Liquid Television

Original Air Date: 1991-1994

Network: MTV

We certainly agree that MTV is a pale imitation of its former self, and that its glut of television series doesn't reflect the "music" part of their name at all. But there was a time when the shows MTV offered were actually pretty clever and interesting, andLiquid Television was among the best of the bunch. A combination of material created expressly for the show and older material now getting the chance to be seen by a broad audience, Liquid Television offered offbeat and creative animated shorts that ran the gamut from silly and amusing to truly surreal and trippy. The show served as the launching pad for some very notable franchises too -- it was here that Mike Judge's short, "Frog Baseball," about two giggling morons playing a rather violent sport, gained the popularity to spin-off the soon to be huge Beavis and Butt-head. Then there was the ultra-cool Aeon Flux segments, about the silent but deadly (though always doomed to die herself) assassin, which were actually stronger than the full-length Aeon Flux series that followed it.