Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Vol. 1
Cartoon Network
"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is one of Cartoon Network's hidden gems. Clocking in at a wafer-thin 15 minutes including commercials "ATHF" episodes air on Sundays, hitting unsuspecting viewers with a blitzkrieg of non-sequiturs, pop culture references, existential quandaries and ricocheting zingers. The characters, anthropomorphic food items including an incredibly selfish and distractable milkshake, a demigodlike container of french fries and a childlike-yet-sometimes-deeply sarcastic wad of meat, have a dynamic that is tight, believable and surprisingly rich.
And far more extensively than conventionally structured series like "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons" "ATHF" revels in the freedom from logical plot progression that animation inherently grants. Like a late-night conversation with a brilliant, sympathetic and ultimately incoherent college roommate, "ATHF" starts somewhere familiar and spirals out to Pluto.
Within the 16 episodes included in the season one DVD collection, viewers get to experience a robot rabbit, scheming leprechauns, a vampire bus, cheaply produced replicants, Plutonians (from Pluto, but named after Atlanta-area colleges), Mooninites (from the Moon, and inspired by a pile of buried Atari 2600 ET games), a giant, sentient pile of moldy kitchen waste, a violent, painkiller-addicted talking doll, the sinister popup-ad-spawning WWWyzzrd and... well, quite a lot more.
With this DVD release, "ATHF" has broken out of the shadowy underworld of cult television into the healthy daylight of broad exposure. By consolidating the first season of this sublime and fringier-than-thou program into a DVD collection, Cartoon Network has wagered that "ATHF" can jump from a vigorous blip on its Adult Swim programming to a cultural presence with some staying power.
One warning to prospective fans who will (wisely) dash out to Best Buy to pick up this chronicle of Master Shake, Meatwad and Frylock's assorted adventures: When you get home and crack open the box, limit yourself to, say, four episodes at a single sitting.
Small, dense, sweet and completely diverting, a chocolate truffle might be the perfect food metaphor for ATHF. But, it should be noted, there is a major gap between the experience of eating a single perfect chocolate truffle and the experience of wolfing down an entire box.
The first truffle activates an entire bank of brain cells like a pinball striking and illuminating a wedge of colorful plastic. Truffle No. 1 has you thinking: "My word, this is delicious chocolate. I love the way the expansive cocoa flavor spreads across my palate. I think I'd like another. Or maybe four or five more. Ah, I can't wait to contemplate this in more detail."
But with each subsequent morsel, your brain gets incrementally less talkative and appreciative. By the time you hit truffle No. 8, you're horizontal on the couch, your stomach congealing into a throbbing block of cocoa mass.
"ATHF" has a similar richness and weight; each episode is guaranteed to feel like 30 minutes, at least, and that's not a knock it's just a hectic little riot of a program.
Thus: Buy the DVD collection so that you may selectively evangelize your friends. Buy the DVD collection so that you may, at a whim, pluck forth and
enjoy the "ATHF" episode that best suits your mood. But "ATHF" is a compact streetfighter of a show; it isn't an epic like "The Golden Girls," where vast, Tolstoyian plot arcs naturally command your attention for 10 or 11 hours in a row.
Bonus features, moreover, add only marginally to the collection's value. The original cut of "Rabbot" features storyboard drawings and is, unsurprisingly, more choppy and sketchy than the final draft. And the three episode commentaries are as distracted as the show's skittish plots, sans the revision and polishing that makes "ATHF" shine. The one exception to the somewhat half-hearted extras is the a promotional short created for the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con. It's brief, but genuinely funny.
That said, those who buy DVDs for the extras with the notable exception of the extensively padded and excellently done Lord of the Rings series and the Criterion Collection are missing the point.
Like any other good television collection, the purpose of the "ATHF" DVDs is to put an entire creative arc at the viewer's beck and call. Like a deep, laser-focused TiVo, the full-season DVD format is changing the way we watch TV, letting us dose and redose ourselves with our favorite stuff. Just know when to say "when."
James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)