“No candy for you, chubb-monster!”

Justin’s rating: …And that’s how Christmas was ruined forever!

Justin’s review: Invader Zim is a once-in-a-century storm of unsettling bizarre weirdness that should’ve been locked behind many warning labels rather than be blithely broadcast by Nickelodeon. When you see it, no matter whether you like it or not, the first question you’ll have is, “How did this ever get on the air?”

I was a light fan of Invader Zim for about 10 minutes back in the early 2000s, coasting on an internet infatuation with the ambitious green alien invader, his doofy sidekick Gir, and his ongoing rivalry with budding earthling scientist Dib. So what better way to spend Christmas this year than to subject more of my brain cells to Jhonen Vasquez’ odd creation?

This episode begins as you might expect, which is to say that it kicks off two million years in the future as an unstable robotic snowman enthralls jittering kids with the tale of the most horrible X-mas ever.

Overcome with the “reinforcements” of Santas on every street corner (two million years earlier), eternally angry alien Zim kidnaps a mall Santa and drains his brain of all knowledge of this beloved holiday figure. He then stages a mammoth Santa return, where Zim himself takes on the titular position, his robot sidekick as a gift-giving elf, and a small army of floating moose to be his sleigh-pullers. Delighted that Santa’s back, the President-Man resigns his post, everyone rejoices, and Zim is effectively handed the keys to the entire planet.

And what does Santa Zim do with this power? Why, enlist everyone to work in the North Pole to create a giant teleporter to send the entire human race to its doom! Everyone is surprisingly cool with this.

(One of the running themes of this show is the deep stupidity of people and their willingness to buy into anything that’s dangled in front of them.)

As usual, it’s not so much Dib’s hard work that thwarts Zim so much as Zim’s natural propensity to have his plans explode in his face. His ever-absorbing Santa suit ends up taking in so much Christmas data that it grows and gains sentience and becomes wonderfully horrible.

I didn’t realize until I started watching this that “The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever” was the last episode of the show for 13 years until the TV movie came out. It’s probably been 13 years or more since I last watched any of these. I can say that this show is just as bafflingly strange — in a kind of great way — as I remember. It’s like someone gave a lot of money to a goth kid to run wild with his doodles. There’s really nothing quite like it anywhere else.

And it’s pretty funny, too. There’s a lot of black humor and twisted jokes, such as “Santa” hugging a kid and then throwing him out of frame the next moment or a woman who is so happy her heart literally explodes and she dies in front of her kids.

Again, Nickelodeon.

If you ever wanted your Christmas stories filled with giant robot duels, insane aliens, morphing suits, candy cane prisons, the Easter platypus, and Santas having their brains sucked dry, then I probably don’t want you as a friend but will subtly nudge you in this episode’s direction and quietly make my exit.

Intermission!

• This theme song always brought the heat
• “Watch my dog eat snow! You, watch the snow eating!”
• Is that a small floating moose?
• The “HUMAN” name tag
• His take home pay is a buck, a few coins, a tuna sandwich, and a human heart
• “…and a chair made of cheese and a table made of cheese…”
• Santas are “red bearded men who smell of ham and VOMIT!”
• city is blacked out “Sorry everyone! Again!”
• “My heart explodes with joy!” keels over and dies
• President-Man
• The incredibly scary nutcrackers
• The Santa Song! “Bow down, bow down before the power of Santa or be crushed, be crushed by his jolly boots of doom!”
• “Robot elves! Just like in the stories!” “What stories?”
• Candy cane prisons aren’t hard to break out of
• “jiggillllyyyyyy”
• Vampire fly
• MEMBRANE: FRIEND OF THE WORLD, ENEMY OF SANTA CLAUS
• Robot duel!
• “That boy just threw Santa into the cold void of space!”
• The Easter platypus and his Easter shrimp