Metalocalypse, Season 2

How does a show consistently ramp up from a cold start to a 1000-BPM spit-take-inducing psychotically gruesome climax in about 11 minutes?

You could read about the show's premise elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here because it's fun to tell. ...Imagine a world in which the dominant cultural force is an international death metal band called Dethklok — a band one thousand times more popular than the Beatles have ever been, with a following so fanatical that mass suicide routinely accompanies news of a delayed album release, and so impossibly wealthy that the band itself constitutes the seventh largest economy on Earth. But the band members are petulant bickering half-wits. Like if Spinal Tap were trillionaires. Mutilation, dismemberment and slaughter follow them everywhere, due most often to gross negligence in concocting highly dangerous stage show gimmicks. A shadowy organization of world leaders monitors the band's activities and attempts to curb their growing influence over commerce and politics, but is largely helpless in the face of Dethklok's private paramilitary force/roadies, the Klokateers, and the band's ruthlessly protective legal management. Oh, and the clueless band members seem to be unwittingly bringing about a prophesied end of days, an "apocalypse of metal".

This is the best thing on Adult Swim, and I say that believing that Adult Swim is consistently the best block of programming on television. Metalocalypse is unavoidably a send-up of the violent imagery particular to death metal, but is brilliant in the way the blood and dragons serve as dressing for wry satire of celebrity-driven media and dogmatic fanboy subcultures. And it isn't just sardonic gag-mongering like Family Guy or Aqua Teen: There is genuine love for the music and the goofy douchebags who play it. The dramatic season finale moved me to tears, moments before it moved me to puke.