A surprisingly sad and serious episode where Frylock discovers the mole on his face has turned malignant, and his friends Meatwad, Carl, and Master Shake try to support his struggles with skin cancer. Andrew W.K. guest stars in this Very Special Episode about tragedy, courage and ultimately, redemption.
- All Just a Dream: Near the very end Frylock wakes up in the doctor’s office good as new, the whole cancer arc being a dream, with the doc suddenly going on a bizarre monologue about them having to merge together to fight aliens before said aliens carry him off and shoot up the office. A very Aqua Teens ending. Subverted when he wakes up again with that having been a dream, the doc tells him the chemo put the cancer in remission and he still has a long road to recovery.
- Body Horror: Shake thinks the reason he’s bad at guitar is that he has stubby hands, so he lets himself be mauled by bees to make them swell up. When he wakes up he’s absolutely covered in grotesque stings, including on his eyeballs.
- Frylock looks absolutely nauseating after going on chemo.
- Chekhov's Gun: The episode keeps teasing that the Time Machine will factor into the story somehow, but nobody ever uses it and Shake eventually sets it on fire.
- Comically Missing the Point: Shake is the only one to point out that the solution to Frylock’s cancer may lie in their time machine. But instead of something like going to the future to get a cure, he decides to set it on fire to “smoke out” the cancer.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Shake duct tapes himself to a rocket with the intent of destroying the sun to cure Frylock’s skin cancer. It doesn’t work but it’s the thought that counts.
- Mood Whiplash: Most of the humor comes from Frylock going through something serious in a realistic fashion, while everybody else still acts ridiculous. Shake chokes to death on a scorpion (which the others barely notice), comes back to life with no explanation, and tries to blow up the sun; Meatwad suggests that Frylock just tell the doctor that he doesn’t have cancer; Carl dresses in trash bags and gloves because he thinks cancer is contagious and asks Frylock how long before he dies, and Andrew WK plays a super loud and raucous song about partying to celebrate Frylock’s chemo treatment. Then, despite all of this absurdity, they have to confront the possibility of Frylock dying in a serious way.
- Oh, Crap!: Shake and Meatwad anre initially their regular boorish selves until Frylock comes out of the doctor’s office clearly upset and they both clearly realize things are serious.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: You might expect some absurd conclusion but no, the chemo puts Frylock’s cancer into remission and the doctor schedules a follow-up in two months.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Carl and even Shake are genuinely torn up about Frylock’s cancer. Especially noticeable with Shake, this is probably the only episode where he’s both a prominent character and doesn’t do anything selfish or mean.
- The Topic of Cancer: Not played for laughs, even. Frylock falls into a deep depression and his friends have to cope with his possible death, the only humor coming from Shake’s increasingly absurd attempts to cure him or cheer him up.
- Unexplained Recovery: The absurdity of having a serious cancer episode in a show where the characters already die regularly is Lampshaded by killing Shake halfway through and then bringing him back in the very next scene with zero explanation.
- Later Shake burns the house down, but again it’s back soon after.
- Very Special Episode: A unusually serious and downplayed episode about cancer. The HBO description even calls it this by name.
