Finn and Jake walked wearily through the door of their tree house, bruises and cuts covering their faces. They flopped down onto the floor limply, groaning from exhaustion.
"That was a crazy adventure, huh Jake?" Finn said weakly.
"Yeah, man. Who knew tiny ladybugs could be so powerful and... muscular?" His companion agreed.
"I'm just glad we were able to get all those artichoke people out of the building before it exploded."
"Heh, heh. Artichokes….. Jeez, it sucks being all tired!" Jake exclaimed as he began to stand up. He walked at zombie-speed over toward the couch and sunk himself into it. Finn followed and sat next to him. The orange dog picked up the remote and started flipping through different channels.
The television giggled as Jake kept pressing buttons on the remote.
"It was pretty awesome of Princess Bubble Gum to program B.M.O to double as a T.V." Finn said.
"Yeah. Bubble Gum's the man!" responded Jake as he settled on a channel. The network's logo was an orange paint-splat with the word 'Nickelodeon' written in white across it.
Finn sighed enchantedly "Isn't she?" Jake chuckled at the boy's smitten response.
Embarrassed and red-faced, the boy quickly interjected "HEY LOOK! Uh... Don't think I've ever seen this channel before! Let's see what's playing..."
A program started just as Finn had managed to direct his dog's attention to it.
The opening sequence began with a crowd of aliens raising their firsts in victory before a sign reading 'Invasion.' Below the sign stood a tiny alien, looked condescendingly upon by two taller aliens, who sent him off riding in a spaceship bringing him to Earth. When they landed, the assembly of a bizarrely shaped house was shown, followed by a montage displaying different characters including a boy with spiked hair and glasses, a short, angered girl with purple hair, and a petite robot with glowing blue eyes. Afterward, the same alien from before stood atop the world, laughing maniacally. The title 'Invader Zim' ended the sequence along with madman-laughter in the background. The music that played in the duration of the opening was an electronic instrumental score. It sent chills down the spines of the two-man audience.
Finn and Jake looked at each other in uncertainty.
"I think I'm going to go get some juice…" Jake muttered, jumping off the couch and walking into the other room. Finn wanted to follow him, but was too tired to move off the sofa, so he figured he'd just watch whatever this freaky-looking show was…
The drawings were pretty weird. The style of the characters and the settings was creepy and often times disturbing. The jokes mainly centered around the humor of random, screaming out bursts, silly voices, the general stupidity of people, and a lot of dark humor about people losing their organs and and mutating into horrifyingly abnormal creatures. Often occurring themes included poop, doom and crazy people. The weirdest part of it all, was that Finn was actually enjoying it a little. He felt really weird about laughing at jokes that were so disturbing and evil-minded. He actually began to worry that the utter wackiness of this show would influence some kind of darkness in him.
The heroic thirteen year old reached for the clicker and pressed the power button, without realizing that the boy on the screen did the exact same thing simultaneously with him. Finn felt a sudden jolt of energy from the remote, traveling through his hand, up his arm, and into the rest of his body. He popped out of sight a split second later.
Jake came back into the room with a juice box and witnessed the whole thing. He stared blankly at the now empty sofa for a moment, then dropped his drink and ran over to were his best buddy was just sitting. He went into a panic, looking under cushions, behind the couch, under the coffee table, all the while asking himself "What the shmow just happened?"