Aqua Teen Hunger Force": Still Gross, Still Great

[wayshway]

It's been awhile since I watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force regularly. That's not a knock against the show and I never lost my taste for it—I just spent most of the last year living outside the US without cable or a regular internet connection. I also missed the feature film, and don't remember the last time I caught a new-to-me episode.

All that said, though, "Robots Are Everywhere" and "Ridiculous," two new episodes set to premiere in late January and early February on Adult Swim, suggest the series has lost nothing in the meantime. If regular viewers find these episodes—which are as outrageous, disgusting, tasteless and relentlessly laugh-out-loud funny as the last batch I saw—a devolution from some recent golden age, well, that's what disclaimers like the above are for. For me, watching these was like catching up with my favorite class clown and finding that he's neither aged nor grown stale.

"Robots Everywhere," which is currently playing on Adult Swin Video, puts Carl through hell when a family of highly annoying and amazingly destructive robots move into the vacated Aqua Teen house. (The regular characters have been kidnapped and are being cocooned by military spiders, it is helpfully—if inconsequentially—explained at one point.) The robots, whose designs look like something a five-year-old mad scientist might come up with were he trying to build Marge and Bart Simpson androids, come across like the Mooninites' cheerfully deranged suburban neighbors, shooting off inanities and laser beams with reckless abandon. Most of the fun, though, comes with watching Carl, so unnerved he can't even yell back, gradually liquefy under their onslaughts. Even at its most absurdist, ATHF has always been about character—how its lunatics manage to push each others' buttons—and "Robots Everywhere" is another great example of its makers' skills. Even after he's been struck speechless with despair, Carl's desperation can leave you laughing out loud.

"Ridiculous" is a more conventional story—insofar as the word "conventional" can be applied to ATHF. Carl has been depositing radioactive lawn cigars (side effects of a device whose purpose can't be described on a family-friendly site) in the Aqua Teens' yard, and these gifts wind up zombifying the dead pets Master Shake had been offing in the microwave. It ends happily for everyone, though. Well, except maybe for Carl, who is last seen unconscious and being whisked away by a helicopter. And for Frylock and Meatwad when the house explodes. Now that I think about it, maybe only Master Shake gets a happy ending.

Moreso even than Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, Aqua Teen Hunger Force set the tone for Adult Swim, mixing rapid-fire smartass dialogue and "dead baby" humor into a surprisingly palatable form. Six years after it began playing regularly on Adult Swim, its creators seem to have lost none of their snap. It's a welcome return.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force "Robots Everywhere" premieres on Adult Swim on January 20. "Ridiculous" premieres on February 3.