Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Vol. 5

February 5, 2008

Rated: Unrated Runtime: 180 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Aqua Teen Hunger Force (or ATHF, for short) is one of those shows that I watched faithfully for the first couple of seasons but then lost track of. Thanks to the convenient use of DVDs, however, I’ve been able to catch up over time and, once again, a new DVD release is enabling me to catch back up with the rest of the ATHF faithful.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a little hard to explain. ATHF has three members: Frylock, Master Shake and Meatwad. Frylock, an enormous floating order of french fries, is the brains of the operation while Master Shake, a man-sized milk shake, is the deliquent and Meatwad, a rolling ball of…meat…is the ‘tard of the team. They *are* teens, but the “Aqua” part of the name is pretty much a complete red herring. As for being a “Hunger Force,” welllll…. not so much. They just hang out in New Jersey and make life miserable for their neighbor, Carl, as you can see from the picture here as he gets anally raped by a two-legged mutant dog named “Hand Banana”. Yes, its name is Hand Banana. All he knows is “ball!” and “good!” ….. and “rape!” But I digress…

The fifth season of ATHF has a lot of the things that made the show really cool. But it’s also missing some things, too. Gone are the Dr. Weird and Spacecataz openings. And there’s no MC Pee Pants! Ok, ok, I didn’t really miss MCPP. One thing I do miss, though, is the laid back tone of the first few seasons. It really seems like they’re trying too hard sometimes here in season 5. The bit with Tera Patrick eating a corn dog in the episode Grim Reaper Gutters was beyond lame. I mean, I’m all for porn stars eating phallic objects on camera, but they way it was done here just sucked…no pun intended.

Despite these criticisms, however, there is a lot of brilliance here which is as expected. Unlike the past seasons, however, the negatives come too close to negating the good stuff. The end result is a 3-star effort.

NOTE: The extras on this set are just deplorable. There’s a lot of them but they are pretty universally lame so just do yourself a favor and just skip them entirely.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Carey Means, Comedy, DVD, Dana Snyder, Dave Willis, Unrated