#adultswim2021

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #89: “Rabbot Redux” | February 8, 2010 - 12:00AM | S08E02

Happy Space Ghost day, everyone! 30 dang years with our great guy. Wow! Seems like as good a day as any to start this shit up again. To the small-yet-still-dwindling number of people who read my shit: Hi! Real life is having it’s way with me right now, so please know I’m instituting a hard-and-fast “will update when I feel like it” rule to this thing for the right-now. So, please don't expect this to be a nightly blog. It'll be more like a "nighty" blog, as in "nighty-night", because it will be angelically and perfectly asleep most of the time. Thank you. 

It’s Rabbot Redux: a fairly unnecessary explanation for what happened directly after the events of the live-action episode. It turns out the Aqua Teens drove their moving van two doors down, to the other house next to Carl’s. Not a lot happens; Neil unpacks while Rick and Vivian fight over which room is theirs. Shake immediately claims the bathroom, not realizing it’s a bathroom. Meatwad gets a luxurious room with a salad bar and a harem.

Eventually Rabbot (from before) shows up with a housewarming gift. He then crushes the Aqua Teens’ house, forcing them to go back to the old house. Schooly D shows up and sings a new theme song (which is also used over the opening sequence). This one calls back a lot of stuff from Rabbot, like Carl working out of the home, and “dancing is forbidden”.

This one isn’t especially groundbreaking, and it’s a little puzzling that they felt the need to write themselves out of that "hole". Normally they’d just ignore stuff like that and relish the show's lack of continuity. Not only did they air an episode between the two episodes (a Christmas special), but they also put it on DVD with multiple episodes between this and the Live-Action episode; I’m guessing in some production order or something. It's striking how little these guys care, sometimes. It's weird to see them dutifully tie up a thread.

This one is fairly funny, though. There’s nothing egregiously bad in it. The biggest smile I did was the part when Shake started berating Frylock about sucking his stuff. Shake is a nasty guy who says rude stuff :)

EPHEMERA CORNER

FOX on Adult Swim bump (January 11, 2010)

Hey, here's something fun and--what luck! I am telling you about it: At this time, Adult Swim was airing episodes of Family Guy shortly after they premiered on Fox, and they had a significant viewership on both channels. In the episode "Big Man on Hippocampus", they aired a fake Adult Swim bumper (intended to mess with Fox watchers) as they went to commercial, making a joke about confusing their viewers into which network they were watching. When the episode aired on Adult Swim, they followed it up with a Fox-style promo instead of their normal bumper. Fun fact: I once spoke to somebody who was writing on an Adult Swim show and they entertained the idea of doing a fake Adult Swim bumper, and asked me if any other shows had done that. I told them "even Family Guy has" because I happened to catch this bit. Took the wind out of those sails.

MAIL BAG

oh wow she's straight-up married to the mindless self indulgence guy. woof

LOL

Hello Mister Swim! What if I called you Mister Swim all the time, like you were Mr. Moviefone? Would that be a treat?

Yeah, it would be a nice treat. Thank you for being so nice to me.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

[adultswim2021]

The Venture Bros. #46: "The Revenge Society" | November 16, 2009 - 12:00AM | S04E05

Look, I love and respect The Venture Bros. Please know that I’m coming from a place of love when I say that this episode has that season three stank on it. 

Generally speaking, I feel like the show has ebbs and flows, vacillating somewhat between episodes where the humor and standalone adventure is emphasized and episodes that feel like an exercise in world-building and character lore. I enjoy piecing together the somewhat complicated story and character histories and stuff like that, because I love this show. But the reason I love this show is for standalone adventures and humor.

This one focuses on Phantom Limb’s reemergence as the head of the Revenge Society, which we find out is comprised of a lady’s shoe (Dr. Mrs. The Monarch’s shoe, I think), a Mug with the word WISDOM on it, and a toaster. Phantom Limb has lost his mind, and treats these all like they’re real guys. One of my favorite jokes of the episode includes the use of the oriental riff, used when Phantom Limb introduces his mug Wisdom. Guy’s gone so crazy that he’s assigned a race to a dang cup. 

This one features a lotta people explaining things to each other. We find out what two of the Council of 13 look like, for instance. We also find out that they are elderly Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper (now known as the Red Mantle and Dragoon, respectively), and they were coaxed away from the airplane that would have killed them by Phantom Limb’s grandfather Phantomas. The fact that these supervillains began life as kidnapped musicians is the explanation for why David Bowie is the Sovereign. Phantom Limb kidnaps Billy Quizboy and has him surgically place Dragoon’s head onto the Red Mantle’s body after attacking them so severely that such a drastic act is their only hope for surviving. They become another Jackson and Doc comedy duo.

Eventually, the Guild of Calamitous Intent show up to the Venture compound while Hatred, Hank, Doc, and Dean all sorta spit off into pairs and stall for time. This makes the episode feel a little listless, like those boring-ass sequences in the Two Towers movie where Hobbits are goofing off with those walking trees. I don’t mind scenes where nothing really happens and characters just chit-chat, as long as it’s funny. I don’t find these scenes to be particularly strong.

Okay, so Phantom Limb is trying to get the Orb (from before). Billy Quizboy knows where it is, which is why the Guild show up to the Ventures door. At some point, the Ventures confront the guild. Dean is paraded as the heir to the Orb or maybe the guild? I guess because Rusty’s grandfather was the protector of the Orb? I don’t know if I really “get” this part at all, but it’s all leading to the conclusion of the orb saga.

Dean knights the current Soverign as the heir to the Orb (I think?) and Phantom Limb tries to get it, only to find out that it’s broken. We then cut to the same flashback from season three, which shows Sandow seemingly strangle Rusty’s father’s father. The scene continues to reveal that Sandow simply broke the orb, and left the elder Ventures’ skull in tact. Apparently this reveal was planned all along, which is why they make the skull-smashing/neck-breaking sound a little metallic-sounding in season three.

The final scene also features a Brian Eno stand-in called Eon. I didn’t know who this was, honestly, and had to look it up. I know who Brian Eno is, I just mean I don’t think I remembered at all what that dude looked like. Is that the real Brian Eno doing the voice? Seriously, no source that would list such a thing lists an actor for him, nor do they point out that he’s voiced by “(unknown)”. I also don’t see anyone asking who the voice is. Am I dumb? 

Other stuff ahead: the dilapidated mansion that Phantom Limb brings Billy, Red Mantle, and Dragoon to comes back later, so keep your peepers peeled if you are a huge dork who likes remembering stuff from cartoons.

More other stuff: this episode pays off Hatred’s fixation on Billy, who is a child-sized but oh-so-legal little man. Billy is knocked unconscious and eventually finds himself in Hatred’s bed. The commentary, the book, and eventually dialogue from a later episode all insist that Hatred didn’t rape Billy; Hatred just cuddled him while he recovered.

And finally, the joke at the end, where Red Mantle tries to jam in a two-headed-related quip to no effect is real funny. I like that joke. See? I told you I love and respect this show.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #the venture bros.

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #88: "Last Last One Forever and Ever" (aka "Live Action") | May 31, 2009 - 11:45PM | S07E10

This episode starts with the Aqua Teens all bursting into flames after finding out their water has been infected with fire. They try to warn Carl, who is currently farting in his above-ground pool with a stack of dynamite that he moved there so that the ants wouldn’t get to it. Carl ignores his neighbor’s pleas and it ends tragically, with the entire Eastern seaboard exploding. 

Then: DAAAAAANG, we cut to a live-action version of the Aqua Teens’ house! it turns out this (and implicitly, every episode of the show) is a story being written by Don Shake, a man in a white jumpsuit that wears yellow dish-washing gloves. He’s played by H. Jon Benjamin. He’s at odds with his roommate, portrayed by T-Pain who vaguely resembles Frylock. T-Pain Frylock has been letting Don Shake slide on rent while he writes his awful stories, which Don promised Frylock a percentage on. Unfortunately, his stories are all bad, and they make him none money.

Shake confers with Frylock’s brownish exercise ball, who sounds like a little guy we all know and know some more. He tries and fails to give Shake guidance. The presence of a sword is established. Shake goes to his job at a bouncy castle house, run by Dr. Weird, whose voice we hear on the overhead system. We also hear Steve. It’s nice to hear from those guys again, isn’t it? Anyway, Carl tries to interfere in Shake’s creative process as well, urging him to add boobs and lesbos. Meatwad is so displeased that he advises that Shake do something to Frylock with the sword. 

After a sword-related fake-out, we cut back to the cartoon reality, because Don Shake now knows how to end his story properly. The Aqua Teens are moving out of their house, and Carl is seeing them off, mostly to try and get their VCR from them. As they drive away, Carl solemnly says “truly… they were an Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”. Then he yells at them for leaving the emergency brake on in their u-haul as they screechily drive away. End of episode. End of series? 

Live-action Carl was played by David Long Jr., who was selected as part of an open casting-call contest that was sponsored by Burger King. There are a couple of DVD Extras covering this, but I’m not sure if they’re on YouTube. It seems much harder to keep ATHF stuff on YouTube without getting copyright stuck. Try archive.org. I remember him appearing in promos, and I’m guessing the guy made promotional in-person appearances at Adult Swim events. Actually, now that I think of it, I am pretty sure the one promo I'm imagining with him was advertising a college tour that he was bragging about appearing at. Did David Long Jr. come to your college and give you the thrill of your life circa 2009? Please let me know. How did he smell? Better than me? 

The live-action set design is wonderful. Meatwad’s room, which is actually Frylock’s exercise room in the live-action universe (he lets Shake sleep there) looks really great. It's sort-of a treat to see a real pile of sand in that closet. I don’t know why, but it is. I’m glad they didn’t chose to tidy up those elements that would make less sense in the live-action world. I would be more interested in visiting the ATHF house IRL than I would the Simpsons house, even though the Simpsons house has much more to explore. But maybe that’s just me. 

After some light googling, I found out that this episode almost didn’t air on television; Mike Lazzo was so unhappy with it that it was in danger of becoming a DVD extra or a direct-to-YouTube curiosity. I’m not sure I ever knew that, and vaguely suspect that those claims are over-stated. What I did know was that the episode was actually written to be a series finale. I don’t think they were canceled, per se, but Matt and Dave seemed to be under the impression that they weren’t going to get picked up for more seasons.

I also found out that this episode isn’t very well-regarded among fans? This legitimately threw me, because I’ve always liked this one and thought fairly highly of it. I get it, I guess. It’s different, and it’s light on actual jokes. But you know I respect a St.-Elsewhere-style rug pull. It was a little undone by the fact that the show kept going. But what’re you gonna do? Stop watching cartoons?

MAIL BAG:

which of the original adult swim shows would you show to a date, if you were the dating type

Of course that depends on the date. I have an aversion to the act of sitting a potential partner down to make them watch something to make sure they also like it. BUT: I am also shallow enough to not want to be with somebody if they didn't like certain things. I guess I'd show her Minoriteam so I could find out how racist I'm allowed to be around her.

i dont get the teen vogue joke in your last article, but you seem pretty proud about it so I wonder what's the deal

It feels so long ago, so it's possible I might've even fucked up the reference-to-the-reference. But for a while there Teen Vogue got all popular for being leftist online, I think? I sorta forget exactly the nature of it, but there were lots of tweets like "TEEN VOGUE IS GOOD, ACTUALLY". But then I think they were anti-union or something and it all came crashing down.

Hello, im writing you an ASK ME ANYTHING message to let you know not to upload anything on Tuesday, for it is Tasty Tuesday and you should respect that. Happy February!

You will be pleased to see I heeded your words. Happy Februany.

If you're going to have nothing but Squidbillies for a while, does that mean you might update the 2022 blog in between to dull the monotony?

An interesting proposition but I simply do not know.

I’m enjoying your reviews of aqua teen. I don’t know when YouTube transitioned into a formula of “talk about x thing you like in depth for 7 hours” but your posts scratch that same itch I have. I like the show, dammit! I want to read some guy’s opinions of it, over and over again!

Hey! Thank you. That's nice! I am glad a handful of people read this blog and sorta like it! Plus: I love to speak my mind!!!!!

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #90: “Rubberman” | February 15, 2010 - 12:00AM | S08E03

I remembered this one being a little too gross. And you know what? IT IS! But you wanna know what else? It got me laughin’, so I’m not pissed off about it! I’m pissed off about other things. 

There has been a spate of sketchy activity in the Aqua Teen area, as evidenced by the nasty leavings of drug-fueled sex-havers. There are condoms and needles and crack pipes all over the place. Frylock’s solution is to set up an information center, urging the drug-users and prostitutes to practice safe sex, and he builds a mascot duck out of the used condoms and needles and stuff. He calls him Clucky, the rubber litter ducky. He comes to life like Frosty, a snow man. He’s now Lance Potter, and he has his own theme song. He demands human appendages and has his ward, Meatwad, acquire them using TV-MA violence. 

I’m struggling to account for why exactly I like this episode as much as I do. I feel like other shows would invoke nasty things like used condoms and needles for easy laughs, but this one juuuuuust reaches the absurdist sweet spot that complete loser idiots like me gallantly enjoy. This might not be your thing, “no matter what”, but it worked for me.

Well, it worked for roughly the first half. Then it started to peter out. But it was lively, and there was even a funny song in the Frosty the Snow Man style. I actually guffawed at the flashback Carl has where he talks about the killer whale that nipped his stones. And, guess what? Don “Tansut” Kennedy is the voice of Meatwad's new baby boy, and George Lowe shows up as a cop. Also, the DVD has a fun video showing the behind-the-scenes recording of the Rubberman song, which is why you ABSOLUTELY NEED TO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY ON PHYSICAL MEDI- oh, wait, it’s on Youtube.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

The First Brit Block (January 22, 2008)

This began a somewhat failed experiment where, on Friday nights, Adult Swim aired their British acquisitions back-to-back-to-back-to-back. We’re talking The Office, we’re talking Look Around You, we’re talking The Mighty Boosh, we’re talking Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It lasted until April 2nd.

It brings to mind the time they did an “old school bumps” night on August 1, 2008. Fun fact: I think I failed to highlight “old school bumps” night on Ephemera Corner. At least, I can’t find any mention of it in my 2008 posts. Weird! Bad mistake! In fact, they tried to do a weekly-recurring old school night that lasted three weeks from August 22-September 5, 2008.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #93: “A PE Christmas” | December 13, 2009 - 11:45PM | S08E01 regular series version aired March 15, 2010 @ 12:00AM

It’s the Aqua Teen Christmas episode, in which Shake and Meatwad steal Public Enemy’s identity and try to cut a rap record to sell on Christmas. It’s a pretty bad plan because they record it on Christmas eve and Shake sorta just believes the CD will appear in stores on Christmas day. The stores aren’t even open on Christmas day!! SHAKE COME ON! 

Mostly this one just consists of two scenes: one where the Aqua Teens attend Christmas mass and Shake acts childish. There’s a nice crowd scene filled with people from previous episodes, and for some reason the monsters are all sitting on the opposite side of the room. You hate to see a segregated church on Christmas. Then there’s the scene in the recording studio, with Shake and Meatwad coming up with bad ideas and recording them. The gag at the end of this, where Shake takes a big shit and it winds up on Meatwad’s track for Silent Night, is pretty low-brow, but it’s maybe the funniest thing in the episode. I don’t want to like it, I’m not about that life. 

This episode featured a bit of a twist where it turns out that Shake was filled with eels, hence his violent butthole outbursts. The original broadcast of this ended with Shake in jail, because he broke into a Better Buy store to see how his record was selling. He gets exploded to death after a bunch of eels burst out of him. When this episode aired as part of season seven, they added an ending that sorta explains that the Eels belonged to Chuck D (flagrantly misidentified as Flava Flav on the ATHF wiki). 

This one’s pretty lame, TBH. There were things in it I liked, but the best thing being a poo poo joke really should sum it all up. It also mildly perturbed me that this one airs between the live-action episode and the official season premiere “Rabbot Redux” which includes some continuity, so I numbered it according to the in-season air order. It also airs in some fucked up order on DVD! I don’t know why! I don’t know why they do that! 

Oh yeah I also liked the part where Shake rudely bangs on the glass in the recording studio. Pretty funny.

EPHEMERA CORNER: 

15th Annual Holiday Content Marathon (December 18, 2009)

An evening of Christmas specials. Also scheduled was “Gary’s Posse”, a promo that aired for a show that didn’t actually exist; in fact, I forgot all about this. Gary’s Posse was put on the schedule for AM this evening, but it was just a repeat of King of the Hill. Swimpedia (where I got this and nearly all of my scheduling information from) uncovered the fact that this is actually just stock footage from Julien Tromeur called "Afraid of your sexual fantasies." The promo advertising Gary’s Posse was just a gag. 

10:00/2:00 King of the Hill: Livin' on Reds, Vitamin C and Propane (Schedule Promo Falsely Announced Gary's Posse at 2:00 AM)

10:30/2:30 King of the Hill: 'Twas the Nut Before Christmas

11:00/3:00 Robot Chicken: Dear Consumer

11:15/3:15 The Venture Bros.: A Very Venture Christmas

11:30/3:30 American Dad!: The Best Christmas Story Never

12:00/4:00 Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future

12:15/4:15 Aqua Teen Hunger Force: T-Shirt of the Dead

12:30/4:30 Moral Orel: The Best Christmas Ever!

12:45/4:45 Moral Orel: Honor

1:00/5:00 Baby Blues: A Baby Blues Christmas Special

1:30 Tom Goes to the Mayor: Rats Off to Ya!

1:45 Sealab 2021: Feast of Alvis

5:30 Home Movies: The Adventures of Cho & Amy Lee

MAIL BAG

KON writes:

Worth noting about THE VENTURE BROS S04E07 "THE BETTER MAN"... it features the use of the Dana Snyder character completely unironically going "sooo... that happened." Granted this was right before that became the exclusive domain of MCU-type dialogue, but it still hit my ear about as harshly as any Bush-era slur. Nasty!

OH YEAH! I think I made note of that but for some reason it didn't make my write-up. i couldn't tell if that was bad writing or if that was an intentional character thing, but usually characters call each other out for saying stuff like that. So, that happened.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

[adultswim2021]

Moral Orel: “Abstinence” | January 18, 2009 | Unaired Special

Abstinence, “the nearly lost episode of Moral Orel”, or “episode 14 of 13” was an episode of the show that was left in an incomplete state thanks to Adult Swim cutting down the episode order. The audio for the episode was recorded, at least mostly (some characters might be scratch tracks, but I’m not certain), but the animation hadn’t been done. So, some people who worked on the show took it upon themselves to animate the radio play using “Orel’s Movie Premiere” style claymation. 

I’m glad they did it, because this is a worthy episode to have exist, even if it’s not 100% a “real” episode. This actually comes pretty damn close to being as satisfying as watching a normal episode. I wish we lived in the alternate universe where Dino manages to talk Adult Swim into letting him animate the show this cheaply in exchange for more episodes.  

This episode takes place during season two (with a post-Nature scene at the end). Doughy has long been neglected by his parents, who simply give Doughy a few bucks and ask him to stay out all day so they can neck with each other. They are now requesting Doughy stay out overnight. Not used to non-daytime activities, Orel encourages Doughy to just do what he does and walk around trying to help people. Doughy keeps encountering people trying to have sex with each other and manages to cockblock them all.

This leads to Doughy getting a job cockblocking actual roosters from impregnating the farmer’s chickens. He loses this job because Ms. Censordoll’s campaign to illegalize succeeds. Doughy winds up working for Ms. Censordoll as a masked superhero that goes around breaking up congress everywhere. 

This one has a very funny joke at the beginning, where Doughy and Orel are waving goodbye to a busload of gay men, and remarking how it was a big mistake bussing them into Moralton. Do you think the show was cleverly going to show the gay dudes in another episode to explain the beginning of this one? And, don’t you think it’s sad they left on the bus and we didn’t get to watch them walk away (hubba hubba). I also laughed at the farmer’s extremely dumb and convoluted reason for not caging his roosters (it’s basically so he can say a dumb thing when asked why he’s not caging his roosters). 

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Moral Orel: The Unproduced Scripts

A couple of scripts for episodes have been shared online. I remember Dino posting one on his Myspace page. The episodes are: 

Raped: This episode was going to be a late season three episode. The original arc for the season was meant to include Arthur Puppington, Clay’s father, moving into Orel’s bedroom while he waits to die of some painful life-ending disease.

Miss Sculptham finds that she is still pregnant post-abortion. That’s because she had twins, and only managed to kill one of them. So she arranges a visit to the prison to talk to Cecil Creepler’s (the guy what raped her) cell-mate to find out what his whole deal was (you know, being naturally curious about the father of her future child). This leads to her deciding to marry this man, even though he’s spending the rest of his life in prison. Orel is being a bitch about it, and celebrates when the guy backs down. The end of the episode is Sculptham falls in love with a woman and is denied for a marriage license, because “this is America”. She can get married to an actual convicted rapist, but not to another woman. 

I was about to comment on the time and place in which this episode was produced, but then realized: I have no idea how legal gay marriage actually is these days. Weird guys have been fighting over the stuff a lot lately. It took a weirdly long time for gay marriage to become any kind of legal here, and it’s still contentious. I just have a vague sense of reading it in 2009 and it feeling very pointed and topical. Pretty weird that it still sorta might be.

This episode was sorta billboarded in Alone, where we learn about Scultham’s rape and her abortion. There also a reference to this in “Abstinence”, where one of the encounters Doughy puts a stop to is one between Creepler and Scultham. 

Narcissism is the other “lost” episode. I never actually read this script before tonight, and I don’t know what the origin of this one’s leakage is or if it’s liberation was acrimonious or not. This one is another Putty-centric episode and is basically a follow-up on the events of Sundays. Putty becomes so obsessed with Florence and uninterested in other women that it makes him attractive. He unceremoniously beds all the hotties of Moralton and doesn’t feel a thing the entire time. His obsession with Florence is simply because she’s disappeared, and Putty doesn’t know where she went. When he finally finds her, she’s lost weight and is generally happier. It appears they get together by the end of the episode. 

I think Arthur is also in this episode, but I forget. I remember Oral mentioning him in a funny bit where he says he would do unto others with his Grandpa, who is currently dying in his bed. Orel says his Grandpa would probably let Orel die in his bed if things were the other way around. 

I found a thing on the Moral Orel wiki where Dino apparently posted the synopsis for the some of the unproduced scripts. I’d been looking for this to quote and kept coming up dry, so now that i found it, I’m just gonna paste it here in this post. The links link to pages on the wiki, and the scripts I described are available on their respective pages:

1. Easter: "Orel's Grampa (Clay's father) comes to Moralton to tie up loose ends before he dies. He ends up sharing Orel's bed as his death bed for the last ten episodes, giving Orel good advice. (happens during the Sacrifice episode)." 2. Nurture: "Shapey and Block nurture each other and grow emotionally." 3. Narcissism: After cutting it off with Florence, Putty becomes disillusioned with all women. This makes him incredibly attractive to all the females in Moralton and he becomes the most available bachelor in town, f***ing tons of *****. This makes him even more bored with every lady out there. He starts picturing Florence as he's f***ing everyone. When he finally runs into Florence, she is dating someone else and is really really thin. Putty's disappointed in her appearance. He's been picturing fat Florence, and even though she's prettier on a shallow level, longs for her previous look. She explains that she got so depressed when he stopped seeing her that she didn't feel like eating. He happily tells her now that he's back and she can get fat again. She is insulted by his self-centered attitude and tells him to go away. In the end, I think he probably wins her back though by showing he really cares. 4. Untitled: "Bloberta and Officer Papermouth accidentally bump into each other late at night, both reaching into the garbage can outside Nurse Bendy's apt. and simultaneously grabbing the "Sonny" Teddy bear. Papermouth chivalrously let's Bloberta keep it, and this starts off an affair between the two of them. It ends up being very good for the both of them. Not sure how Clay reacts. Didn't get very far on this one." 5. Untitled: "I wanted to write the continuing saga of Orel and Christina, but never got to it. No solid ideas on this." 6. Raped: A script for this episode was briefly put on Stamatopoulos's MySpace blog. It expanded on Miss Sculptham's trauma over being raped. She would take the kids on a field trip to prison to meet the man's cellmate and strike up a brief relationship with him. 7. Death: "Orel's Grampa finally dies. Orel doesn't find too much solace from anyone and becomes a Goth kid, getting heavily into the Christian Death Metal band: Multiple Godgasm. Don't want to say much more about this, on the remote chance that there will be a Moral Orel movie, I'd like to use a lot of this story."

And that’s it for Moral Orel. Unless you count the special. Unless you count the Frankenhole Bumper where he cameos. Unless you count Australian DVD releases. But you can COUNT on me… blogging about it!!!!

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #moral orel

[adultswim2021]

Metalocalypse #41: "Dethhealth" | November 23, 2009 - 12:30AM | S03E03

I watched season three when it was on television, but remember very little of it, and suspect that I haven’t actually rewatched any of these since they aired. Good thing I spent way too much money, probably, buying this brand new on blu-ray.

Dethklok have a brush with death when playing a concert meant to help a massive amount of pets get neutered. Fans bring their pets to get their balls cut off by a machine, which collects the nasty things in a big glass receptacle. Predictably, all hell breaks loose, and the Sphinx is destroyed, nearly flattening Dethklok. Suddenly, the band becomes very aware of their own mortality. This fear or “hamburger time” (the “making cotton candy” of this episode) causes the band to subject themselves to a variety of doctors visits. The doctors visits cause Murderface to doubt his sexuality, Nathan to befriend his clearly-suicidal dentist, and Toki to have a cat. Also: Pickles tests come back and it’s bad: he’s dying. 

This one is pretty great, but it still demonstrates the show’s transition to the half-hour format not being exactly seamless. In fact, there’s a case to be made that it barely hangs together and is more-or-less a collection of B-plotish vignettes. There are scenes that you know would’ve been snipped out if this were an eleven minute episode. The scene where they all demand a decadent beach vacation before going to the doctor and leave a desiccated beach in their extravagant wake feels especially superfluous. The dream sequences are cool, but they feel like padding. But if you're going to pad for time on this show, it should be with something nightmarish, like Nathan having his jaw get Ebert'd off his face. The saving grace is that a lot of it is pretty funny, so who really cares? Honestly, this shit being more cohesive sorta comes second to that. 

Pickles doesn’t wind up dead after all because it turns out his pee was switched with Toki’s cat’s, who dies, because anything Toki loves winds up dead. This one ends with a fairly delightful music video where Toki’s head appears on a cat’s body. It’s derivative of season one’s Dethkids, but again, it’s a fun cartoon with cussing in it. How could something with cussing in it be taken that seriously?

The post credits scene, where Nathan takes his dentist on a hunting trip in order to save him from suicide and he immediately says “check this out” and blows his own head off with his hunting rifle, is a memorable one. It’s the one part I remembered from this, hence me calling it "memorable".

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode 2.5 | November 23, 2009 - 11:30PM | Special

Okay, I am not going to watch this because fuuuuuuck that. This was an extended cut of the special, which I believe debuted on DVD. So, please enjoy the JPG of the DVD cover I put up there. I'm sure you are all loving that.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #metalocalypse

[adultswim2021]

China, IL: “The Funeral” | May 26, 2008 - 12:45AM | S00E01

This one feels daunting to me, and it’s not just because I cried while watching this. It’s more because I don’t know exactly how to adequately praise this one. I will say, I was excited to revisit this one, and it fuckin’ holds up. In fact, I was surprised by how much of this I remembered, because it’s been quite a while since I’ve revisited it. 

Brad Neely was maybe the best thing about Super Deluxe, excluding Tim & Eric Nite Live. I honestly feel remiss not including his Super Deluxe work somehow in a more chronologicalized way.

It wouldn’t be until much later until this became an actual weekly series. When it became a weekly series, it underwent a cosmetic overhaul, with actual animation instead of a rapid succession of stills which this special and Neely’s Super Deluxe shorts used. I always wished they’d stuck with this more minimalistic format; though I may be alone in that. I remember some people saw this show as a harbinger of bad things to come, animation-wise. People who couldn’t hang with Tom Goes to the Mayor for it’s limited-animation probably REALLY hated this.

The plot of this episode: Baby Cakes finds a diary belonging to a woman. She was a professor at his college, where his father works, as well as the professor brothers Steve and Frank. She dated Frank, and secretly despised him. She hated a lot of stuff about her life, and spilled her truth on the pages of her secret book.

Baby Cakes finds out that he’s dead, and in fact the diary was taken from just outside the site of her fatal car crash. Baby Cakes begins to cope with the fact that he’s in love with a dead woman, and also harbors the secret knowledge that Frank, who is despondent, but also oblivious to the fact that she hated him. Eventually Baby Cakes, in an act of posthumous love, dramatically reveals the truth at the woman’s wake. Frank runs naked towards the graveyard where she’s buried his friends all come to his rescue. 

I know this doesn’t all exactly sound like a hilarious romp. But Neely has a way with words and funny drawings that somehow make the material hilarious. Nearly every turn-of-phrase in this is meticulously written to be funny, and there are many expressionistic/imaginative tangents from these characters to keep it lively and interesting. There are subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them sight gags. The imagery has great comic and dramatic timing. There’s references to the previous shorts thrown in there for those of us who’ve been along for the ride. It manages to be deep, soulful, hilarious, beautiful, and unpretentious.

It’s frankly incredible that I never got fully obsessed with the original shorts. I think that’s because I didn’t really like watching these on the Super Deluxe website. Sad! As a comedic influence, I underrate Neely drastically. There are all kinds of moments in this where I thought to myself “oh, I try to write shit like this all the time”. It’s sad to say that my barrier for appreciating him fully was a technical one. If I were able to buy these shorts on DVD and watch them in order on my television set, I probably would’ve repeated them into the ground. But. 

The shot of the three kids on bikes, sorta apathetically watching the funeral party bury the teacher. It’s a small detail and they show it for like, a second. This bit might be the single strongest memory I have of this show. It’s just so great. Sorta sums up what makes this great, at least in my mind.

Anyway: This originally began airing on Super Deluxe in four parts, with a few extra title cards. It flows great as one long thing, though. It seems like it’s supposed to be one long thing, in my opinion. I watched both versions, curious to see if there was a lack of censorship in the one scene where Frank freaks out and starts cussin’ up the wake of his lady love. The version I saw was still censored. It’s on Brad Neely’s Youtube channel. The thing is, these probably wound up on Adult Swim’s site as well in this format, so maybe the shorts got bleeped too, and and maybe that’s what survives. Not sure.

Hey! GUESS WHAT? I have a wonderful surprise for you.

What follows is my attempt to piece together a complete listing of Brad Neely videos that were ever uploaded to Super Deluxe, along with upload dates and times. I’ve also included the descriptions from Super Deluxe. Where available, there are YouTube links. Shortly after this special, Super Deluxe was absorbed into Adult Swim’s website, where they offered a fraction of the Super Deluxe library with additional censorship to meet Adult Swim’s standards and practices.

NOTE: The running times listed are as they appeared on the Super Deluxe listing. I included them on the off chance that they would be required to help identify a particular video that may or may not have been retitled. For the most part it was unnecessary, but I don’t feel like deleting them. A few of the videos had a 0:00 running time attached, which is why some of them are not noted. I assume that was a glitch, because none of these videos are 0 seconds long.

ALSO NOTE: first there was a non-Super Deluxe short: Washington. I was trying to pin down a date, but the best I could do was I found an article from December of 2006 that said it played as part of the Spike and Mike Festival of Animation. I went to re-find this article and couldn’t. I guess that’s what I get for haphazardly closing tabs. A Brad Neely interview from the Super Deluxe era reveals that he sold the rights to the short to Spike and Mike along with the characters of Cox & Combes, which lead to him creating the Professor Brothers. I think they were characters from Creased Comics.

January 4, 2007 - 10:41 AM EST Professor Brothers - Bible History #1 Who says the Bible is boring? Our favorite scriptural scribbler, Brad Neely, breathes new life into the Sodom and G-town yarn, complete with sexy angels, ca-ca eating and lots of things that'll send you to straight to Hell.

January 13, 2007 - 11:53 AM EST I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #1 The soon-to-be-popular myth of Baby Cakes begins here. In his very first diary entry, Baby Cakes introduces us to his wizard father, his role-playing friends and expounds on what it's like to be a man-child still living at home.

January 19, 2007 - 4:40 PM EST Buh Buh (0:16) I Am Baby Cakes commercial for Super Deluxe [dot] com.

January 19, 2007 - 4:49 PM EST Good Person (0:16) I Am Baby Cakes commercial for Super Deluxe [dot] com.

January 19, 2007 - 4:50 PM EST Party List (0:16) I Am Baby Cakes commercial for Super Deluxe [dot] com.

January 19, 2007 - 4:56 PM EST Cat People (0:16) I Am Baby Cakes commercial for Super Deluxe [dot] com.

January 19, 2007 - 4:58 PM EST Doors (00:31) I Am Baby Cakes commercial for Super Deluxe [dot] com.

January 29, 2007 - 8:43 AM EST Professor Brothers present History Lesson #1 Who cares who shot JFK? Brad Neely's Professor Brothers know the real story behind the slain prince of Camelot. And they've got a single-bullet sing-along that's guaranteed to silence all the other crackpot conspiracies.

February 5, 2007 - 8:45 AM EST I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #2 (3:32) We all have to start somewhere, and Baby Cakes is no exception. Our favorite rapping role-player takes a trip down the family line to bond with his pops and grandpops over King Drunk beers, dysfunction and fire.

February 12, 2007 - 8:45 AM EST The Professor Brothers - Late Date (3:32) If you're late for a hot double date, you'd better have a good excuse-like Frank's. It involves explaining to the Professor Brothers' boss, the Dean, why there are two soiled condoms lying in the backseat of his car.

February 20, 2007 - 8:49 AM EST I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #3 (2:48) A day in the park makes for some strange diary musings in Baby Cakes' world. In his darkest entry yet, Mr. Cakes reflects on death, dream girls and the dreaded Brain Fuckler that he sometimes sees humping people's faces in public.

February 26, 2007 - 8:58 AM EST I Am Baby Cakes - Baby Cakes Sees a Play (2:18) For hundreds of years, Shakespeare's King Lear has asked, "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" Now we have an answer, courtesy of Brad Neely's beloved man-child creation, Baby Cakes. He's not afraid to get excited. Or to see a play.'

March 5, 2007 - 8:49 AM EST Professor Brothers - Office Hours (2:41) The Professor Brothers both like to make time for their students - they even schedule their office hours together. This helps when Steve wants to get Frank caught up on the new Kenny Winker tune. Haven't heard it yet? Let Steve handle the monotone singing and you just rock out.

March 14, 2007 - 8:49 AM EDT Brad Neely - Bring the Gold (1:00) Blime us! This little bastard might be the first rapper in the age of bling to disavow real paper money. That's because Brad Neely's lil' leprechaun only wants you to bring the gold this St. Patrick's Day.

March 19, 2007 - 8:57 AM EDT I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #4 (3:08) A lovelorn Baby Cakes tells his diary, "When I was around her, I felt like a goblin made entirely out of wicked genitals." We ask: who hasn't felt that way about their dad's girlfriend? Especially one named Shirley Moats.

March 26, 2007 - 8:39 AM EDT The Professor Brothers - Substitute (3:11) The Professor Brothers are always there for each other. When Frank needs to skip his US history lecture to run an errand, Steve comes through in the clutch. By offending each and every student with his utterly f*cked up take on America's past.

April 29, 2007 - 11:47 PM EDT I Am Baby Cakes - The Role Play Tournament (2:34) In a perfect world, this jam would stay perched on top of the Billboard charts longer than "Dark Side Of The Moon." Mic in hand, Baby Cakes spits some mad lyrics about D&D role-playing and his two-word philosophy: be aggressive.

May 6, 2007 - 11:25 PM EDT The Professor Brothers - Future Thoughts (2:33) What's the future going to be like? Find out in this bizarro symposium curated by the Professor Brothers. Features cameos by Kenny Winker, Chimmy Chummy and Baby Cakes!

May 13, 2007 - 11:54 PM EDT I Am Baby Cakes - Lies (2:48) Oh, cruel and deceitful world. You have tried to deceive Baby Cakes for the last time. And he's not going to take it anymore (without singing about it).

May 28, 2007 - 1:05 AM EDT The Professor Brothers - Fliff Night, Part 1 (2:39) Oh, what a night Frank had! Seems the Professor Brother was the life of the science department's big Oppenheimer piñata party. That is, until the fliff throwing came to an abrupt end.

June 3, 2007 - 11:21 PM EDT The Professor Brothers - Fliff Night, Part 2 (2:17) Oh, how the fliff has fallen! In the second half of this Professor Brothers saga, Frank recounts how his big boozy night out turned ugly. And left him single again.

July 1, 2007 - 10:36 PM EDT Brad Neely - American Moments of Maybe (2:14) US history? Boooooring. Brad Neely's alternative takes on America's past? F'n yeah! Heck, he had us at the mere mention of Nat Turner's Punchout.

July 12, 2007 - 1:45 PM EDT Kenny Winkler: Now We Can Make Love (1:41) Coming fresh off the success of his hit single, "Don't Trust Me," Kenny Winker presents the music video for his follow-up banger, "Now We Can Make Love."

July 29, 2007 - 10:38 PM EDT I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #5 (2:06) Everyone needs a little time on their own. To wear wigs. To chronicle paranatural sightings. And to catch a Brain Fuckler.

August 12, 2007 - 10:41 PM The Professor Brothers - Movie Talk, Part 1 (2:36) Great news, students! Frank and Steve are now holding a lecture series on the great films of our time. First flick on the syllabus: "A Secret Place To S#!t."

August 26, 2007 - 10:56 PM The Professor Brothers - Movie Talk, Part 2 (2:36) Seems Frank and Steve's film lecture series is a smash hit. Next up for discussion: “Kitty Karloso,” “Ad Nauseam,” and an amusing animated feature.

September 27, 2007 - 8:38 AM The Professor Brothers - Jesus F**king Christ (3:38) Take your seat and prepare thyself for the Gospel of Frank. For whatever reason, the Professor Brother has decided to testify to his American history class about that magical carpenter from Nazareth.

October 14, 2007 - 10:07 PM I Am Baby Cakes - Group Therapy (2:38) Holy crap! Baby Cakes is finally back on the mic. And he's got a laundry list of complaints to spit about. So, just close your mouth when you eat sh*t.

November 25, 2007 - 10:10 PM I Am Baby Cakes - Diary #6 (1:40) What is the meaning of life? That's what Baby Cakes wants to know. But mostly, he just wants to know about human sexuality. In this latest diary entry, Baby Cakes explains it all.

December 7, 2007 - 3:45 PM The Professor Brothers - The T.A. Interview (2:48) Let's talk about real sh*t. Frank and Steve need a new teacher's assistant. One who'll be prepared for after the bombs drop.

December 16, 2007 - 12:26 PM I Am Baby Cakes - The In-House Carol (00:48) Ho, ho, ho! Baby Cakes wants to share a very special Christmas carol with you this holiday season. And take his shirt off.

December 20, 2007 - 8:53 AM The Professor Brothers - Prisoner Christmas (2:50) Prepare yourself: This Christmas, the Professor Brothers are breaking out of academia and into a lil' ditty about jailbirds.

January 22, 2008 - 8:46 AM I Am Baby Cakes - The Coffee Line (2:53) Next time a barista asks you "Grande or Venti," do as Baby Cakes does and ask them right back: do you believe in God babies? Or magic spells? Or nothingness?

February 10, 2008 - 10:47 PM A Valentine From Eva (1:42) Everybody loves somebody sometime. Even if they're one of the most universally despised figures in human history.

April 14, 2008 - 8:52 AM Fxck The Humans (1:24) It was bound to happen. All of the woodland elves, satyrs and hobgoblins are finally coming together for a ragtime protest ditty against us Homo sapiens.

May 5, 2008 - 8:55 AM China, IL: Part One - Romeo & Romeo (3:38) In the first installment of this four-part series, Baby Cakes delves into the diary of a fellow resident of China, Illinois. And discovers death.

May 12, 2008 - 9:16 AM China, IL: Part Two - Lives After Death (2:56) In the second installment of this four-part series, Professor Frank sounds off about Helen Keller and learns the fate of his ex.

May 19, 2008 - 8:38 AM China, IL: Part Three - Cruel Duel (3:15) In this third installment of Brad Neely's four-part series, Professor Frank laments the lust, and Baby Cakes sets him straight.

May 26, 2008 - 8:49 AM China, IL: Part Four - The Lovers Reconcile (2:03) In the final installment of Brad Neely's four-part funeral, Baby Cakes and Frank finally come to that final stage of grief.

AFTER THIS: Adult Swim commissioned a 12-part series called America Now. You can click that link to watch all of them. I don’t have dates for those yet, but I’ll poke around at some point for those.

BEFORE ALL OF THIS: Wizard People, Dear Reader, which I think is from 2005.

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #china IL #brad neely #baby cakes #professor brothers

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #81: "She Creature" | April 12, 2009 - 11:45PM | S07E03

Carl’s pool is DISGUSTING, and it pisses me off. It is full of slop and teeming with bugs. This also pisses off Frylock, who plants trees like some kind of woman. Meatwad is the first victim of the pool’s mysterious problems: he goes in there and gets pulled into a watery oblivion almost immediately. Frylock, ever the good roommate, decides to go on in there and rescue him, using a diving suit. 

Just then, Vincent Pastore and Steve Schirripa show up and be on the show. They are from television’s Those Dang Sopranos, a show I’ve seen some of before, but was too scary for me to keep watching. Maybe I’ll give it another shot and watch the whole series some day, but I keep getting this creeping feeling that each episode was going to end with a harsh cut to a black screen and that just spooks me to my core.

Anyway, it turns out they use this pool to disappear bodies and Carl is indebted to them and he HAS TO LET THEM DO IT. Wait, wasn’t one or both of these guys in the Laser Eyes episode? I think they might’ve been. I am pretty sure one of them or both of them is canonically Carl’s cousin. And, we cherish the canon. 

Frylock rescues Meatwad. Shake gets tricked into going in there and the thing eats his hands off. Frylock cleans the pool for Carl because he’s nice, but he gets in trouble with the mob guys, but Frylock zaps ‘em. Carl is lured into the pool by a sexual jet.

Inexplicably, the monster comes back. This time we see she’s got a beautiful woman naked lady body in addition to a serpent’s lower-half. She magically enters Carl’s penis, which promises to be orgasmic. She’s really just laying some dang eggs, and Carl explodes. Frylock also explodes, because I guess she did it with him too. Also Meatwad, even though he was saving himself for marriage. Shake is left out, but keeps lying to the camera saying he had sex. Then the mob guys wake up and kill him. That’s it. 

This one’s middling; I found Gene E. to be lackluster, and Shake Like Me doesn’t exist, so I can’t make a comparative statement about it here. This one’s better than Gene E, and it’s perfectly fun. I am mildly bothered by some of the story issues, which to me are sloppy but not in a fun way. Like, they kill the monster, but then she just shows up? Frylock had sex with it somehow, even though earlier his claims that being with the monster was pleasurable was clearly part of a ruse.

It’s almost like they wrote the first half of the script and then shelved it for a month and decided to finish writing the second half without rereading the first half, as part of some kind of creative exercise. I don’t know man, I like absurdism, but I heavily dislike when a script contradicts itself for the sake of a surprise. “Just kidding, it happened differently and I’m not gonna explain how” is just cheating to me. But to be fair, this show does this fairly frequently and it’s made for stoners, so nobody should take this complaint seriously. 

Shout out to Michael Clayton on blu-ray. 

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #aqua teen hunger force

[adultswim2021]

Xavier: Renegade Angel #19: “Damnesia You” | April 10, 2009 - 12:15AM | S02E09

This was just so great, man. I loved this so much. I don’t even want to review this all that much. Fuck it! I won’t! There have been a bunch of special episodes lately. The Racist one! The one-long-sketch one! This one! This one starts off like Damnesia Vu, with Xavier in the room with all them colored doors. He’s in some kind of mind-palace, if you’ll recall. In this one the doors lead to different viewer-submitted home-made versions of Xavier: Renegade Angel. Some of them are animated (both traditionally and not), and some of them are live-action, and some of them are a mix of both. 

A lot of the people and voices and styles seem vaguely familiar, at least to me. David Dineen-Porter is a guy I’ve seen perform comedy, and he is way brilliant. I read something on Reddit saying one of the guy’s is shmorky. I don’t actually know who shmorky is except for the fact that people say his name while grimacing and lowering their head in prayer. I googled it: it turns out he was involved in a “no bueno” situation. AHHH!!!

The episode takes the fan submissions and lets them play, sometimes. Sometimes the editors remix the entities a bit, which is nice of them.

Rather than talk about the content of the episode I am just gonna say this: I got high as fuck before watching it because it’s snowing outside, and that’s a good reason to use marijuana at 3PM. It probably helped me watch this three times, which I did. I watched it twice on the Adult Swim app, but the second time I pressed play was a mistake, and I just let it roll. “Roll that beautiful bean footage” I should have said.

The third time I watched it on DVD because I couldn’t identify the screengrab from shmorky’s cartoon, which I wanted to identify out of morbid curiosity, and the Adult Swim Roku app sucks for if you want to pause the episode. It sucks if you want to watch the last ten seconds of the episode without the screen dimming and being covered up by a big thumbnail of the next show in the autoplay, even if the credits are rolling over the final moments of the story. It fucking blows. 

I broke out the DVD just so I could pause it properly and read the names of the entries. I made a list of all of them here, because I don’t think there’s a list of them online anywhere, and that seems valuable, maybe.

The only other guy I actually remember here is David Dineen-Porter, who I’ve seen perform comedy and thought was brilliant. His IMDB shows that he wrote on the James Corden show. I hope he made an obscene amount of money and is currently buying lots of guns with it (I mean this nicely). 

Also, I found a link to every entry on it’s own. 

Grant “Manfred” Duffrin - Xavier Lends a Helping Hand Eric “Emotikkkon” Binmoeller - Meerkats David Dineen-[“] Porter: Self the Eye the Sees The Cream Within Shelby A. Hohl - As Above So Below Andrew De“hole”Young - Prism Jay Z. Yum David “He” Health - Gazzavier Renegade Angel Goes Up A Mountain Chiyoung “2:29” Lee DDS - Catch They Neighbor Robert “t S”mith - Omnippletence/The Phone Call Colyn “Bynumb” Emery - Art What Art Thou Dave “Da Grave Slave” Kelly - Xavier Looks Behind His Eye Amy “Peanut butter” Warner - Dog Eats Ketchup (couldn't find) John “Bobby ‘the ‘der’ Sanch’ Sanchez” Santos - Sueo Mojado Jason Dorris - Portly “n’ Jelly” Porthole Bo “Bikey” Thrice - Superhole Shuffle

Also: Those CLOSING CREDITS! A friend of mine told me to look out for them, and I said "okay".

MAIL BAG:

the cinco brothers are electric. they should bring them back and let them tell more stories about their lives.

The Sinko Brothers are in jail for nasty crimes and I hope they stay there. This thought is crude. Shame on you

#adultswim2021 #adult swim #xavier renegade angel

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #80: "Shake Like Me" | April 5, 2009 - 11:45PM | S07E02

A momentous episode. Folks, it’s the “lost” episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Hell, it's loster than "Boston" at this point. It’s the one you can’t stream online or buy digitally or whatever. Hell, it’s even missing from the recent DVD box set. Can we get an Adult Swim Treasures DVD box with an intro from Leonard Maltin? Will it ever be okay to laugh again???

Okay, this is how this write-up is going to go. First I’m going to dryly describe all the racist stuff in the episode. Then I’m going to apologetically tell you that I thought the episode was funny. Then I’m going to pay lip-service to people who might legitimately have problems with the episode. Then nobody is actually going to read this, and I’m gonna go on to watch Duckman or whatever show aired after this. I think it was Duckman. I don’t know, there’s some weird guy on YouTube who makes his own Adult Swim blocks but he includes shit like Duckman and Dr. Katz and I'm starting to believe it's all real. I don’t hate it, but I’d prefer to see Duckman sandwiched between Weird Science and USA Up All Night, with nothing but phone sex ads and promos for Silk Stockings.

A construction crew is dumping green toxic ooze into a neighboring house (the Ruth Powers side, not the Ned Flanders side). Shake tries to stop them by yelling at them a lot, when one of the operators, a black man, gets pissed off and bites Shake. So, he was bitten by a radioactive black man. Eventually signs of Shake’s blackness start coming out; he turns from white to brown, sprouts an afro, sports a bejeweled grill, and now possesses an immaculate vertical leap. Frylock, scientifically testing the authenticity of his blackness, tries to make Shake go in Carl’s pool. But alas, Shake can no longer swim. I’ve heard of MASTER Shake, but CHOCOLATE Shake???  

I have never heard of a “chocolate shake”. Anyway, Frylock tries to give Shake his whiteness back, but it just won’t take. Boxy Brown eventually intervenes (is this the first time characters other than Meatwad interact with him?). Boxy, of course, is the original racist character of the show. He encourages Shake to embrace his blackness, but while they are on the basketball court it simply begins to wear off. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. I mean, if that’s the kind of fun you like having. 

Honestly, this episode made me laugh a lot. The joke about him swimming, especially. Also, the part where Frylock gives him a wristwatch after his supposed white conversion in which they straighten his hair and cover him in white house paint. Frylock gifts the wristwatch and says something like “here, time management is going to be real important to you now”. Really funny! I'm not even racist! That's what's so insane about this! 

REFERENCE: There’s a scene where Frylock takes Shake to a hockey game in order to whiten him up. There is a hockey guy in the background just bleeding from his neck. That seems to be a reference to Clint Malarchuk, who in 1989 took a skate to the neck and it caused massive blood loss on the ice. He survived! If you just wanna see photos of a hockey goalie hunched over a nasty amount of blood on an ice rink, I recommend googling his name and looking at the image results. 

In retrospect, the squirmiest part of the episode is Carey Means participation. I would like to think they cleared these jokes with him beforehand, and I’m sure if I googled around one could definitively answer this. A better version of this blog would be one where I actually take it upon myself to do just that. A better version of this blog would be one where I am also being paid handsomely to do stuff like that. Oh well. But: the main sticking point with me is the idea that Frylock is specifically written to not exactly be black. 

There’s an argument to be made that Shake isn’t actually white; they are food products and aren’t afflicted with race. It sorta gets to the problem of whiteness being seen as a “default”. If Shake is white, then that should mean Frylock is black, and Meatwad is retarded. The only reason I don’t think I’m stretching too much for this, is the fact that Frylock defends himself to Boxy Brown that he’s not being “racist” against him. To me, this is the only actual profound misstep of the episode. It’s the thing that cements the fact that they fucked up Frylock’s characterization. It sorta made me feel the same way when I saw an old episode of South Park where Trey Parker voices a black character saying stuff like “actually I’m opposed to hate crime legislation”. 

This one is funny as fuck. That's kinda the only thing that matters to me. But I get why they would rather sweep it under the rug. I also get why I sought out an old iTunes release of the episode and keep it on my computer. I get why I won’t get rid of my DVD copy of it.

EPHEMERA CORNER

#adultswim2021 #adult swim #aqua teen hunger force #Youtube

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #73: “Curling Flower Space” | November 19, 1999 | S06E05

One of my all time favorites! This one starts with the ending of the fictitious filming of Brilliant Number Three (labeled #44c). They then do a postmortem on the show in a Rashomon style, with Jerry Springer being forced to stay late to listen to it.

Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar take turns telling their version of the events, which all involve Space Ghost making a pass at Sarah Jessica Parker and being interrupted by an errant ceiling tile. Space Ghost’s story paints the tile as a sophisticated villain that Space Ghost bravely bests, all while suavely wooing Sarah Jessica Parker with the suggestion that they “do sex”. Somebody told me that "doing sex" was actually parlance taken from the 1996 motion picture Freeway, a film that has always been part-way down a list of movies I keep in my head as movies "I really should see some time." Maybe I will--okay, pal?

Zorak’s story seems closer to the truth, in which Space Ghost humiliates himself while jumping around like a jackass and Sarah Jessica Parker is repulsed. It also features a lengthy tangent where Zorak gets picked up by Boston, represented by that spaceship that’s on an album cover. I am pretty sure that Boston is just one dude. I only sort-of know stuff like that.

I gave Dorkin and Dwyer a lot of credit for keeping the H-B references fresh in the show. This episode continues that spirit by using the old Space Ghost end-episode sting whenever Space Ghost gets quippy. Also the sequence where Zorak rocks out a bunch of different planets is full of vintage H-B clips. 

My favorite scene is the one with Moltar’s flashback. His little summation of the events, where Space Ghost falls down in slow-motion while interviewing one of those cymbal-clashing monkey toys, is one of my favorite jokes of all time. Then it’s followed by ANOTHER one of my favorite jokes (thank you snard.com for the transcript)

(A red sports car pulls up to Moltar and crashed into the control console) Moltar: Where's the driver? Car: I'm a talking car. Moltar: Why are you here? Car: Why is anyone here? (The car backs out of the control room) Moltar: Whoa. (Flashback ends) Moltar: And that was when I decided I just need to spent a lot more time in church.

This is the joke I repeated to all of my friends the next day.

Episode ends with a designation of “200 Series”, which I’m still not sure I understand the meaning of (I think another later episode ends with a “100 Series” label). I think I said this elsewhere, but I think I assumed this meant they made 100 episodes of the show, so maybe that confusion is the entire joke. 

This episode has one of the best illustrations on the Volume 5 DVD. It’s the sorta thing you look at and wonder what the hell Sarah Jessica Parker ever did to them. 

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #space ghost coast to coast

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #84: "Time Machine" | May 3, 2009 - 11:45PM | S07E06

Frylock has built a time machine, which Shake immediately hijacks. He elects to go to the year 8008, which he’s only spelt out on the digital read-out because it looks like BOOB. It actually just goes to Carl’s house, where Shake bashes Carl’s head with a lamp and steals his sleek leather jackoff chair. Shake lies to Frylock about the future, which Frylock thinks is full of giant cockroaches who be mean to you. Surprisingly, when Frylock finally attempts a future travel himself, he actually DOES find big mean cockroaches. What the heck? 

This is the paragraph where I spoil the ending, which is okay, because I do that on here regularly if you haven’t noticed. It turns out Carl’s house has been taken over by the large cockroaches and his living room has been dressed to look like a desolate future Earth. They claim they’re from the future and that they traveled back to Frylock’s present day to take his time machine from him. The plan falls apart with a lot of logic issues, and basically Frylock just figures out these guys are just assholes and not from the future. 

I tend to think of Aqua Teen Hunger Force as one of the more consistent of the first-gen Adult Swim catalog. Kinda like if the Simpsons maintained a season 9 quality of being less-perfect but still more-than-half good. This episode is pretty solid, but it does have a couple of elements that I found off-putting; namely Shake’s fart-themed parody of the Safety Dance and the little scene where the characters speak in subtitled hand-gestures. The Safety Dance thing is juvenile in an unsatisfying way, and the subtitle bit is basically feels like it's from a Zucker Bros. movie. I love Zucker Bros. movies, but it always rubs me the wrong way when certain shows indulge in that sort of thing. Especially cartoons. 

The theme song is slightly shortened in this episode, I noticed. I wonder if that’s a thing they’ve been doing and it hasn’t dawned on me until now. It’s just like, two seconds shorter, I think? Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seemed like they lifted out just a tiny bit of School D. saying like “check it, yeah” or something. Look, I don’t feel like making absolutely sure I’m not talking out of my ass here by actually A-B-ing the theme with different episodes. Somebody else can do this. PLEASE! I HOPE SO!

Speaking of audio differences: Shake calls Frylock a pussy in this episode and the words are “bleeped” out with cat noises. I checked both my recently-acquired iTunes versions of the episode, which is also bleeped. The volume seven DVD version has uncensored audio, which I read is the first release to include those salacious swears. I simply can't get enough of hearing cuss words without bleeps.

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Xavier: Renegade Angel #20: “Braingea’s Final Cranny” | April 17, 2009 - 12:15AM | S02E10

The final episode of Xavier is here and boy, what a show. I don’t think I ever watched this one, either, so I can’t pad this out with barely-relevant tangents about how I was working on a commercial fishing boat at the time of it’s airing or whatever it was I was doing. I miss the sea. 

Xavier yearns for his mother so hard that he cries for 9 months, creating a fertile beach with it’s own ocean (ah, there she is! How I’ve missed her so!). Xavier inadvertently harms a young man with his first job, dressing like a dolphin and handing out free samples or some shit. Xavier mistakes him for the real thing and tosses him into the ocean. He gets out alive, but then Xavier mistakes his scuffed up Dolphin dress as a carcass, and forces him to eat it in front of him, an ethical thing to do if you kill a living creature. Later, when he finds the guy trying to commit suicide he orders him to eat himself. 

That guy winds up getting taken to an asylum, and Xavier sneaks in with him, believing his mother is there. He then has to “pretend” to be insane. He is psychoanalyzed using a Rorschach test, which anthropomorphizes into a guy that talks to Xavier and explains that he can take any form Xavier wants. The inkblot can’t take Xavier and eventually materializes on the psychiatrist’s couch, and is committed. 

Later, Xavier finally finds his mother in the lobotomy room. He digs through a pile of brain and finds the missing chunk from her head and crams it back into her head. When she comes back to full sentience, she tells Xavier that she faked her death to get away from him, and that she doesn’t want to see him ever again. She ensures this happens by gouging her own eyes out.

Xavier meets Nurse Escher and you KNOW they gonna bone. They bone, then the psychiatrist reveals that the nurse is Xavier’s real mother, and he was trying to prove a scientific theory that lobotomies remove oedipal taboo from the brain.

The inkblot comes back and runs off with Xavier’s mother, taking them back to the beach. Xavier travels to the beach by jamming together all the lobotomy pieces into one big brain, which sorta functions like a hot air balloon. He gets the blot to turn into an ice cream cone and consumes it. 9 months later, he, his mom, and his fake mom all give a tandem birth to Xavier’s incest baby, which becomes that weird symbol that’s in every episode. We pull out of the symbol on a Rorschach test being administered to Xavier back in the psychiatrist’s office. There, Xavier finds out that he’s beautiful by looking into a hand mirror and seeing a conventionally handsome man looking back at him. The psychiatrist now looks like Xavier. THE END? 

This one is ultimately sort of a middling episode, but it has some great laughs. The run where Xavier is trying different brain chunks on his supposed lobotomized mother had three great gags in a row. I assume I laughed at them, because I wrote them down, and that’s usually the reason I write specific jokes down. When he shoves in a piece, his mother begins talking in the voice of whatever brain it actually is. He tries a young man’s voice who is confessing to his father that he forgot all of his pizza knowledge. “Dumb (DISGUSTING AND OFFENSIVE anti-Italian slur) coulda used a Goombotomy.” Then he tries one where the voice is a sports announcer calling the winner of some game. “Damn it, I had money on that game.” The next one causes chicken noises to come out of his mother. “Oh, chicken, Yum!” Xavier says before chomping the brain bit. That said, I think I prefer Damnesia Me, meaning You, as my head-canon finale. 

Okay, I usually like to do a top ten (in chronological order) of each show when they end. This one was tough for me, but I tried. I bet if I went through the show again I’d come up with a slightly different list. HERE IT IS: 

S01E01: “What Life D-D-Doth”

S01E03: “Weapons Grade Life”

S01E05: “Pet Siouxicide”

S01E07: “Bloodcorn”

S01E09: “Signs from Godrilla”

S01E10: “Shakashuri Blowdown”

S02E05: “Vibracaust”

S02E05: “Free Range Manibalism”

S02E06: “Damnesia Vu”

S02E09: “Damnesia You”

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[adultswim2021]

Xavier: Renegade Angel #15: “Haunted Tonk” | March 6, 2009 - 12:15AM | S02E04

In Haunted Tonk, Xavier visits an all pregnant-woman strip-club that used to be the site of his childhood home. He begins remembering his childhood, and then realizes that in order to communicate with his younger self all he has to do is remember his older self having actually visiting him, thus making it having really happened. That’s when the episode kicks into high-gear, with current-day adult Xavier trying to whip his younger self into the guy he is today.

As a respecter of tortured logic, I respect this episode a ton. I don’t mean to damn this with faint praise; it’s also very funny. I like to examine the phenomenon of episodic television having select episodes be more lore-heavy. The fact that this is what qualifies as a “lore” episode for Xavier is wild, because it’s as unhinged as any other episode of the show.

I especially love the sequence where Xavier, ensconced in the flashback he created of himself hanging out with his younger counterpart, begins to faintly remember the time a crazy guy tried to train him. He then remembers a more monstrous version of himself, oblivious to the fact that he’s currently scarring his past self and this is the product of that.

The line that jumped out to me in this one: Xavier presents his younger self with his spirit animal, which is just a squirrel. Xavier guts it to read it’s entrails, and determines that it “died needlessly at the hands of a dim goon”. If that ain’t poetry, I don’t know what is.

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[adultswim2021]

Xavier: Renegade Angel #11: “Vibracaust” | February 13, 2009 - 12:15AM | S02E01

Xavier is back for a second season. This one has sort of a two-part structure, with an A story that segues into a B story. First, Xavier rescues a little boy he suspects is being diddled by a catholic priest and matches him with a couple who recently lost their child. They are medicating themselves with antidepressants, which is what takes us into the second half of the episode. A fake ad (voiced by Bill Hader) reveals that the pills they’re taking are spiritual in nature, and packed with recorded chants from some monk guys. Xavier’s attempts to free the monks (who are doing this on their own volition and are quite content with their situation) lead to them automating the process, requiring Xavier to intervene, for some reason.

Like most Xavier episodes, this one has a dizzying array of shocking satire, off-putting characters and situations, and wild wordplay. Every line contains either a hilarious joke, or at the very least just a word being pronounced funny. The show really hits you over the head with itself.

I left out some of the darker elements of the episode in my one-paragraph description of it. It’s revealed that the boy isn’t being molested at all; he’s actually raping the priest. When Xavier places the white child with his new black parents he does so by applying crude crayola blackface to him (moments after scolding the crayon makers for offering a pink “flesh” colored crayon). Also there’s the hilarious detail that as soon as the Monks become lazy they all suddenly have latino accents. Hot damn, this is some peak-ass comedy.

EPHEMERA CORNER:

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