To be fair, there are a handful of Aqua Teen episodes that haven't aged well but for the most part the show was absurdist but in a relatable way.
The Aqua Teens are a distorted caricature of the proletariat as the other in society but the story is from their perspective, which highlights the absurd contradictions of society.
Carl represents the petit bourgeois and one of his main character traits reflects this. Carl from the beginning of the show is defined not by what he does, because he doesn't do much, but by what he owns. His car, his above ground pool, his TV; these are what he rabidly defends from the unwashed next door. He's well aware that his neighbors are living in third world conditions but he actively scorns them rather than provide any aid.
The Aqua Teen's landlord is a literal vampire who refuses to fix the dangerous gas leak in their living room for basically an entire season, then kidnaps them when they don't pay the rent because of said gas leak.
So yeah, Aqua Teen isn't perfect but it was pretty based at times.
It has really good timing and the voice actors are legitimately funny and work well together. It's just stupid enough to be funny while not completely losing the viewer. It doesn't ask anything of the audience either. South Park wants to force you into some pretty dumbass introspection on issues they're completely missing the point on because they just hate it when opinions gain steam. Aqua Teen Hunger Force doesn't care about morals, it's just a show about sentient but stupid fast food items with vague super powers.
I was watching it the other day, very high, and I started thinking about how Shake is Trump, Frylock is Obama, and Meatwad is Biden. Really makes you think.
Southpark definitely felt like the voice of Gen X's "caring about things is dumb".
Absolutely. I enjoy plenty of media with a statement but I still love plenty of shit that's just entertainment for entertainment's sake.
South Park started as something more comparable to ATHF and then decided to have lessons a few seasons in. I was in middle school when it came out and have been going through it now just to see how bad it really is and they don't really get up their own ass that much until around season 6 and they don't go all in with it until 9 or so. Regardless of era, they're way funnier when they're trying to be dumb as hell and not trying to push a point.
Yeah that's a very good point. Earlier South Park is pretty funny because it doesn't take itself too seriously.
I actually had a great time with the early seasons, the edgy bits can come off a bit contrived but that's the late 90s for you. Something else they actually managed to dial into hard that I remember at the time is that although the age is a bit off, the main characters reflected being a millenial middle schooler hard.
Yeah I was right around the same age as the characters when it first aired haha. There are definitely some things that seem exaggerated that really aren't. I definitely liked the earlier seasons. It's been a long time since I watched them though.
Shake is Trump, Frylock is Obama, and Meatwad is Biden.
And Carl is the average voter
ATHF is the only one of those that never tried to be anything other than funny. A lot of what made South Park cringye at times was Matt and Trey's shitty opinions bleeding through into the show and them using their characters to get on a soapbox. Same with McFarlane and Family Guy. ATHF doesn't have any characters acting as stand-ins for their showrunners, and it was so absurdist you couldn't even tell what the writers views on anything were.
Each of the four main characters in ATHF is an archetype of toxic masculinity. Avante-garde antics ensue.
Infantile man-child. If the origin story in the movie is canon (if anything is with that series), Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad are the same age, yet Meatwad acts as though he is locked in at a toddler/Charlie Kelly stage of development, except when he suddenly isn't.
Only seen maybe like a handful of episodes of it but I'd go with the absurdist humor that isn't punching down on anyone.
I think because the shitty characters in South Park and Family Guy were portrayed as cool and edgy, whereas characters like Master Shake and Carl are always portrayed as assholes and shitty people. When I watch those shows I feel like Matt and Try and Seth really identified with a lot of what their main characters represented with their both sides edginess, and I don't think the creators of ATHF ever did. So ATHF still has a lot of that edginess from that cultural era, but it never feels like the creators want the viewer to identify with it.
That's my two cents.
imo Space Ghost coast to coast is still good. but I guess but that's part of the same family
Definitely. It's extremely nostalgic for me though so I might be jaded. It was the first of those oddball late-night stoner cartoons. Honestly pretty influential in a weird way. Plus Sonny Sherrock did a lot of the music and he's cool as fuck.
Because Master Shake is literally the ur-aggreived white dude. Shit is hilarious.
Sometimes one can create something so stupid it transcends ideology.
I've never watched it but I did watch those other ones and we can all appreciate how much south park and family guy just sucked. It's like this is the kind of shit you cared about? I'm from the future and trust me you'll get over it matt, trey and seth
maybe there's also a little bit of- these things were trying to be countercultural but now they're just...cultural?
society clearly went in a certain direction so when south park is doing their 'both sides' thing and the joke is "look we're saying the slur!" It's just NOT countercultural. That's the direction we went.
I don't know. But like aqua teen hunger force, I should watch that. because they made good stuff back then, I'd like to spot the non-cringe.
contrast between absurdism, as other people have said, and realism, creating magic realism. It sort of slaps you in the face because you're not expecting it either way.
the only thing i remember about this show was the episode where the guy got caught under a vending machine and the scorpion was stinging him
Lol captain Murphy gets addicted to scorpion venom and the bebop cola machine shoots soda cans at his face knocking his teeth out
Yes but also can we fucking talk about Frisky Dingo?! I wanna talk about Frisky Dingo! That was fucking art.
Yea so good vivid memory of living with 4 people watching that while using a volcano
For one, they don't take any cringe, right-wing positions on current events. What was edgy when we were teenagers is downright awful now, even to libs.
A generation of kids taught climate change isn't real thanks to South Park
I was that generation and you're seriously overstating South Park's importance there.
I never knew ManBearPig was about climate change when I was a kid watching it.
I think at the time they just wanted to make fun of Al Gore and didn't out much thought into it.
The amount that they didn't try is seriously amazing if you look into it. When interviewed about the movie Dana Snyder said the main difference between the show and movie was the movie was 90 minutes long so he had to work for 90 minutes instead of 11. They just did one take for voices.
The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future would like a word...
So I've always liked the show and I think it still holds up because Master Shake is completely unpredictable and Carl is beyond predictable (character wise); and they purposely distilled their content to it's bare necessities (vs being super topical like South Park).
It rules. Some shitty jokes at the beginning but the creators grow and allow the character to change to fit a more inclusive perspective.
Like Venture Bros. is really good, I'm pissed they canceled it in 2020.
I was genuinely surprised that shit got cancelled, I grew up with that show and it just felt like AS's big prestige baby y'know :sadness:
hoping for comics or something to round it out, it'd fit well in that format
They should have done more than one season every like four years
Unfortunately it kept being really good right up until when it was canceled
I've listened to the DVD commentaries and the creators are very Hot Couch, there's no way they could have done that. It didn't really bother Adult Swim until the sale to Warner Bros cause they'd put out 10 or so episodes on occasion and when they did a lot of people would watch it. They could air it when nothing else was going on and get viewers when they normally wouldn't so the general attitude was 'fuck it, we have plenty of shows anyway, just do it whenever."
Doc Hammer has an inner ear disorder, that mixed negatively the stress of the show and literally had him stuck in a wheel chair for a bit.
They worked their asses off on that show lol, the consistent increase in quality is because it was just them but yeah there was a downside to it.
Hot Couch mostly reflected any talk of their personal life at the time and the squalor if the Astrobase. You don't hear many DVD commentaries where they're rolling smokes while talking about the episode and then find out that the QuickTime files they were sent by adult swim cut off early and they had to finish the commentary by memory, which got left in. That's powerful Dudes Rock energy and God bless them for it. I know they worked hard as fuck on the show and was fine with a season every few years. They just really don't seem the type to be able to nail deadlines either
It's one of the greatest shows ever made and if it doesn't get an ending I will be really really sad.
Jesus I stopped watching that in college. I don’t even remember what arch it was on when I did. Was there some weird hiatus? Because I think I stopped watching because I thought it was “dead” but only recently heard they kept going till 2020z.
Was there some weird hiatus?
Between literally every season, yes. It basically only had two writers and they refused to grow the team IIRC. So it remained very tightly focused and consistent across the seasons, but they worked way slower than shows that have full writing teams.
Think that explains it, some friend turned me onto it and I binged it and then watched the newest season and was like "oh boi can't wait for another!"
And then nothing happened. I imagine you dwindle your fanbase over time doing that.
Yeah. I started watching like a decade ago, and got to see all of like two new seasons release, and the last one ended on a fucking cliffhanger. It got canceled a couple of years later after having been greenlit for another season, so the next season would have been probably half done already, though I imagine their production pipeline was likely a long, involved writing and storyboarding process followed by animation and voice-work at the tail end for cost reasons, so it may be that while they were greenlit to write another season when it came time for the big investment of animating and voicing it the plug got pulled.
It maintained a pretty active, devoted fan-base despite the long gaps between seasons, though.
It works better as a binge watch anyway, the second episode of season 7 revolves mostly around a plot point from the third episode, and there was like 15 years between the airdate of each one.
