Studio: Cartoon Network, Williams Street
Distributor: Cartoon Network
Short Synopsis
Space Ghost, the 1960s Hanna-Barbera superhero now hosting a late-night talk show from a set floating in space, interviews his fellow talk-show host Conan O'Brien, who appears on a monitor in live action. The interview barely begins before Space Ghost spontaneously combusts in mid-conversation. After he recovers, he is bitten by an ant on the set and vaporises it with his power bands. Then he spots another ant in the studio, and becomes obsessed. Vowing revenge, he declares that he will follow it home and kill its whole family. The rest of the episode follows him out of the studio and across a barren alien landscape of purple sky and red rock, crouched low to the ground with his cape trailing, stalking the tiny insect on its way home, in a parody of a hunter's grim pursuit that goes on far longer than any joke should. Where the ant's home turns out to be, and what becomes of its family, is best left for the viewer.
Why It Matters
- Space Ghost Coast to Coast took old Hanna-Barbera animation, recycled cels of characters made for an action series in 1966, and used it for deadpan, improvisational comedy with real celebrity interviews edited into absurd shapes. It invented a whole style of cheap, surreal, adult-oriented animation.
- The show was the foundation of Williams Street and of Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim block, which launched in 2001 and produced Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021 and many more. The writers of this episode, Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro, went on to create Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Notes and Trivia
- The series ran from 1994 to 2004 and was Cartoon Network's first original series.
- The week before it aired, the show broadcast "Table Read", in which the cast and writers rehearse this very episode in live action.
- See also: Treehouse of Horror V (1994), SpongeBob SquarePants: Help Wanted (1999).