Adult Swim, the overnight alter ego of the Cartoon Network, has been derided as an outlet of stupid and borderline satanic TV content for stoners and insomniacs since it launched in 2001 ... nine days before 9/11 at around 11 p.m., conspiracy theorists.
And... so what? Here are five Adult Swim series you've probably never heard of — or totally forgot about, thanks to herbal erasure.
Moral Orel (Seasons 1-3 on Hulu)
Young Orel of Moralton, Statesota, is determined to live by good Christian Values, even if no one else seems to know the diff between "righteousness and wrongteousness." Running 2005-08,
Moral Orel was a darker-than-dark stop-motion animation... tribute? ...to
Davey & Goliath, and a white-hot rebuke of holier-than-thou Jesus Crispies.
South Park wishes it were this blasphemous.
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (Season 1 on DailyMotion)
A British import that aired unnoticed on Adult Swim in 2004,
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace was two shows in one: Horror author Garth Marenghi, kind of a greasier Stephen King, waxes on about his misunderstood brilliance while presenting his long-lost '80s haunted-hospital series
Darkplace. It's awful, it's fantastic, it's like
Grey's Anatomy and
Night Gallery had an eyeball-head baby.
Frisky Dingo (Seasons 1-2 on Hulu)
Before striking gold with
Archer, writers Adam Reed and Matt Thompson basically reimagined Tony Stark and Iron Man a couple years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe did with 2006's
Frisky Dingo. Similar to
Archer, Frisky Dingo was crisply animated, and loaded with obscene insult-trading between billionaire playboy/superhero Xander Crews and supervillain Killface. Better than
Iron Man 2, for sure.
Black Jesus (Seasons 1-2 on Hulu)
Jesus is alive, and he lives in Compton! Before it premiered in 2014,
Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder's
Black Jesus offended the hell out of white Christians — and they hadn't even seen it yet, imagine that. This Jesus (Lamar Davis) smokes weed, drinks 40s and keeps his buds on the straight(ish) and narrow, so naturally he must be... crucified? Have we learned nothing from fake history?
12 oz. Mouse (Seasons 1-2 on adultswim.com and Adult Swim app)
Crudely drawn and abrasively surreal,
Aqua Teen writer Matt Maiellaro's
12 oz. Mouse was budget anarchy at its finest in 2005. Asshole mouse Fitz and his chinchilla sidekick Skillet take odd jobs to buy beer — oh, and there are malevolent forces manipulating Fitz's reality in David Lynch-ian ways that make the
Twin Peaks revival seem linear. Bonus: a balls-out theme song by Nine Pound Hammer. ♦
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