It wasn’t until my first year at community college that my family finally got cable. For one glorious year, from 1996 to 1997, I gorged myself on the programming that I’d missed out on growing up, supplementing my solid foundation in afternoon cartoons with a thorough grounding in MTV and Nick at Night. Without this pop culture education, Robot Chicken would offer nothing but potty jokes and shock value. But for me, this Adult Swim series distills MTV’s blink-and-you-miss-it programming style into powerful social commentary for the attention-deficit-disoriented—not that it has any particular aim except making you laugh so hard, whatever you’re drinking will come out of your nose.

Currently re-airing seasons 1 and 2 on the Cartoon Network, the humor ranges from edgy and gruesome to snotty and juvenile. Ok, so it’s not a very wide range, but nostalgia can make up for where the jokes fall short. Each episode offers up ten minutes of parodies that, in order to fully appreciate, requires a base investment in having watched lots and lots of TV at some point in your past. Creators Seth Green (Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer—who’d’ve guessed?) and Matt Senreich combine stop-motion animation with legally-vetted parodies to be able to use actual names, brands and characters in their sketches that range from send-ups of 80s afternoon children’s programming to spoofs of more recent pop culture phenomena.

Sketches might toss in characters like The Transformers, inexplicable star Vin Diesel, or comic book super hero favorites like Batman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman. Sure, Aquaman was no one’s favorite, as Robot Chicken very effectively points out in their inaugural episode in a 5-minute sketch called The Real World: Metropolis. But keep watching, because you never know who’s going to show up in the next 2 to 30 seconds. Standout sketches include Voltron getting served in a breakdance showdown, the seedy underworld of Archie’s universe, and a PSA starring Optimus Prime dying of prostate cancer. Oh, and if you enjoy maddeningly trivial guessing games, a host of celebrity voices stop by each episode, including Mark Hamill, the cast of That 70’s Show, and Ryan Seacrest (showing off a surprisingly well-developed sense of humor in Zombie Idol).

Robot Chicken may or may not be returning to the Cartoon Network with a third season in April this year.