‘Adults’ Bosses on Season 2’s Pop Culture Inspirations

‘Adults’ Bosses on <a href="https://comicvibe.com/where-to-watch-iowa-footballs-season-opener-vs-niu-today-time-tv/” title=”Where to watch Iowa football's season opener vs NIU today, time, TV”>Season 2’s Pop Culture Inspirations: From ‘Survivor’ to Broadway

Spoiler Alert

What To Know

• Adults creators Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold open up about Season 2’s Survivor highlight.
• Plus, the personal connection behind Issa’s performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables and Carly’s pop girlie phase.

While Adults is making waves with its own significant impact on pop culture, Season 2 is filled with fun nods to beloved pieces of media, whether it’s Billie (Lucy Freyer) and Issa’s (Amita Rao) Survivor nights or the latter’s “I Dreamed a Dream” performance in “Pop Girlie.”

But what inspired these inclusions? When it came to Billie and Issa’s go-to TV viewing experience, long-running reality competition Survivor fit the bill, partly because “it feels very Billie to us,” series cocreator Rebecca Shaw tells TV Insider. “I think all of the Billies in our life really like Survivor.”

“It feels like something about the Billie personality type, you really are craving gamification of social rules,” Shaw explains. “She loves organized fun; I feel like that translates out to Survivor as well.”

As fans see, Billie and Issa enjoy the show while clad in leis and sipping from plastic margarita glasses in bed, and that’s due in part to the episode’s writer, Sarah Naftalis. “It’s a good insight into what the writers’ room is obsessed with,” cocreator Ben Kronengold adds of the pop culture inspirations and influences at play onscreen. “What are the songs that we’re playing during lunch, what are the shows that we’re watching at the time — I always love how that seeps in, and Sarah Natalis, who wrote that episode, is a huge Survivor fan.”

Kronengold points out, “You can tell that she’s a huge Survivor fan because the joke of, ‘Look where the camera’s pointing, that’s clearly where the idol is!’”

Ultimately, Shaw says, “We just try to keep it really character specific and not lean too timely. I think sometimes if we try to tether something to exactly the year 2026, we’re worried that by 2027, it’ll feel exactly the six-month period that we were shooting this in, but something like Survivor [works].”

Meanwhile, Issa’s Broadway moment serenading attendees at Carly’s (Rachel Marsh) single launch with the Les Misérables tune “I Dreamed a Dream,” held some deeper meaning for Shaw and Kronengold specifically.

“Amita Rao, who has a genuinely beautiful singing voice, sang it at our wedding at the after party,” Shaw shares of her and Kronengold’s inspiration to include it in the show. “She brought the goddamn house down, and we were like, we have to incorporate that into the show somehow.” Thankfully for fans, they manage to.

As for Carly’s failed K-pop aspirations with “Hiccups (Body Go Crazy),” the creators were partially influenced by their school friends. “We love musical comedy, and we wanted to try to find a place for it in the show this season,” Kronengold shares. “We went around the writer’s room and realized that we kind of all had that friend from high school or college who was on a pretty stable track and then took a wild left turn and dropped a single, and we were fascinated by this pop girlie phenomenon.”

‘Adults’ Season 3: Bosses Tease New Housemate, Issa’s Romance & Future Plans

Ultimately, it became a test for Samir’s (Malik Elassal) relationship, as Shaw says, “Sweet Samir, who was delighted by the idea of having a stable girlfriend and getting to be sort of a supporter, a dentist’s husband, as it were, suddenly realizes that she’s about to derail her life. We love this character of ‘boyfriend Samir,’ we wanted to figure out what sorts of challenges we could throw at him.”

In the end, it’s just one block in a tower of hurdles that are too much for Samir and Carly to overcome before the season is through, but thankfully, it did give birth to one of Adults‘ catchiest pop culture contributions. What do you think of Adults Season 2’s influences? Sound off in the comments section, and relive every hilarious moment by streaming the FX comedy on Hulu.

FX’s Adults, Season 2, Streaming now, Hulu

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2025–

Comedy

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AdultsAmita RaoBen KronengoldLucy FreyerRebecca Shaw