The TV adaptation of The Boondocks breathes new life into a tiring comic strip.

It's not cool to admit it, but here goes: I've always been a little wary of Aaron McGruder's whole stick-it-to-the-white-man schtick. Not because he's not right that white people pretty much suck—oh, but we do!—but more because, day after day, McGruder's comic strip The Boondocks shoots the same fucking fish in the same fucking barrel over and over again. White people have a labyrinthine system of oppression that keeps black folks down on pretty much every front possible; meanwhile, McGruder's riff goes, black people are lazy thinkers and ignorant on too many levels to even go into. That's great, Aaron, but what else have you got for me?

On paper, not a whole hell of a lot, it seems, but the television adaptation of The Boondocks absolutely kills. Really. Taking a brave departure from the drab three-panel knock-knock joke format of his comic strip, the animated Boondocks lives and breathes in the strange anime-meets-Fat Albert universe McGruder's always hinted at. Like the strip, it follows Huey and Riley Freeman—two little boys who represent the Goofus and Gallant of the modern black conundrum: Huey is a De La Soul rap come to life, all empowerment and reason but also a lot of rage, and Riley is bling nation personified—cripplingly unquestioning, following the herd and basically a white T brought to life. And of course, yes, yes, yes, it's edgy, although at this point, that's both a given and kind of a groaner; banging the same drum in a different medium is still banging the same drum.

But the color and motion make McGruder's bile a lot more fanciful and risky. One episode, for instance, is given over to Huey and Riley taking a field trip of sorts to R. Kelly's trial. Meeting their lawyer neighbor/token-bougie-black-guy-married-to-a-white-woman (who also happens to be the prosecution) in the parking lot, Huey lays it out on the line right away: "Do you have any idea how much niggas love R. Kelly?"

What follows is a satirical Hollywood trial circus: R. Kelly's white lawyer convinces the jury that Kelly's whole arrest hinged on racism; base feelings stomp all over the bougie guy's beloved values of reason and probability; and, of course, the golden shower jokes rain down. But where this would feel pretty rote in his strip, on television McGruder may have found his medium. The characters are all perfectly voiced, the animation style really pulls you in, and most shocking of all, there's even a little humanity to the characters. They are not made entirely of grist, and for McGruder, this is a huge growth spurt. At the end of the episode, after Huey has blasted everyone in the courtroom with a self-righteous but kind-of-reasonable diatribe—"You want to help R. Kelly? Introduce him to some OLDER WOMEN!"—and he gets ignored and Kelly gets off anyway, a dance party erupts outside the courtroom. And for once, the humor, the feeling, is inclusive; for once, it's not about blame.

The Boondocks airs on Sundays at 11 p.m. on The Cartoon Network.