“Aqua Teen Hunger Force” returns, 40% less terroristy

Quite the 2007 Adult Swim’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” had. First, boyoboy did they get in trouble with the City of Boston, which flew into an absolute panic when some viral-marketing Lite Brite boards plastered around town were mistaken for a terrorist plot to destroy the city. Good times.

Then, they released a movie that was pretty much incomprehensible to most critics and was in general too long to sustain the show’s Dadaism, which is just fine in short 11-minute bursts. The movie made all of $5,520,368, enough, however, for an Adult Swim press release to call it “successful.”

And now they’re back where they belong, on late-night basic cable. “ATHF” returns for a new season Sunday, except that Master Shake, Meatwad and Frylock are nowhere to be seen. Instead, their neighbor Carl sells their home to a family of box-shaped robots (motto: “The universe is our bathroom”) with the requisite complications.

But the really interesting episode will air Feb. 3. It’s entitled “Ridiculous.” I will recap its plotline sans commentary herewith, and allow you to decide which is stranger: This episode or the astonishing string of comments left by one Jose Garcia on a recent post (you’ll have to scroll down a little past all the invective, but, really, it’s worth it – for a while, at least; is it actually David Foster Wallace off his meds?).

Anyway, “ATHF:” “Ridiculous” (oh, and: SPOILERS): Master Shake puts Meatwad’s kitten in the microwave; it explodes. Meatwad is sad. Meatwad will later put Master Shake’s kitten in the microwave with similar results. As Frylock presides over a feline funeral in the backyard, they notice Carl riding a space-ship-y-looking and loudly buzzing machine called “Re-Dick-U-Lous,” with a large tube strapped to his phallus. Said machine’s purpose is to enlarge and pleasure male genitalia. Frylock, who has had his fair share of misadventures with Carl, hypothesizes – correctly, it turns out – that a lamentable consequence will result. And indeed, Carl’s groin and fecal matter begin to glow, something Carl attributes to “minor side effects.” Carl eventually becomes concerned enough to call the company help line, where he gets what anyone gets when they call a company help line. Carl’s feces, which he has liberally left in the “ATHF’s” backyard, reanimates the menagerie of dead pets buried there into a zombified army of pleasure-seeking, STD-addled beings. Master Shake avails himself to the pleasures offered by Meatwad’s dead-now-zombified pet ape and contracts a zombie STD. Frylock attempts to kill Master Shake by separating his brain from his spine with an axe. It doesn’t work. Frylock laments that he should not have trusted Wikipedia for information on how to kill zombies.

I swear: That’s the plot. So now you’ll either tune in or spend the rest of your life wondering how something like that got on Television.

- “Aqua Teen Hunger Force:” 11:45 p.m. Sunday, Adult Swim.