HBO Max has quietly removed episodes of Adult Swim favorites The Boondocks and Aqua Teen Hunger Force from their platform. The reason offered was to cater to current cultural sensitivities, a common trend in the new age of streaming. The Boondocks specifically, controversial even in its own time, seems to be a mark of the precedent set for its revival on HBO Max with Aaron McGruder returning as showrunner.
According to The Daily Beast, episodes removed include "Shake Like Me" from ATHF, which sparked interest from Reddit users by appearing suddenly in August and then disappearing immediately, as well as "Boston." The former was an homage to the book Black Like Me and featured Shake briefly becoming a stereotype, and the latter was a parody of a real-life bomb scare. Meanwhile, The Boondocks episode "The Story of Jimmy Rebel," which features Uncle Ruckus (a wild over-exaggeration of the Uncle Tom archetype) obsessing over an overtly racist country singer, was never available.
None of these episodes were ever meant to be on the streamer, and "Shake Like Me" being available even temporarily was an accident. The only other episode from Adult Swim's catalog that remains missing is The Shivering Truth episode "Ogled Inklings," which has been labeled "temporarily retired" and will return to the platform later.
This appears to be the new normal in terms of censorship. Unlike the episodes of popular sitcoms pulled from streamers earlier this year for blackface, which apparently may return with the scenes in question edited out, these are episodes effectively removed for their premise. The more interesting of the two is undoubtedly The Boondocks, a show which won a Peabody award for its cultural importance with a different episode. McGruder declined to comment, so there's no telling for now how this might affect the new version of his show. As for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, it appears as if the series will live on, minus the offending episode.
Source: The Daily Beast