Aqua Teens celebrate Christmas

     As part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, Aqua Teen Hunger Force has been around since 2000, airing six seasons in that time.  The sixth season ended in May, so I was a little surprised to see a Christmas special air this week.  The episode title was "A PE Christmas", although it wasn't readily obvious that PE stood for Public Enemy.  That's because as part of the plot, Master Shake (Dana Snyder) and Meatwad (Dave Willis), having stolen Flavor Flav's identity, decide to record a Christmas album.  Well, one twelve-second track that Master Shake plans to release and make millions off of for Christmas, even though it is already December 24th.  The sound technician humors them, barely, and readily agree that the new CD will be shipped out to stores immediately so he can get home.

     Fans of the show know that even though episodes are a mere eleven minutes or so, that main plot, taking up the middle chunk, will have little to do with the beginning or end of the episode.  Cartoon Network was initially scared to put on a show about good items (Carey Means's Frylock being the third member of the cast) doing random things, but the show has enjoyed a cult following and relative popularity, even earning a feature film.  Don't worry if you hadn't heard about the film, few did, but it existed, and was in actual movie theaters.

     This Christmas episode was every bit as good as Aqua Teen gets.  It began with the trio of 'heroes' in church, one plotting to rob the collection plate, another confused as to why Santa Claus was skinny and hanging on a cross with an appendectomy scar, and the third just shaking his head and getting them out of there as quickly as possible.  It ended with Shake breaking into a Better Buy store so that customers could get in to buy him album, and then randomly exploding in jail from eel diarrhea.  In short, it was wrong, gross, and hilarious.  If you stuck around past the end credits, pervy, sweatpants wearing neighbor Carl (also Willis) delivered a heartwarming rendition of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" concerning what exactly self-pleasure he would be doing.  Clearly, the show is not for everyone.  But for it's target audience, it succeeds.

     They also released a Christmas album this year, on sale now.