[tps_title]#30-21[/tps_title]
30. “Betty”
Season 5, Episode 48
The end of an arc featuring the wizard Secret Society that we’ve seen bits and pieces of propels a completely different story forward when Ice King, a frequent crasher of their meetings, loses all of his magic and transforms back into Simon Petrikov: “This must be it, man. I’ve crossed into some new super insane insane zone where I feel like I’m just normal again…or maybe I’m just normal again.”
The stakes are high. Simon wants to find Betty, but his body is finally dying. When Finn, Jake, and Marceline show up in the Ice Kingdom, the tower is weeping. Marceline says goodbye to the stuffed doll PB saved from Maja the sky witch. Simon gets ready to say goodbye.
What happens instead is powerful. Simon never sees Betty again because in this moment, she jumps through time to him, only for him to beg for death (Death made a mixtape for the ride: “Summer Jams 3”) because this might be his one chance to escape eternity as the Ice King. It’s a plot-heavy episode that throws a lot of punches only to return to status quo. Plus Betty.
Funniest line: “Hey, stop looking at yourself. You’re ugly, bro. Get lost. This is my busking spot.”
29. “Mystery Dungeon”
Season 5, Episode 8
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The thing about “Mystery Dungeon” is that it’s just the show at its funniest, and it does it all with supporting players, with Lemongrab’s best turn outside of debut “Too Young,” including him eating pie out of the mouth of a giant dead rat. Meanwhile, we have Tree Trunks being kind of out of touch, Neptr being a loser, Ice King being a dingus, and Shelby keeping it real.
Ice King’s sadness rules all (except perhaps Tree Trunks’ meandering takedown of him), unfortunately, including his inability to recall that he’s Neptr’s “father” (BMOP “should’ve been here instead of this weird piece of junk that I don’t remember nothing about”) and his obsession with turning fantasy into reality. But he can’t bring down the fact that “Mystery Dungeon” is Adventure Time‘s good times output maxing out.
Funniest line: “Who in this world is sadder than the Ice King?” “Me, watching this.”
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28. “Ocarina”
Season 6, Episode 12
Adventure Time‘s early seasons generally were an interrogation and then forgiveness of Jake’s faults. Here, its most recent season sees Jake’s son Kim Kil Whan trying to pressure him into a more traditional lifestyle by acting as his slumlord.
It’s always jarring being reminded that deeds and treaties even exist in Ooo, and it’s never better shown than in Finn’s confusion at being kicked out of his treehouse not by force–as in “Evicted!”–but by the law. Jake then illustrates his radical understanding of the world (“Once they was winning, they changed the rules up”), which falls in stark contrast to the corporate machinations of Kim Kil Whan (“Deeds don’t bleed”).
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Jake’s absent fatherhood is illuminated alongside these two deeply different understandings of the world. It’s almost a little confusing that a nonworking instrument and the most basic gesture of goodwill sway Kim Kil Whan in the end: “No, I think I was wrong about dad. I think he’s good.”
Funniest line: “Yeah, it’s not hollow. I made the holes with the back end of a pencil.”
27. “The Diary”
Season 6, Episode 30
“Maybe we shouldn’t read this.” “Yes, we should.”
Cartoonist Jillian Takami’s recent This One Summer did a lot to capture that feeling when, as “The Diary” puts it, “you don’t know what the future looks like, you just hope you’ll have stuff figured out by then.” This episode does, too, with fleeting thoughts from BP, the author of a mysterious diary Jake’s son T.V. finds, showing up throughout the episode: “I stayed in and tried to cut my bangs. Mom says it looks like I got in a fight with a snapping turtle.”
For how much they tell about Nurse Betsy Poundcake, it’s incredible how densely packed in the rest of “The Diary” is. We also tackle the character of T.V. and see Jake’s first truly successful attempt at real parenting–contrast it with his relationship with Kim Kil Whan–while meditating on loose divides between fantasy and reality in storytelling. The extent to which T.V.’s tone has changed by the end of the episode is poignant.
“Hey, that guy must be pretty sad, huh? Hey, you wanna go find him?” “No.”
Funniest line: “Kissing is fun and easy if I don’t think about the bacteria and spit teeming…multiplying…”
26. “Too Young”
Season 3, Episode 5
This is a true story: I was in a cabin when “Too Young” first aired, and it was storming. Lightning exploded the cabin next door while this episode was on, and my brother and I were way too focused on the horror that is the Earl of Lemongrab to care about the completely destroyed home a few feet away from us until the Earl of Lemongrab was done and off the TV. Lemongrab’s character is just freaking incredible. I’m partly convinced that Rick & Morty would not exist for Justin Roiland had it not been for Lemongrab, PB’s creation and therefore heir.
It’s a fascinating detail of the Candy Kingdom that Lemongrab becomes de facto regent until the Princess comes of age, but at the time, it didn’t seem like that logic might carry into the show. Adventure Time was still pretty innocent, and PB turning thirteen–losing five years after The Lich possessed her–solved a short-term Adventure Time problem of Finn’s unrequited crush.
But since “Too Young,” the show has more than tripled its longevity, and the return of Princess Bubblegum to her eighteen-year-old self reflects a rejection of instant gratification for the show, retrospectively a hint that it wanted to create room for a more complicated future.
Funniest line: “Let me share with you a little secret on how to win the heart of a princess. It’s not easy, but you have to be persistent. You might have to defeat a demon lord and warp through several worlds, but once you do, you walk up the wizard stairs and produce your magic key you got in the water world and unlock the chamber door.”
25. “King Worm”
Season 4, Episode 18
A few episodes of Adventure Time leave you not knowing how to feel, and this was both the first and the one that took the simplest path to achieve that end. “King Worm” resembles the first half of “Memory of a Memory,” sending us through a labyrinth of vignettes inside someone’s mind.
“King Worm” best succeeds in illustrating the limitations of Finn’s dream consciousness, imagining fascinatingly boring scenes like Lady Rainicorn instructing Jake in how to tape a wrapped present. The little glitches in his mindscape littered throughout are what make the episode truly attractive and unique, especially a fake Jake that only helps him escape a dream within that dream.
It’s actually a rather disposable episode, but its style and imagination capture the quintessence of the series.
Funniest line: “Finn, shh! I’m having coffee with The Lich! You wouldn’t understand. You’re too young!”
24. “The Cooler”
Season 6, Episode 22
Princess Bubblegum is kind of a tyrant (her right hand man is some kind of evil sorcerer, for chrissakes), and by the time “The Cooler” aired, it was definitely time to confront the topics of diplomacy and surveillance. Who better to cast judgment than Finn’s other crush, Flame Princess?
It’s hard to realize just how bad Princess Bubblegum gets here, so let me put it in simple terms: she slowly freezes an entire kingdom so that she can perform a pre-emptive strike by destroying a people’s cherished, secret religious idols, which she knows about because of her secret surveillance of anyone and anything in Ooo. She does this despite the fact that Flame Princess talks off her brother’s war hawk rhetoric of attacking the Candy Kingdom.
Way too much could be said about the relevance of this episode’s central conflict to today’s America, but I think it’s best put in that moment where PB has limitless information at her fingertips, she notices she’s watching two goofballs do some harmless song, and she gives it up.
Funniest line: “I’m PB! I spy on everybody. No big D!”
23. “Freak City”
Season 1, Episode 20
The first thing we ever see Magic Man do is turn a bird inside out. Then he turns Finn into a giant, good-smelling foot. Then he disappears in an explosion that spells out “EAT IT.” Magic Man was pretty instantly one of the most awesome things on the show.
“Freak City” is the early seasons’ go-to story of Finn’s focused heroism versus Jake’s carefree thrill-seeking at its most extreme, and the story is actually the inverse of season five’s “Blade of Grass,” when acceptance of a curse was the solution rather than the problem. Finn’s run-in with other freaks–my favorite is Kim–culminates in a brilliant song of Finn’s near-resignation before his heroic tantrum of retaliation.
The lesson learned? If you think it’s anything other than “Magic Man is a jerk,” you’re wrong.
Funniest line: “Yeah, Finn. Maybe there’s another lesson to be learned here: to accept what fate has given you and stay a miserable foot. Gork, can we live here in this pile of trash and rats forever?”
22. “No One Can Hear You”
Season 3, Episode 15
Look, maybe I’m overrating this, but this was the first episode to actually wig me out and impress me with how skronked up the show can get. This is the episode with that messed up deer that breaks Finn’s legs and eventually takes off his hooves and wiggles his fingers intimidatingly.
The whole episode is creepy, with a deserted Candy Kingdom, Jake living like a delusional hobo, and a climax in the sewer system. And the moment when Finn realizes he’s been unconscious for six months while Jake, who has cockroaches crawling all over his body, has waited for his surprise birthday party is madness, and Jake playing with his puppets is even more so. With “No One Can Hear You,” the show embraced a side of itself that wasn’t just dark, but twisted.
Funniest line: “Ring ring! Hang on, dearie. Hello? Baby, I told you never to call me here!”
21. “Escape from the Citadel”
Season 6, Episode 2
“Finn the Human,” as a title, has a bit of a twist: its choice of article is literal. Finn gets existential when he thinks there might be a human other than him, as seen in the Susan Strong episodes, but when he learns that not only is there another human out there, but it’s his father, it takes a different sort of toll. Finn pursues his father to the Crystal Citadel, a nigh-inaccessible prison, and in the “Escape from the Citadel,” Finn has to deal with The Lich in the middle of this emotional encounter.
While The Lich lurks and the universe’s worst criminals escape, Finn is caught up with a father who clearly just doesn’t care about him and is actually kind of a criminal. Finn’s denial is so deep that he loses his cursed right arm. The Lich is dealt with, but Finn’s dad just runs away. Again. And Finn and Jake return, but with hurt and heartache they wouldn’t have if Martin never entered their life.
Plus, The Lich manages to stop Tree Trunks from divorcing Mr. Pig.
Funniest line: “Finn, I know we normally come out of these things okay, but I got a bad feeling about this. Just promise me that if both my eyes get fried off, you’ll fry off your eyes too.”
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