By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’m fortunate enough to have been a teenager with access to cable right when Adult Swim was becoming popular on Cartoon Network, and I have Aqua Teen Hunger Force to thank for warping my sense of humor in all of the worst ways. But as time marched forward and life’s responsibilities continued to pile on, I forgot about the series sometime after it was rebranded to Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1, Aqua Something You Know Whatever, Aqua TV Show Show, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force Forever as the seasons approached double-digit territory. In an effort to recapture my youth as a means to escape the horrors of modern life, I started reworking through the series, and found out that 2022’s Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm saw a direct-to-video release after the series’ cancellation.
Even better, Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm was so well-received that just a year after its release, the series was picked up for a new season.
Growing up sucks, but sometimes if you hold out long enough, your favorite cartoon in the “sentient fast food” genre gets a second chance, and for that you should be thankful.
Getting The Band Back Together
Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm is the standalone sequel to Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, and kind-of-sort-of picks up where things last left off.
Years after Frylock (Carey Means) moves out of the gang’s New Jersey home, Master Shake (Dana Snyder) finds himself homeless and destitute, and Meatwad (Dave Willis) manages to get by working at the pet shop where he also sleeps at after hours.
Frylock, now working for the totally fictional yet highly exploitative “Amazin” as an IT drone, enjoys his solitary life and is the model employee you’d expect him to be if you’re familiar with ATHF lore. Wanting nothing to do with his own life, Frylock finds himself better off after separating from Master Shake and Meatwad, but the helpless and endlessly frustrating milkshake and meatball can’t get by on their own, leading them to hit up Carl (Dave Willis again) for a place to stay.
Carl, who’s also better off now that his former neighbor’s house is condemned, is beyond excited about the prospect of his property value going up, especially now that Amazin is gentrifying the neighborhood.
It’s About To Get Complicated
After establishing the tried-and-true Aqua Teen Hunger Force dynamic, Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm introduces its many, many conflicts, and you’re just going to have to strap in from this time forward.
Frylock befriends vertically challenged Amazin owner Neil (Peter Serafinowicz), who is frustrated with his current assistant, Elmer (Paul Walter Hauser), for not figuring out a way to make him taller. Frylock suggests cloning a larger version of Neil that he could then splice his own DNA with, and Neil immediately promotes him so he could spearhead the project.
Meanwhile, Elmer, who has big plans for Amazin that have yet to be revealed, has been working tirelessly to teach plants how to speak English so they could become super intelligent.
Once the characters and plot to Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm is fully established, you’re met with too many conflicts to count, as Carl starts stealing empty Amazin boxes to house Master Shake and Meatwad, which then dissolve in the rain, but only before growing violently from the ground as killer plants. Frylock, who now wears a new box made out of Brotanium, finds himself stuck in a difficult situation because he’s found a best friend in Neil while his old friends are fighting for their lives against some unknown vegetative force of mass destruction.
At this point, you’d think sitting back and watching everything unfold would be simple enough, but Ignignokt (Dave Willis yet again) and Err (Matt Maiellaro), more affectionately known as the Mooninites, have access to the copy of Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm that we’re all watching, and since they’re the OG ATHF antagonists and archrivals, they fast-forward through most of the world building that’s needed to make sense of its convoluted plot.
Undeniably Aqua Teen
With all of the usual tricks up its sleeve, and a bunch of new ones as well, Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm somehow manages to take a dozen or so side plots that aren’t logically connected in any conceivable way, skip out on most of its own exposition through a series of fast-forward gags, and still tell a cohesive story about the greatest crime fighting team known to man: The Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Destroying your retinas with the entire color spectrum as Carl and the newly reunited Aqua Teens blast out of your screen while they build the kind of car you’d see in a Mad Max movie, Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm is explosive and juvenile, intelligent and pithy, and just as absurd as creators Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis would lead you to expect after decades of continuously pushing the envelope.
You should only really get into streaming Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm on Max if you’re already a fan of the original Adult Swim series (also streaming in its entirety on Max). If you go into this with no context whatsoever, which would be a profoundly stupid thing to do, you’ll probably walk away wondering why you wasted 76 minutes following the adventures of a talking box of French fries, and his dimwitted milkshake and meatball friends.
