(Adult Swim/Madman)

No longer number one in the ’hood

Aqua Teen Hunger Force has never been a show that’s about its strength of plotting, so saying that this fourth season (collected in volume five just to confuse us) has storylines that feel meandering and unresolved is really saying something. It used to be that the stories wandered all over the place but the show was funny enough that you didn’t notice or care, but there’s a definite dip in quality here. Maybe the creators put too much time and effort into the movie. There are two clip episodes in this volume and one of them is a two-parter made mostly of deleted scenes from said movie. That would have made an okay special feature for the movie DVD, but calling it the ‘Star Studded Xmas Spectacular’ and billing it as two episodes is a bit cheap. A couple of episodes approach the old glory, including one where a miniature version of Master Shake voiced by Patton Oswalt arrives claiming to be his son despite the fact that Shake has never had sex because he’s a milkshake. Unless you’re a dedicated (and heavily medicated) fan though, this marks the point where they give up even having a parody of a semblance of a storyline, or enough jokes to make it worth hanging around. Even the token Mooninite episode, in which the 8-bit aliens arrive from the Moon bringing the gift of ‘moonajuana’, doesn’t measure up to their previous standard. This anthropomorphic fast food is past its use-by date.

**½

JODY MACGREGOR

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