The alternative comedy movement of the 1990s and early 2000s spawned a dazzling host of boundary pushing entertainment that spanned films, television, stand-up, music, and animation. It was hard to keep tabs on all of the original voices emerging during this time, sometimes frustratingly so. For example, just when you thought you’d found a new favorite TV show, the network would abruptly pull the plug due to lousy ratings, even though raves from critics indicated that it had a high-quality series on its hands that might just need a little more time to find its audience (as was the case with “Seinfeld”). This is how we unceremoniously lost classics like “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Freaks and Geeks,” and “Undeclared” after one season.
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While I’d like to think some of these series would’ve eventually caught on with a large enough viewership to justify their continued network existence, many oddball series were doomed from the outset. Due to this, the smart move for talented alternative comedy writers and/or performers was to seek the more permissive shelter of a cable channel like HBO or MTV. These channels wanted weird stuff, and they were willing to stick with off-center shows that connected with a small but dedicated audience (provided the budgets stayed low).
When Cartoon Network debuted its adult-skewing Adult Swim lineup in 2001, it immediately became a hotbed of bizarre comedy series. Already existing titles like the groundbreaking “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” moved over to this programming block, but it was the array of hilariously baffling new shows that turned this endeavor into an oasis of knowing absurdity in a world that, post-9/11, had unknowingly lost its marbles.
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There were many animated classics created for Adult Swim in its early days (e.g. “Sealab 2021,” “The Venture Bros.,” “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law”), but its most distinctive success was “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” Created by Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, this gloriously strange show followed the exploits of a wise box of french fries named Frylock (Carey Means), a sociopathic milkshake known as Master Shake (Dana Snyder) and a childlike, shapeshifting hunk of beef called Meatwad (Willis). No one asked for “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” but all you had to do was watch one episode to know if this was your kind of nonsense. The series hit the mark for many weirdos for well over a decade until Adult Swim abruptly canceled it in 2015 against the wishes of Willis and Maiellaro. Why did the company kill such an enduringly popular show?
Adult Swim was ready to move on from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
In the wake of Adult Swim canceling “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” Willis and Maiellaro did interviews with Paste and Vice where they shared their unhappiness with the company’s decision. “The show does well,” Maiellaro told Vice. “It generates a lot of revenue, it’s not too expensive to make. So for them to let it go is just a bit odd. We call it odd behavior.”
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The explanation given to the duo from Adult Swim president Mike Lazzo was that he was “ready to move on from it.” That’s awfully vague, no? Maillaro had a theory about what really motivated Lazzo:
“It really comes down to guilt economics. When you have something that’s incredibly successful that doesn’t take any amount of effort or finances to make, you start feeling kind of guilty for America and so you pull back and you let other shows shine here and there. It’s guilt economics. You make all this money and you’re like, ‘Holy s***, this is too much money. We got to stop this for a while.’ It’s kind of vulgar [to keep making all that money]. It’s vulgar. Wise decision on Cartoon Network, for morale, you know.”
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The boys were especially ticked off because they didn’t find out about “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” getting canceled from Lazzo but, rather, one of their friends at Adult Swim. While they both freely acknowledged that the show had made them loads of money, they were genuinely sad to see it end because they were still having fun making it (though they did admit to some burnout in a 2023 interview with /Film’s Witney Seibold). So did, in their view, everyone who worked on the series.
“We’re going to miss the whole process,” Maillaro admitted. “We’re going to miss the characters, we’re going to miss working on it. We have a small crew that has been on it forever, and they’re fans of it, as we are […] so it’s really kind of sad to see this process shut down. It’s such a well-oiled machine. It just works.”
Indeed, it was hard to say goodbye to the titular trio as well as the strange pals we made along the way, like Carl (Willis), the Mooninites, and the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future. But we did get to hang out with them again in the 2023 film “Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm” and, perhaps most importantly, all of the show’s 12 seasons are currently available to stream on Max. You can’t trust that it’s going to be there for good, but, as of right now, you can check in on the fast food friends whenever you like.
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