'Aqua Teen' leads geek-chic TV

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is one of those shows that make more sense at midnight, if it ever makes sense at all. Which is a lot to ask for a cartoon about, among other things, an amorphous ball of meat.

But, thanks to some alchemy of late-night giddiness and geek-chic, the 15-minute-long cartoon -- which airs six nights per week, mostly at midnight -- has long been one of the most popular shows on Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network's late-night programming block. This past month, it averaged 1.56 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Created in 2001 by two veterans of the cartoon "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast," the show centers on three fast-food items: a package of french fries with a goatee ( Frylock ), an overeager milk shake ( Master Shake ), and the aforementioned ball of meat, known as Meatwad.

They live together in a New Jersey rental and cross paths with a human neighbor named Carl, who worries about his lawn and above-ground pool.

And while the show began as a vague spoof of superhero comics, it has devolved into a Seinfeldish rumination on nothing in particular.

"Situations just kind of throw themselves at them. Like, 'Oh, we're being visited by a robotic turkey from the future,' " said Mercedes Milligan, 19, who works at the California-based Animation Magazine. Other plots, such as they are, have focused on a possessed sandwich and a suicidal doll.

Milligan has been an unabashed fan since the show launched, despite or maybe because of its raw production values. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" started out so low-budget, she said, that it had to recycle the same bits of animation. That meant writers had to find repeated ways to explain why, for instance, Meatwad would turn himself into an igloo.

"It's kind of made to appeal to this Internet, random-humor generation, where most of the time it doesn't really make much sense," Milligan said. "Most of the comedy comes from just pure, 'What the hell's going on?' "

Like much Adult Swim fare, it appeals to a particular crowd, which is coveted by advertisers. Last summer, Adult Swim touted itself as the "number one ad-supported basic cable network" among adults ages 18-24 and 18-34 and men 18-24 and 18-34. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," in particular, is popular enough to have spawned a spinoff movie, the focus of this month's ill-fated marketing campaign.

This week's Thursday-at-midnight episode was preceded by Adult Swim's widely circulated apology to Boston over a viral marketing scheme gone awry.

It featured two vaguely shapeless aliens in sweatbands who beamed Frylock and Master Shake onto their spaceship and forced the shake to read a copy of "Redbook" magazine. Meatwad spent most of the time lying on the floor in a heap, mumbling barely intelligibly.

Was it funny? Maybe, in the right frame of mind. Adult Swim shows "do go over a little bit better with some herbal enhancement," said Ryan Ball, Animation Magazine's staff writer and Web editor.

But maybe not as funny, to the show's most fervent fans, as the Boston brouhaha.

Milligan said she was in a bank with her boyfriend yesterday when she saw a television news report about bomb scares in Boston. When cameras fixed on a close-up of one of the "suspicious devices," she recognized a character from the show and erupted in laughter.

"My friends and I have been saying it's the start of the geek uprising," Milligan said. "Striking fear into the hearts of people who go to bed at a reasonable hour."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.