[tps_title]#40-31[/tps_title]
40. “Evergreen”
Season 6, Episode 24
The only episode thus far to look before the Mushroom War takes place in the Cretaceous as a Lich green comet approaches Earth. That’s typical for comets to do every thousand years, but this time it’s different. “See how it writhes for our extinction,” warns wizard Urgence Evergreen, who looks and sounds like modern day Ice King.
But the story instead focuses on Evergreen’s apprentice, a tiny dinosaur named Gunther (voiced by Pamela Adlon, famous for voicing Bobby Hill). Evergreen rides atop a magical palanquin while Gunther carries his supplies and has his feet mangled on the rough terrain. Gunther is mistreated by his master, but he sticks with him because he thinks there’s nobody cooler.
When Evergreen is unable to cast the wish to save the planet from the comet, Gunther must. Gunther wears the crown, which makes his deepest desire a reality. But instead of saving the world, he simply transforms into Evergreen, shouting “Gunther, no!” as Evergreen instructs him to use the magic he slowly realizes he neglected to teach his lackey. The comet kills everyone and everything, and we cut to Ice King screaming while having a nightmare. His penguins are terrified, and a blue comet approaches in the distance.
Funniest line: “If this comet hits, we four indeed may perish, but the elements we embody — fire, ice, candy, and slime — will live on!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqtv7SCO424
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39. “What Is Life?”
Season 1, Episode 15
Neptr is one of my favorites. After “What Is Life?” everyone forgot about him and got caught up in the adorable BMO as Adventure Time‘s resident robot while Neptr was neglected, naive, but eager to please his creators. But once upon a time, way back in season one, Finn and Ice King actually warred over Neptr. Finn exposits: “Look, I know we just met, and you’re probably going through a lot of personal stuff right now, but I really like you, Neptr, and I’m not gonna rest until you’re working properly and throwing hot pie on my best friend’s face.”
It’s easy to forget how wonderfully manic season one is with its humor. Ice King’s semi-loyal ice-a-pede, Finn’s prankster, blood oath-bound, suicidal balloons, and Jake’s big bag of butter are all wonderful early instances.
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But “What Is Life?” is wonderful not only because of Neptr’s irritating innocence (his ability to sneak around the Ice Cave is atrocious), but because Ice King is humanized, which wasn’t really treated seriously in “Prisoners of Love.” Even in a magical world with unlimited possibilities, he’s relegated to his mind for any kind of comfort.
Funniest line: “Aww, man! Nothing’s better than throwing a big bag of butter at someone!”
38. “Shh!”
Season 5, Episode 20
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Adventure Time never indulges in just how delightful it is like it does in “Shh!” Finn and Jake resolve that they can only communicate through signs they write in a thirty-second span, and the first to speak loses. BMO invites bikini babes over. BMO freaks out because he thinks that the silent Finn and Jake are imposters. The bikini babes can fly.
It doesn’t quite reach the heights of the similarly light-on-dialogue “Thank You,” but “Shh!” goes for a pleasure a lot simpler that’s also a lot less appreciated. Despite going ten minutes without any lines by Finn and Jake, “Shh!” encapsulates the essence of Adventure Time despite its leading pair’s language being so key to its signature. Jake explores the insides of their wall, encountering spiders, mice, and a miniature depressed writer. The pair gets beaten up by bikini babes until one of them talks.
Adventure Time has its own kind of language.
Funniest line: “Finn! Jake! I invited some bikini babes over to dance to this song!”
37. “Princess Cookie”
Season 4, Episode 13
Typically, Jake’s inclination to dismiss problems as unfixable are overruled by Finn’s desire to help people no matter what. “Princess Cookie” is unusual in this manner, because Finn’s off being wacky while Jake listens with an empathetic ear. It’s a slight role reversal that mainly benefits from Finn going out of his mind and acting like a ninja.
I was wary of “Princess Cookie” at first. When we see a young “Baby Snaps” get laughed at by PB for wanting to be a princess, the joke seems to be the gender identity. But the episode’s resolution feels like a validation of Princess Cookie.
Donald Faision (Turk from Scrubs) puts in a great performance here as Cookie, a tortured soul who’s rejected by the world and thus turns to crime. With the world unwilling to accept her, Cookie even attempts suicide.
Squint just right and the episode can be seen as advocacy for transfolk.
Funniest line: “Get ready, Jake. When we get to the cookie, you throw some milk in his face and yell, ‘Alvin’s. Hot. Juicebox. Alvin’s. Hot. Juicebox.’ He’ll be really confused, and that’s when we grab him and tie him up-style.”
36. “Fionna and Cake”
Season 3, Episode 9
Adventure Time‘s first and most famous experiment is “Fionna and Cake” and the subsequent episode in that universe. The twist ending revealing it as weird, pervy fan fiction by Ice King actually isn’t unlike what actually happened. During the first season, character designer Natasha Allegri, now the creator of the wonderful online series Bee and Puppycat, drew up a comic based on Adventure Time, but with the characters wielding different gender identities. It was a joke about lady problems. Long story short, everyone loved it, and they decided to do it.
Somehow, they managed to snag Neil Patrick Harris as Prince Gumball, so of course we get a big Rebecca Sugar musical number. It’s a little annoying that Fionna’s first (and second…and third, sorta) appearance focuses so much on someone courting her (although her ending monologue about not needing a boyfriend was good tonic), but when she rips apart her fancy dress to save the day from the totally awesome (what else do we expect from a character voice by Grey DeLisle?) Ice Queen, we obviously want more time in Ice King’s fanfiction universe. And we got it.
Funniest line: “Ice Queen, why are you always predatoring on dudes?”
35. “Incendium”
Season 3, Episode 26
“Incendium” was our first real look at Finn’s adolescence, which seems to have only just been tied up in “The Comet.” We’ve seen lots of reactions to his unrequited love of Princess Bubblegum, but the heart-wrenching song and tears are almost certainly more hormone-induced than any.
And speaking of that song, “All Gummed Up Inside,” with its eight-bit boops, and “All Warmed Up Inside,” with just Rebecca Sugar’s ukelele and John DiMaggio’s modest singing, form the core of an episode about senseless emotion. In the end, the only thing that soothes Finn’s senseless pain is senseless hope about senseless love.
But for something so heavy, it’s pretty light when it needs to be. Flambo spits on Jake. Some flame guy thinks aloud, “An awesome prince? That’s the best kind!” Jake wins Flame King over by pretending to be murdered by pretend-Finn. It’s great in showing that when you just look around, there’s so much more to see than the angst fogging your vision.
Funniest line: “Greetings, Flame King! My final gift is your favorite thing in the world.” “A koala bear?”
34. “Mortal Recoil”
Season 2, Episode 26
“Mortal Recoil” might be the closest Adventure Time has come to an ending, with only “The Comet” bringing similar feelings of satisfaction. But “Mortal Recoil” is the better half of a diptych that signified the end of one Adventure Time but the birth of another, accidentally analogous to PB’s rebirth as a thirteen-year-old.
The Lich is a darkness that over time has become so alien to early Adventure Time that his very introduction signified a tonal shift, and with “Mortal Recoil” we saw heroes working with villains plus the death and rebirth of main characters. Its terrifying images make Hunson Abadeer look like a chump. The sweater, with the power of liking someone a lot, fails Finn.
It doesn’t cop out. They actually win by straight-up killing the possessed Princess Bubblegum. “Mortal Recoil” took the show into an entirely new space, and it would never be the same.
Funniest line: “What’s all that biz?” “Uh, bleach, lighter fluid, ammonia, gasoline, I dunno. Lady stuff.”
33. “You Forgot Your Floaties”
Season 6, Episode 38
“You Forgot Your Floaties” sees both the beginning and the end of Magic Man, from the beginning of his madness and sadness on Olympus Mons to the loss of his magic to Betty.
Appropriate to Magic Man, it’s tough to penetrate. Jesse Moynihan is doing some of his most freeform work here, and this episode nearly speaks in riddles, like when we learn what Magic Man thinks of the mind: “You imagine the lock before the key. You think this is the key, but it’s a wastebasket.” This is echoed when Prismo produces an actual wastebasket in response to Magic Man’s wish for his missing wife.
But while she learns about Magic Man, Betty’s mind is on learning the nature of magic. Early on, Magic Man taunts Betty: “The coconut crab that swims in your neighbor’s pool at night: maybe Simon’s in there, too. Who else holds their breath in there, Betty?”
“All magic users swim in the loomy gloom.”
By episode’s end, she disappears in a puff of madness. She forgot her floaties. She’s sunk.
Funniest line: “Dude, we’re scavengers.” “Is that what we are?”
32. “Hot to the Touch”
Season 4, Episode 1
The tragedy in Finn’s delusion in “Hot to the Touch” definitely invites Neptr (in only his second appearance here), a robot so unaware of his pathetic existence that he thinks, instead of just being forgotten, Finn and Jake were trying to find him for fifteen months, four days, and nine hours. He’s so useless that he needs to tell you when he’s giving a thumbs up. He’s not even a good rapper. And he just about kills Flame Princess. “No, Neptr!” “Yes, creator.” Neptr has a star performance here, and when he says, “Even if everything burns, you’ll still have me, creator” he hits this space between sweet, sad, and hilarious as it provides no consolation whatsoever to Finn.
Finn is just as cringeworthy, clinging to the idea of a woman he’s barely met who only has a basic understanding of the world (“It’s all coming together! Needs more…fire”). He follows her around at night. Then he even starts chasing her. His feelings are artificial and are likely tied to the pain we saw in “Incendium.”
After they hug, Finn smiles weirdly when he tells Jake: “It hurt.”
Funniest line: “Oh Jake, look at her. She’s innocent. Like the steam off a puppy’s nose, searching for ham in the snow.” “Guy drops one piece of ham in the snow and he never hears the end of it!”
31. “Belly of the Beast”
Season 2, Episode 21
No episode better represented the ethos of early Adventure Time seasons than the one where they try to get a bunch of partying bears to get out of a monster’s belly. Their chief, Party Pat (Andy Samberg), almost carries the episode on his own by resting on the monster’s heart like it’s a water bed, quietly identifying himself by pulling a string with his foot that turns on a neon sign reading his name, or making Finn and Jake participate in the world’s wonkiest karaoke song (which might actually be my favorite moment of the whole series).
Describing the episode is best done by listing off the awesome stuff in it, really. There’s the little bear, Cubby, who talks to Finn and Jake acting like he’s revealing a conspiracy in the middle of a cult. There’s Finn and Jake trying to get everyone to abandon the party by singing a quiet blues about how their favorite foods are dead. There’s the monster trying to get rid of the bears by drinking lava.
And finally, after escaping with their lives barely intact, Jake reacts to Party Pat’s insistence on going back into the belly of the beast: “You’re sick, Party Pat.”
Jake walks away, angry that they even bothered to help these stupid bears. Finn suggests they stop setting off fireworks inside the monster. With this agreement, the monster swallows all of the happy bears again so they can party. Finn stares in awe for a second and then decides to walk away from the insanity.
Funniest line: “You move to music, but that’s not dancing. You chew pancakes, but you’re not tasting. To truly party, one must leave behind their problems that are troubling and open one’s…mind eye.”
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