Collegiate Times

-$50 for seven discs

For me, Adult Swim has come to mean the hour or two I spend in front of the TV almost every night. This isn’t a newly brewed love affair or something I picked up in college, it is a relationship that has endured since my high school days because the network has managed to reinvent itself show after show since its inception
in 2001.

This isn’t to say that everything the network has shown has been gold; sometimes the programming seems more aimed at habitual practitioners of glue-sniffing than it does 20-somethings looking for a break, and this is something that has hampered its material as it has sacrificed some great efforts while favoring the incredibly asinine. To this day I am still upset that “Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil” was never renewed for a second season while the uninteresting ventures into sheer stupidity such as “Xavier: Renegade Angel” and “The Tim and Eric Awesome Show!” have been allowed to flourish.

With this conundrum in mind, I was interested in seeing what would float to the top in the network’s new box set, “Adult Swim in a Box.” It seems sort of a daunting challenge for only six specially selected shows to act as the defining essence of a network that has had a slew of memorable programming. I can almost guarantee that if people were given the choice of selecting their six cream-of-the-crop shows on Adult Swim, they would all have different answers. And this is the same crisis that the people at Adult Swim have chosen to address with their newest
release.

Overall, the box set is a give and take. It has its strengths such as “Sealab 2021,” which follows the lives of a team of discordant underwater scientists as they humorously fumble their way through various aquatic endeavors. It’s this type of deadpan, absurd humor that set the tone of the network in its early years. The other show that follows this tradition is “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” whose second volume is included in this package. Many of my friends and I have been rather divided amongst the merits of this show and while I have never really been a fan, it has its occasional moment of glory.

Another throwback show that is included is “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” which is essentially what happens when Generation X gets its hands on a talk show. It is wacky, purposefully half-assed and a little trippy. All in all: it reeks of the ’90s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is an incredibly unique show and nothing of its sort has yet to reappear on the air. Besides, it features Beck debating over whether or not he should eat a two week-old taco, and who doesn’t want that? But because of its guest lineup, which consists of many now household names such as Tenacious D, David Cross and John Stewart, and a rather squeaky clean sense of humor absent of sexual innuendos or overtly shocking commentary commonly found in most programming today, the show feels like a moment trapped in time.

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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 16 issue of the Collegiate Times.