The Dressing

"The Dressing" is the twenty-first episode of the second season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the thirty-ninth episode overall. It originally aired on December 14th, 2003.

Plot

Cold open: A decapitated Space Ghost is shown, then Dr. Weird puts his head on as a hat and exclaims, "There can be only one!" as guest Seth Green looks on and says "Nice."

Meatwad approaches Carl and invites him to Thanksgiving dinner at the Aqua Teens house. Since they aren't legally US citizens yet, the Aqua Teens have Thanksgiving a week past the actual holiday. Carl agrees only after hearing they actually have a turkey; however, he eats outside "where witnesses can see him", correctly predicting something terrible will happen.

As Shake gorges himself on a taco pie which consists of tacos smashed up with a hammer and mixed with all of the food coloring in the pantry, topped with broken crackers, a strange robotic turkey bursts in, threatening to choke Carl if the Aqua Teens don't put down the chainsaw they're going to use to cut the turkey. After dropping Carl the turkey identifies itself as Turkatron and explains he was sent from the year 9595 to save "the great, great, great, great grandfather of Goblox." He then proceeds to tell a long, Terminator-esque story about the war of the turkeys against the hyper-evolved chickens from the future. He is dismayed when he learns the turkey is dead and that the Aqua Teens have been eating him, but agrees to take the cooked bird with him to before he was cooked.

While waiting for his "time rift" to open, Turkatron decides to stay for a little bit and tell another extremely long, boring and nonsensical story while eating their taco pie and drinking all their wine. Since it's basically the same exact thing the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future pulled last Christmas, Frylock correctly recognizes him to be the same character, which he admits to, saying he was reprogrammed by "rogue chicken scientists" into a robotic turkey in order to rescue Goblox. They are suspicious, since as Frylock notes, people from the future don't usually carry their socks and toothbrush around in a torn garbage bag; Turkatron angrily tells them not to touch those, as they are dangerous "laser guided" weapons.

Turkatron eventually becomes belligerently drunk, shouting at and breaking the TV and threatening to punch Frylock in the face for suggesting he go lie down. He then drunkenly mistakes the curtains for the "time rift", wraps them around himself, and promptly passes out.

Frylock opens his circuitry & reveals that Turkatron is actually a defective toy called "Hustlin Tom Turkey" that was subject to a product recall for erratic behavior, and that there are hundreds more identical robot turkeys like him in circulation. Making a few adjustments to his brain, Turkatron suddenly remembers his toy programming and starts dancing and telling everyone to "Do the Hustle".

Just then, there's a knock on the door - Shake opens it up and finds a huge crowd of identical robotic turkeys outside looking for Goblox. Shake points them in the direction of Carl's house—Carl opens the door and says, When the army of robot turkeys ominously ask Carl what he's eating. Carl thinks for a second and says "This is your great, great, great...", prompting them to pull out their "laser guided" sock weapons and point them at him. Carl, undeterred, decides to finish his statement with "Your mother", at which point they blow him to pieces.

Deaths

1. Space Ghost is decapitated by either Dr. Weird or Steve.
2. Carl is shot to death by several Turkatrons

Cultural references

• Meatwad: "Bird is the word."
  A reference to the song "Surfin' Bird (Bird is the Word)" by The Trashmen.
• Turkatron's story that he has arrived from the year 9595 to protect the ancestor of Goblox, who is destined to lead the rebellion against "Master Chickens," echoes the plot of the Terminator trilogy, where a robot is sent back in time from the future to assassinate (and later, after being reprogammed by the humans, protect) the mother of the man destined to lead the human rebellion against their robot masters.
• Turkatron's quote of saying "...in the year 9595" may be a reference to the 1969 song "In the Year 2525" by Zager & Evans.
• Dr. Weird: "There can be only one!"
  A reference to the movie Highlander. Shake made this exact reference in the past episode Dumber Dolls and Baffler Meal which is where Aqua Teen first appeared.

Notes/Trivia

• The objects Meatwad pulls out of his head are: His 'To Do' list, the Jiggle Billy doll from Dumber Dolls, and his (dead) pet squirrel Squirrely from Balloonenstein.
• The Turkatron is similar to the Cybernetic Ghost.
• Carl gets his head cut open when he's thrown through the glass, but at the end of the episode, he is fine.
• In one scene, Shake eats one of the turkey legs but a few scenes later the leg is back on the turkey.
• This is the second time Carl did not bow his head. First time in "Balloonenstein".
• Dave Willis has stated that Matt Maiellaro and him originally wanted to do an episode in which Seth Green would have moved to the same street as the Aqua Teens and would have started dating Meatwad (the interview can be seen here http://news.wabe.org/post/aqua-teen-hunger-force-creators-talk-cancellation-weirdness). Apart from his appearance in this episode, Green doesn't appear again in the series.