3 out of 5

Created by: Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro

That complete give-up of a title; the very, very odd mash-up of country-weird rock and rap of the opening song, and it’s accompanying leftfield illustration style: these are possibly the signs up front that Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro didn’t really know what Aqua Teen was at this point, post the revitalized (initial) focus of last season, and that results in a very up and down set of episodes. There’s flirtation with the Colon-era exhaustion of gross-out gags, although it becomes… kind of more mean-spirited here, expressed in violence rather than scatology, though there’s plenty of the latter also.

On the other hand, the shoulder-shrug approach results in some absolutely brilliantly bonkers stuff; perhaps being past the point of caring much about expectations allowed Dave and Matt to not force the randomness, and / or it’s better tempered by their experience. Whatever the cause, stuff like Shirt Herpes – though ending on a kind of cringey rape gag – feels classic, and a stylistic experiment like Rocket Horse & Jet Chicken (in which half the episode is done via Meatwad’s childlike illustration) isn’t perfect either, but it’s a swing that they probably wouldn’t have taken however many seasons ago. This wishy-washiness is perhaps the season’s best feature, in a way: that no episode is overall bad, and you can’t exactly predict if it’s going to turn around into something suddenly hilarious or not.

If such a thing can be said to exist in the ATHF world, ASTKW is sort of a slowburn, a cult season of a cult show. I don’t think it’s great, but I appreciate it’s unevenness as creatives workshopping the vibes along the way.