Finally, It's a "Dickesode" in a Box Set

In my favorite episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a cornerstone of Cartoon Network’s college kid-oriented Adult Swim program, a preteen rapper named MC Pee Pants turns out to be a giant, diaper-and-shower-cap-wearing spider who wants to use human blood sugar to power a drill that will bore into Hell and release demons who will oversee a global diet pill pyramid scheme.

Aqua Teen is a defiantly surreal show. Its heroes are a milkshake (Master Shake), a box of French fries (Frylock), and a lump of meat (Meatwad) who share a house in South Jersey, and every adventure of theirs sounds as ridiculous on paper as “MC Pee Pants.” But many of them are not nearly as funny in execution. In a great Aqua Teen episode, the plot makes sublime, demented sense. In a bad one, not so much. Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, the show’s creators, run a mad comedy laboratory, and they surprised everyone—including themselves and Cartoon Network executives—when more of their crazy experiments turned out hilarious rather than incoherent.

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 5 DVD, which confusingly contains the show’s fourth season and a few unaired episodes, is the first time that the misses outnumber the hits. In “Grim Reaper Gutters,” the Aqua Teens spend the episode reminiscing about old times in what is essentially a lazy clip show. Then porn star Tera Patrick shows up. The Grim Reaper knocks on the door, and it turns out he’s a gutter salesman. Then Meatwad kills himself. Roll credits. Random? Yes, but not funny and even boring, an applicable description for many episodes in this set.

The most unpleasant development in this volume is a new reliance on raunchy humor. Aqua Teen has always been a slimy, gory show, and much the better for it. But until now, fart and sex jokes were window dressing, not the fabric out of which whole episodes were created. In “Hand Banana,” Frylock and Meatwad create a dog, who then mercilessly rapes their neighbor Carl. Funny, right? “Dickesode” is exactly what it sounds like. The DVD contains the fully uncensored version, if thousands upon thousands of floppy, disembodied penises is your cup of tea.

The extras on the DVD are short, funny diversions, but most have more to do with the full-length Aqua Teen movie that came out last April than with the fourth season itself. Between the Aqua Teen TV show and movie, and the other (less successful) Adult Swim shows they’ve recently created, Willis and Maiellaro are no doubt spread thin, and it shows. But they have lost none of their bizarre, experimental streak, and the best of Volume 5 is very, very good. Aqua Teen fans will be glad to know that the Mooninites, the show’s quintessential villains, make another hilarious return, and an episode about a nefarious car wash had me bent over with laughter. I can’t recommend Aqua Teen Volume 5 wholeheartedly—buy Volumes 1-4 first—but there is funny stuff on these two discs. With any luck this is a temporary dip in quality, and not the beginning of a slow decline.