of television’s best sitcoms, praising how its writing combines existential anxiety with unabashed physical comedy. The review particularly singles out Rao and Thiele, whose Issa-Anton dynamic becomes one of the season’s strongest assets.

The A.V. Club reaches a similar verdict, describing Season 2 as a more mature and substantially funnier sophomore outing. That evolution matters because Adults did not emerge universally beloved. Season 1 reviews ranged from TVLine awarding the comedy an A to The Guardian criticizing its attempts at TikTok-era edginess. Season 2’s perfect early Tomatometer therefore represents more than a shiny number; it suggests Kronengold and Shaw have sanded down some of the freshman year’s rough edges without declawing its oddball personality.

The creators themselves have described the characters as entering their “fking and feeling phase of life”** this season (per TV Insider), replacing Season 1’s attempts at conventional maturity with messier relationships and emotional consequences.

Freaks and Geeks Walked So Adults Could Stumble

Jason Segel and Linda Cardellini in Freaks and Geeks | NBC

The Freaks and Geeks comparison works best as a spiritual-successor argument, not a literal connection. Paul Feig’s cult classic followed teenagers navigating friendship, identity, s*x, family expectations, and social hierarchies without polishing adolescence into a glossy fantasy. Adults applies a comparable affection to people who are older but hardly wiser. Season 2 tackles everything from fertility and sibling milestones to stale careers, old fake IDs, changing friendships, and the terror of realizing youth has an expiration date. Rotten Tomatoes itself calls Adults one of the best of the current crop of Gen Z friendship comedies.

The format also remains refreshingly ensemble-driven. Nobody has to become the designated sensible protagonist while everyone else supplies punchlines. Anton, Issa, Billie, Samir, and Paul Baker are allowed to be selfish, loyal, ridiculous, frightened, and occasionally perceptive within the same friendship. That is where the Freaks and Geeks DNA feels strongest: the characters are the attraction, not merely vehicles for the joke of the week.

Adults Season 2 has eight regular episodes plus the bonus episode Marathon Day. The season premiered August 27 on Hulu, while FXX is airing two episodes weekly. International availability includes Disney+ in several territories. A 100% Rotten Tomatoes debut does not automatically crown Adults the next Freaks and Geeks. Still, after two seasons, the comparison no longer feels like wishful thinking.