Aqua Teen Hunger Force: The 50 Best Episodes

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, sadly, reached its end in 2015. Lasting a whopping fifteen years, the 11-minute cartoon has for the most part held up its quality and remained funny. As a way to say my goodbyes, I decided to spend several days marathoning the entire series. All 139 episodes from eleven seasons. 139 episodes about three food people and their disgruntled next-door neighbor having to put up with each other while slumming it in an even more Hellish version of southern New Jersey.

Now that that’s done with, I’m ranking my favorite 50. This is not counting the movie, natch. That just wouldn’t feel right. But it is damn enjoyable and you should watch it if you haven’t already. There are several notable episodes that I couldn’t bring myself to include. “Last One Forever and Ever” never lived up to the potential of making the characters live action, even if its version of Carl was on point. “Boston” has its moments, but it’s mostly an exercise in bitter whining. I really wanted to like “Carl Wash” more than I did since it uses Carl Brain from one of my favorite Space Ghost: Coast to Coast episodes, but it never clicked. Then there’s the ever-popular “Hand Banana,” but an episode where the joke is that a dude is continually raped and nobody believes him is too gross for me no matter how absurd it’s painted.

So let’s get on with the list already.

50. JUMPY GEORGE

Season 8

Carl and Shake meet a single mother and fight over her. There’s a whole subplot in there about her true identity and her connection to the Mooninites, but that’s the weak point. The true greatness comes from Carl and Shake being the absolute worst in every way and yet she still doesn’t show any signs of thinking them repulsive. Carl talks to her bluntly about his diarrhea and has stains from it on his shirt and she still doesn’t bat an eye.

The following season would revisit the same basic idea with “Big Bro” and improve on it, but we’ll get to that later.

49. BOOKIE

Season 9

Watching Shake get his just desserts doesn’t happen all the time, and even when it does, it’s usually at the end of the episode. This is just 11 minutes of Shake digging a hole through sheer idiocy and his inability to understand gambling and paying for it every step of the way. The fact that Meatwad is able to become an expert at it to the point that he’s beloved by the mob and Carl is his right-hand man only enhances how screwed up Shake is in all of this. The ending ties back into the beginning (where Meatwad shows off his magic tricks) in the best, most cathartic way.

48. RABBIT, NOT RABBOT

Season 11

There was nothing really wrong with any of Season 11, but it’s such a short set of episodes (only nine) and I feel bad that this is the only one to make the cut here. It’s such a bonkers 11 minutes. Shake has his brain switched with a sinister rabbit, which leads to a wonderful piece where the main cast and some pet store animals pee in a mall’s water fountain in the name of science. The logic is completely off the wall, yet makes sense in its own fictional logic. While I usually like the random, quick-cut endings, I wasn’t too keen on Meatwad’s sudden fate here. The ending was strong enough without it.

47. LARRY MILLER HAIR SYSTEM

Season 7

The meat of this episode is Carl looking at a video of what his life would be like if he had hair. The real Carl is disgusted with how square his healthy, Christian, happily married self is and is inexplicably able to communicate with him. He drives him down a horrible spiral in record time, which is just dark as hell. The opening, where Carl meets Larry Miller and the ending, which includes a cameo appearance by a certain regular guest character, are very welcome in adding flavor to this strange episode.

46. LAST DANCE FOR NAPKIN LAD

Season 8

In a way, I feel that this is the ultimate punchline for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The very joke of the show is that after doing this action-packed opening credits where the team fight robots, have space adventures, and so on, we get our whacked out characters existing in a less exciting, suburban setting. So after years of this gag, finally there’s this big payoff where everyone is secretly a spy and everyone is betraying everyone through chase sequences, gunplay, and espionage. In other words, the entire series loops around.

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45. MERLO SAUVIGNON BLANCO

Season 10

Shake is allergic to shellfish but still goes out on benders anyway as a tamer version of alcoholism, which is great. Frylock tries to get him help by sending him to a hypnotist named Merlo Sauvignon Blanco, but that guy’s shady as hell and merely hypnotizes Shake into being his minion in getting revenge against all who have wronged him. It’s merely okay for the most part, but it takes a wonderful turn in the final minutes as we see each Aqua Teen’s separate take on “friendship.” This gives us one hell of a final line by Carl and if this was in an earlier season, we’d have a million t-shirts printed by now.

Seriously, it’s up there with, “I don’t NEED no instructions to know how to ROCK!”

44. VIDEO OUIJA

Season 3

The second half of the episode is kind of lame and doesn’t really make much sense, as why would anyone want Shake resurrected? It’s the first half that gets me. Meatwad uses an Atari video game to speak to the dead and Shake – in his infinite lack of wisdom – decides to commit suicide in the most over-the-top fashion as possible in order to enter the game and potentially make fun of Meatwad. It’s such a wonderful setup, even if the whole Billywitchdoctor.com bit falls flat for me. Even if having him trick the others into saying, “We are sofa king we Todd Ed,” gives it some points.

43. RABBOT

Season 1

Ah, the pilot. If feel obligated to include it on the list, but I can’t rank it too high. They were definitely finding their footing during this episode about Dr. Weird’s Rabbot causing havoc throughout New Jersey. Frylock is too stiff and the action detective motif (which they needed to sell the series because “food guys do nothing” wasn’t going to work) doesn’t feel right. There’s still many flashes of brilliance in there (“Why is anything anything?” and, “Grant?! What is that? Shut up.”), but it has to be graded on a curve.

42. THE CYBERNETIC GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST FROM THE FUTURE

Season 1

While I like the Cybernetic Ghost character, the whole backstory gag with the different art style kind of wears thin on me and isn’t all that funny outside of people calling him out. Luckily, this episode has more going on, what with Carl’s house being cursed with elf blood and his priceless reaction to it all. Everything from how he refuses to use the Aqua Teens’ shower because he doesn’t want to be nude in their house to how he’s totally chill about making amends with an ape Santa Claus until he finds out it’s a sexual thing. The episode is mainly a winner because of the ending where Danzig shows up, sans shirt.

41. DER INFLATABLE FUHRER

Season 6

Frylock does some freelance science work and it turns out that his benefactor “Radolf” is in fact Adolf Hitler, who has been reborn as a balloon. I mean, that’s as high-concept as you can get. The episode has a lot of fun with the idea, especially when Balloon Hitler converts Meatwad into a Jew in order to kill him and Meatwad kind of enthusiastically half-asses it by yelling random Jewish terms. Then things get hilarious when Frylock tries to change Balloon Hitler’s mind by showing him how many talented Jews there are who he’s looked up to over the years. Realizing that he loves The Waterboy, Hitler is devastated at his past behavior.

40. THE SHAVING

Season 2

This is another episode that holds together because of its amazing ending. One Halloween, the Aqua Teens find out that there’s some kind of spider onion creature named Willie Nelson living in their attic. Shake gets disgusted at how chill Willie is for a supposed monster and tries to have him scare/murder Carl to prove himself. It’s not a laugh a minute, but it’s a smooth ten minute setup into one hell of a punchline.

"JUICE!"

39. THE GRANITE FAMILY

Season 9

It’s a wonderful thing when TV and movies can make outright idiocy look smart. Shake has been watching The Granite Family, a Flintstonespastiche, and is frustrated by his inability to connect with the show. Rather than take up Frylock’s offer to use a time machine so he can spend time in the Stone Age, Shake instead has a plan where he wipes out billions of lives via nuclear annihilation to bring humanity to a new Stone Age. All so he can make “It’s a living!” jokes. This episode is full of great stuff, such as the Aqua Teens and Carl sharing a bunker, but is hurt by a subplot involving a Time Warner time traveler.

38. MAYHEM OF THE MOONINITES

Season 1

The very first appearance by the Mooninites. I mean, I would have to include this one by principle, even if there are better Mooninite episodes. Ignignokt and Err show up to live with the Aqua Teens after Shake rents out Meatwad’s room. The two aliens spend their time being self-important assholes to everyone, which allows them to get along with Shake. While fine on its own, “Mayhem of the Mooninites” wouldn’t be nearly as good without the gags of their slow, square laser bullets and their unwavering confidence in them. Probably the best little moment is when they unleash the Quad Laser and it’s so slow that Shake comes out to ask a question, notices that they’re in the middle of a fight, and leaves the scene...all while the bullet has barely moved at all.

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