I’ve been a fan of Adventure Time since 2006, when it was just a short on the internet and my pipedream was for it to become a show. It debuted on Cartoon Network in April 2010 and, after six seasons, there are 200 shorts. Wow.
This list is a tribute to the top quartile of Adventure Time episodes, mostly meant for fans who have already experienced its wonders. A few of the episodes not present are completely wonderful, and narrowing this down to just 50 was painful. Please comment below on how wrong you think I am.
If you’re new to Adventure Time, this is a good demonstration of its many qualities and a fine introduction to its appeal. But you should know there are spoilers. So beware.
One note: I consider two-part episodes to be one only if they share the same name, such as both parts of “Lemonhope.” Adventure Time changes storyboard teams for differently-titled two-part episodes, so I think this is doubly appropriate.[/tps_header]
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50. “The Duke”
Season 1, Episode 19
“The Duke” is filled with little morsels of hilarity and Adventure Time‘s first true bit of wisdom: “People make mistakes. It’s all part of growing up, and you never truly stop growing.”
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“The Duke” is a wonderful reflection on the fallibility of authority and, more obviously, the virtue of telling the truth. It’s Adventure Time in its purest children’s show mode while never forgetting the off-the-wall humor, like the still-unnamed red squirrel, that draws the greater audience. It’s among the show’s simplest pleasures.
Funniest line: “I’ll kill you and raise your children as my own!”
49. “James Baxter the Horse”
Season 5, Episode 19
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BMO sings a song about being impregnated by an electrical presence. Finn and Jake try to cheer up a funeral by saying their names in horse voices from the bushes. A horse on a beach ball named James Baxter is the most popular presence in all the land. That’s the headspace of “James Baxter the Horse,” an oddball among oddballs in the Adventure Time canon.
It’s ultimately a story about the difficulty of the creative process and putting one’s own personality into a work of art. Jake explains: “It’s like he’s shredding on a guitar, and learning how to shred isn’t just copying the exact notes of someone else’s solo. You need to learn how to do your own solo!”
Finn and Jake test drive both the audio and visual aspect of their routine. Finn sounds like he’s holding a focus group when he tells BMO, “Good, good. Happy’s what we want.”
It’s a delightful, hilarious take on the creative process, especially the feeling when, at the end of the day, you probably can’t step to the beat. And in this case, that’s James Baxter. The horse.
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Funniest line: “I think we should find an easier person to cheer up. It was a mistake to visit a funeral.”
48. “The New Frontier”
Season 3, Episode 18
The Cosmic Owl made brief appearances in “Prisoners of Love” and “Donny,” but it wasn’t until “The New Frontier” that Adventure Time began to use him as a device, for the first time creating a thread of prophecy and spirituality that would grow and grow from then on.
Here, Finn and Jake see the Banana Man (Weird Al Yankovic) from Jake’s croak dream the morning after. Jake takes the Cosmic Owl immensely seriously and basks in the awesomeness of the universe while upsetting Finn with the idea of his death. Jake’s kind of a jerk about it as Finn chases, and tempts, fate.
And Finn figures it out. He can cheat destiny with his own presence.
And throughout all of this, Banana Man’s well-being, sanity, and property are the only real victims.
Funniest line: “Finn, when I die, my individual earth consciousness is gonna go all over everywhere while Glob tallies my deeds.”
47. “Jermaine”
Season 6, Episode 33
Despite their incessant use of “bro,” we almost never have to think about Finn and Jake as (adopted) brothers. The starkest exception is “Jermaine,” when we visit their other brother–Jermaine (Steven Universe‘s Tom Scharpling)–in the house they grew up in.
Jermaine has dedicated his life to protecting the swag Joshua stole from the demons that surround the house. This is a task that so occupies his life that he needs to flip over a tape periodically to keep one of them at bay. Jermaine feels he’s responsible, but to what end? It mostly seems like Joshua was a jerk to a bunch of demons and now Jermaine is just squatting on property that means nothing to the present.
Jermaine’s resentment toward his brothers is a bit like Kim Kil Whan’s, except Jermaine’s responsibility is a prison he keeps himself in. “You got to be Dad’s favorite, but I got stuck with his mess!” But Joshua is gone.
He only feels free after they burn their childhood house down.
Funniest line: “How dare you use tacks on my poster!”
46. “Something Big”
Season 6, Episode 10
In “Sky Witch,” Maja (Jill Talley) said she was working on “something big.” And here we are. It’s so big that Chief of Police Root Beer Guy has to die offscreen, before the episode even starts.
The excellent opening battle sequence is just a buildup to reveal how big its deciding factor, Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant (nickname “Ele”), is. And once these grand events and the ancient Darren (Allen Oppenheimer) are over, what does such a large presence do? Ele’s master, Finn, orders him to be free, but Ele doesn’t really know how to do that. Steve Agee turns in a fantastic performance as Ele, who, like Darren, is from a time when feelings don’t matter because life and death are so much at the fore.
Then, perhaps hallucinating, Ele hears the sun: “What was and what will be is meaningless. Meanwhile, you should wonder: Are you just a two-headed pile of meat on a crash course with the cosmic dump, or do you contain the soul memory of a million dead stars? How do you light a candle without a match?”
For reasons we still don’t know, Ele decides that he’s going to be both the candle and the match by befriending Maja, but there’s so much going on in this episode, as is Jesse Moynihan’s signature. Colonel Candy Corn finds new meaning in battle after being widowed. The all-powerful Darren fails to understand Maja’s scheming, with the concept of feelings and uncaring being irrelevant to his ancient ways. Grunts in the Candy Kingdom army begin to make peace with imminent death.
But it’s all prelude to an existential crisis of the being above it all.
Funniest line: “You should be free, boy.” “Free to do what? I need psychic commands.” “Can you help me dice tomatoes for this guac?” “No.”
45. “The Tower”
Season 6, Episode 4
“The Tower,” along with “Breezy,” is a showcase of Finn at his absolute lowest. Sadness consumes him in “Breezy,” but his anger is at play in “The Tower,” when he decides that he really wants to tear his dad’s arm off and use it as his own. So he builds a tower into space.
“The Tower,” though, is actually an argument between two philosophies. Jake is of the mind that Finn needs to gets his feelings out of his system. A cloud person named Carroll (Cameron Esposito) tells him to run away from his old life and keep his painful memories locked in a vault. PB thinks that Finn blindly chasing his rage is dangerous, and at the end of the episode she shows Finn just how unsatisfying his revenge fantasy is.
“The Tower” is a contemplation on what to do with directionless adolescent confusion and aggression, and it concludes that allowing oneself to keep thoughtlessly going forward goes nowhere.
Funniest line: “My melon wants to punch my dad in the face and steal his arm.”
44. “Power Animal”
Season 2, Episode 7
Early seasons of Adventure Time focused so much on Jake’s shortcomings that, even after making episodes strictly dedicated to examining them, they built the ultimate one in “Power Animal,” where Jake is unable to save Finn because he keeps forgetting that he needs to. What ensues is one of the greatest showcases of Jake the Dog to date.
Finn has a great bit being used as a perpetual motion device in the Beneathaverse to power a machine to flip the world upside down so that the gnomes are on top (“the engineering is very sound”), but again, this is about Jake. Jake teaches a dancing bug how to shake it. He tells sexy water nymphs an incredible joke and laughs so hard at his own joke that he blacks out. He meets the awesome power of Party God (Dee Bradley Baker).
It’s pretty funny, because, typical of early Adventure Time, nothing is learned. Jake can only focus when Party God fills him with the power of a thousand partying demons, destroying everything in his path.
Funniest line: “Now it’s time to power up the plasma ball…with sexy, fun dancing!”
43. “Susan Strong”
Season 2, Episode 18
“Susan Strong” marks the first time that Finn’s status as potentially the last man on earth is confronted, with him getting all soul-searchy and weird whenever he thinks about it. His excitement when he meets what appears to be a tribe of humans trapped underground dissipates as it becomes clear that they’re incompatible with today’s world.
Adventure Time‘s first heavy moment comes as the Candy Kingdom burns, Finn learns that the tribe isn’t human after all, and Finn and Susan stare at each other. “Susan, what are you?”
We still don’t know much more about Susan Strong, as she’s only been in two other episodes. But she represents an unlikely hope for kinship that Finn’s constantly missing. And then there’s Jake’s sagely advice: “We’re all wild animals, brother.”
Also, Starchy’s a Beelzebub.
Funniest line: “These people are so terrified. Scared of their own shadows.” “We could rule them. Like gods! Angry gods.”
42. “Jake the Brick”
Season 6, Episode 20
Jake narrates what he sees as a brick in a shack, and the land of Ooo listens in to his nature show about the inspiring resilience of a bunny who keeps losing his home. But Jake insists, “It’s not about the bunny! The bunny is incidental to the brick experiment.”
But as Ooo is captivated by the bunny, so is Jake. There’s something very soothing about Jake leaving his brick form for only a moment, celebrating the bunny, only for the shack to crumble. Jake missed the opportunity for his weird fantasy to play out, but he doesn’t care anymore. He originally cared about the inevitability of a structure’s collapse, but watching an animal finding shelter time and again makes him think again about his fascination with inevitable collapse.
“Who cares about being a brick in a wall of a fallen-down shack? There’s something bigger than that, and the bunny has answers.”
Funniest line: “Finn, ever since I was little, I wanted to see what it’s like to be a brick in a brick shack when the brick shack falls down. And this shack is gonna fall down. Just look at it. Like sandcastles in the sun, baby. You’re too young; you wouldn’t understand.”
41. “The Enchiridion!”
Season 1, Episode 5
Adventure Time was great fun for its first few episodes (plus the teasers of “Business Time” and “Evicted!” we got to see), but it wasn’t until “The Enchiridion!” that it began to put Finn and Jake on quests that felt refreshingly like the pilot. This was the episode that left me feeling really great about the young show’s future.
Like the pilot, it wasn’t so much the adventure, inspired so thickly by Dungeons & Dragons, but the wackiness drenched all over everything. Fairies blowing up old ladies, a giant baby obsessed with his dollar, and a neutral ant. “The Enchiridion!” was the truest realization of the show as promised by its pilot, and its unexpected importance in Adventure Time‘s “The Lich”/”Finn the Human”/”Jake the Dog” triptych echoes just how much it mattered at the time.
Funniest line: “Slay this unaligned ant!”
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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
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.
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
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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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
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.”
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”).
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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20. “Food Chain”
Season 6, Episode 7
Adventure Time has had three guest-animated episodes so far, and the other two, “A Glitch Is a Glitch” and “Water Park Prank,” are among the series’ most disposable episodes, but Maasaki Yuasa, a well-respected anime artist and director, somehow tapped into the show’s soul the way the other guests just couldn’t while making an episode entirely unlike any before or since.
Magic Man showing up as a catalyst and not coming back is always a great device, but along with the loose animation, what makes “Food Chain” is the music, from its use of Mozart to the frankly unsettling plant song, right down to the grand finale. Finn and Jake learn about the food chain firsthand. “Food Chain” skirts the line of edutainment while retaining the twisted dialogue and effortless goofiness of Adventure Time.
Funniest line: “Hey, have you noticed we are birds now?”
19. “Holly Jolly Secrets”
Season 3, Episodes 19 & 20
Ice King has always been a tragic character. After being conked out in “Prisoners of Love,” his dream self wondered why nobody liked him. “You’re a sociopath,” cooed the Cosmic Owl. He just might be, but his loneliness, sadness, and even occasional helplessness added something to his character beyond his villainy. But it wasn’t until the sorta-Christmas special “Holly Jolly Secrets” that Adventure Time‘s mythology was opened up forever with the revelation of Ice King’s former life as scholar Simon Petrikov.
About as sad as the tale of Simon Petrikov is Ice King’s daily life, though. His video diary is a dull, vapid, and ponderous vat of despair, including a segment BMO speeds up about how he bathes in spoiled milk. BMO also finds a preposterous code involving Ice King’s tears revealing a picture of Gunter.
One of the only things holding “Holly Jolly Secrets” back from being of stratospheric greatness is that it doesn’t quite justify its double-length runtime, but it still provides enough wackiness to keep its heavier contents well afloat.
Funniest line: “Y’know, diary, I’ve been meaning to tell you something insanely private. I’m serious. I…I…love…to…GRRRR…fill my bathtub full of milk and sit in it like I’m a magic angel! There, I said it. My, the milk is dense, but when I poke my little toes up from the milk, it startles me. But I giggle! I giggle, diary. I get cold toes, but I giggle! And then I fall asleep, and the milk curdles and I get all stinky and sticky. Disgusting, diary. I’m disgusting! I’m disgusting…I’m disgusting and I smell like curdled milk!”
18. “Sons of Mars”
Season 4, Episode 15
High stakes episodes have become pretty routine in Adventure Time, but in the fourth season, “Sons of Mars” is built on three revelations: A. Glob is an actual character and not just an interjection, part of a four-headed deity residing on Mars known as Grob Gob Glob Grod, B. Magic Man is his brother, banished to Earth, and C. Abraham Lincoln on Mars, a throwaway joke in the pilot, is actually canon, and Honest Abe is the freaking King of Mars.
We go through a stupefying amount in the ensuing eleven minutes. Jake and Magic Man switch bodies, Jake dies by Abraham Lincoln’s decree, and Abraham Lincoln sacrifices himself to bring back Jake.
The epic scale is brought deep into the realm of fun by the great dialogue and voice acting for Magic Man, and the ending monologue by a tiny manticore is an added slice of strange.
Funniest line: “And what about that one time when he turned all the water into hair, and we all got so thirsty we drank it?”
17. “Breezy”
Season 6, Episode 5
After “Frost & Fire,” this is the second look into Finn’s unfocused horniness, and it gets weird. Finn has doctor’s orders to go out and have a good time for the sake of his torn-off arm, and a bumblebee named Breezy, obsessed with the flower on his stub, wingmans him into quick kisses with lots of princesses (“Maybe if I made out with lots of girls, I will feel something?”), but things go wrong when Finn is attacked by bees, Breezy fulfills her duty of drinking the royal jelly and becoming a queen, and Finn declines her offer to partake of her pollen and become her drone. It’s sad: “But I royal jellied for you.”
In perhaps the show’s most disturbing sequence, Finn does something like losing his virginity to Lumpy Space Princess. Wondering if having fun and collecting kisses from princesses is the answer to his problems, his flower responds by losing a petal. This episode shows Finn at his very lowest, but it also introduces a one-off character powerful enough to inspire Finn’s arm back, although with a tantalizing thorn on his palm.
Funniest line: “I’ve been pounding pickle juice like I was preggos. For the electrolytes.”
16. “Memory of a Memory”
Season 3, Episode 3
This is the one in which Marceline’s ex pretends to be her spirit animal to trick Finn and Jake into an Eternal Sunshine-type situation. She storms out on him after he sells Hambo (“I sold that teddy bear you love so much!”) and he gets Finn and Jake to collect that memory, but along the way they see a young Marcline with Hambo, her dad eating her fries, and Marceline moving into their treehouse before arriving in the memory core, which feels like it could be based on an indie video game. It’s a pretty slick way to further explore what was already one of Adventure Time‘s deepest characters.
The rest delivers just as well. Finn showing Marceline his memory of her memory in his memory is a complex resolution for a children’s show, Finn’s “Puncha Yo Buns” scene was an instant classic, and the episode ends with Terry Gilliam’s Flying Circus foot.
Funniest line: “Don’t you guys get it? I out-brained you.”
15. “Thank You”
Season 3, Episode 17
Setting aside the surefire Fionna & Cake episode, this was the first true experiment Adventure Time ever tried. In a mostly wordless episode, a snow golem takes care of a lost pup from an enemy species, the fire wolves. It’s the most adorable episode of the series alongside “Simon & Marcy,” a Romeo & Juliet tale with paternal themes in place of romantic. The golem almost sacrifices himself for the young wolf and explodes with glee as a pack showers him with thanks. There’s not much to say about it. It’s a little weird, completely adorable, but mostly just quietly, gorgeously hopeful.
But then there’s also the image of the pup suckling from the udder of a cow, burning it as the cow screams in agony. That’s great.
Funniest line: “You know, maybe we could all learn a thing or two from those sandwiches.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Hz9B1Ldu0
14. “Puhoy”
Season 5, Episode 16
Adventure Time had gone pretty far off the rails at this point, but this is the one where, as he and Jake are building a pillow fort while stranded inside during a knife storm, Finn lives in an entire lifetime lost in a fantastical pillow world. And it all starts with Finn being bummed because his GF Flame Princess didn’t laugh at a joke of his. “Man, having a girlfriend is hard.” “No, being crazy is hard,” Jake corrects him.
Finn spends his entire life festering on an escape into something else rather than focusing on the wonderful family around him. It’s a great display of how Finn’s sense of adventure can interfere with his joy. Meanwhile, after Jake tosses literally his favorite cup to show Finn about imaginary problems, he reels it in from the knife storm. “I thought you said you didn’t care,” says BMO. Jake sips from his empty mug and doesn’t acknowledge it.
Funniest line: “Are you telling me that birds in your world don’t poo little pillowcases?”
13. “Adventure Time”
Pilot
The first thing that happens in the very first episode of Adventure Time, which became a viral video all the way back in 2007, is Jake downloading a little dance from the internet with his mind. It doesn’t not stop being this wacky, and it does not stop being this awesome. Sweet Jesus, it was awesome. Everything about it reeked of greatness, from its open-ended world to its bizarro-cutesy chiptune scoring to its algebraic use of slanguage.
What’s most remarkable is that just about everything from the short has been kept intact, right down to Abraham Lincoln, who takes Pen’s–Finn’s name at the time–mind back in time…and to Mars. Ice King (who actually has a great voice here), Lady Rainicorn (who didn’t speak Korean then), and Princess Bubblegum were entirely recast, while Finn’s voice actor, Jeremy Shada, had not yet replaced his older brother, Zack.
There’s really only one thing that hasn’t been followed up in the series, and I’m a little sad that we never saw what happened to those ninjas stealing that old man’s diamonds. Give him back his diamonds!
Funniest line: “That guy is a total patoot.” “He’s like fifty patoots!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpG1nR0p0OE
12. “The Comet”
Season 6, Episode 43
There is a lot to take in with the season six finale, “The Comet.” There’s Finn fighting breaker of worlds Orgalorg, Finn’s ultimate confrontation with his father, Finn being given the choice to become one with the universe as a greater sense of being, and Jake’s prophesied death.
Ultimately, it’s about Finn A. realizing that not everything gets to be satisfying and B. coming to the same crossroads we saw in the question Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant hears in “Something Big” and the decision Grob Gob Glob Grod makes in “Astral Plane.” Finn gives up transcendence because tending to the world he’s invested in is something greater.
At the beginning of season six, Finn moped around singing “Lost in the Darkness.” As he drifts into the void–actual, literal darkness–he finally makes peace with his situation.
Funniest line: “It was like forty years ago.” “I’m sixteen!” “Well, I don’t have a star to revolve around to track time.”
11. “All the Little People”
Season 5, Episode 5
Watching Finn mess around with living, miniature versions of the show’s cast, including C-listers, is really strange, especially as he begins interfering with their romantic lives like he’s writing some sort of voodoo fanfiction.
His obsession brings him off the rails, with intense spanking, a weird, funky threesome (!) involving Choose Goose and Abracadaniel, and little Marceline licking little Peppermint Butler into nothing
Funniest line: “You’ve crossed the line from weird curiosity into some dark, messed up stuff.”
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10. “Root Beer Guy”
Season 5, Episode 43
Herein we see the Kafkaesque life of a Candy Kingdom citizen who works as a telemarketer shilling dietary supplements. His only escape is his enthusiasm for reading and writing crime fiction, but this escape is bringing tension to his marriage, even with a wife willing to dress up like a sexy maid for him!
Something interesting finally happens in his life when he sees Finn and Jake kidnap Princess Bubblegum, but he gets no help from anyone, especially not the banana guards, a police force about as potent as children as acting like policemen. Meanwhile, Finn and Jake hilariously behave like shady criminals.
Root Beer Guy chasing his one hope for breaking out of his life’s monotony earns him a spot as the Candy Kingdom’s chief of police. It’s a great reminder that no matter how deep in life you get, you can dare to dream of finding a new way.
Funniest line: “It’s easy to do when you have the new leads.” “Exactly, it’s all about the leads.”
9. “Astral Plane”
Season 6, Episode 25
“Astral Plane” is made up of small pieces like the Graybles episodes, but its wistfulness and Finn’s contemplative observation of nighttime in Ooo lift it up as Finn sees a lonely astral projection of Mr. Fox, hears Marceline sing a song meant to be heard by nobody, and witnesses the birth of a space lard.
But what earns “Astral Plane” its high placing is its ending, as Finn inspires Grob Gob Glob Grod to sacrifice themselves to save their creation and it’s revealed that the comet signifies the coming of Finn’s father Martin. These are the most exciting moments of the entire show, and suddenly the prospects for season six seemed thrilling.
Funniest line: “Hey, do you ever say ‘Oh my Glob?'” “No, but sometimes Gob does.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N9nT2aHoMQ
8. “Is That You?”
Season 6, Episode 19
After Finn and Jake perform a wondrously weird ritual for their fallen ally Prismo, the first act is great for a very simple reason: it’s a greatest hits of Jake, with Jake exploding at the end of each one. Bacon pancakes, Everything Burrito, “you’re shaking it all wrong,” tough guy contests…maybe clip shows would be better if every sequence ended in a reality-disrupting explosion.
Then it gets into some seriously high-concept junk as Prismo plans to revive himself. Prismo’s just a dream, so he uses Jake. Long story short: “Jake, that means one of your alternate reality incarnations will sleep for eternity to keep me alive.” “Cool, dude!”
But if you thought Inception was confusing…hoo boy.
Funniest line: “It’s filled with…down feathers of a baby griffin. That’s illegal!”
7. “Frost & Fire”
Season 5, Episode 30
In this episode, we see Finn’s arguably greatest folly, which is manipulating his girlfriend based on the instincts that get his young adolescent buns hot and bothered, and Jake’s obsession with the Cosmic Owl doesn’t help anything.
But aside from the growing pains and the breakup, it culminates in a flying battle worthy of Dragon Ball Z.
Funniest line: “Dear Flame Princess, your feet smell like face cheeks, your stupid candles smell heinous, and you can’t even kiss Finn without totes freakin’ out!”
6. “Simon & Marcy”
Season 5, Episode 14
Rebecca Sugar’s final storyboard before she went off to work on Steven Universe was for a guaranteed heartstrings-puller, with seven-year-old Marcy and a kindhearted Simon Petrikov alone in a post-apocalyptic world, a setup slightly reminiscent of The Road.
It’s just an overwhelmingly sweet episode, accentuated by Simon’s use of Cheers‘ “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” to mark a desperate, lonely moment.
Funniest line: “CLAMBULANCE. CLAMBULANCE. CLAMBULANCE.”
5. “Jake the Dog”
Season 5, Episode 2
The first few seasons of Adventure Time featured an ever-virtuous Finn alongside a slightly lazy and hedonistic Jake, with the former overcoming the latter when need be. The culmination of the three-parter that started with the season four finale’s cliffhanger, “Jake the Dog” highlights a point when everything is on the line and Finn’s approach fails while Jake’s succeeds. Even with Jake’s idiotic, selfish wishes for a sandwich, his personability saves him.
Sure, you have Finn’s nuts wish-altered reality where he’s wearing the Ice King’s crown and going crazy while the apocalypse begins around him, but the episode is mostly Jake chilling in a room with his new friend, the wishmaster and pickle artisan Prismo.
“I don’t want to get in a relationship because I don’t want to have a discussion about what we’re gonna have for dinner every night!” Jake just hangs out in a hot tub with Prismo and listens to his bleak outlook on romance and raps. And his easygoingness saves the universe.
Funniest line: “I’ve taught you well, my traitorous gang.”
4. “Lemonhope”
Season 5, Episodes 50 & 51
The Earldom of Lemongrab has always been a rocky plot point, including in Lemonhope’s introduction in “Too Old,” but here we focus on a character whose individualism makes him his people’s only hope as he grapples with his urges to do as he pleases instead of saving the lemon people who saved him from a Kim Jong Un-esque Lemongrab. He’s sort of like a college freshman struggling through his Ayn Rand period. He’s unable to sustain his own life in isolation (“If there’s no juice, I got freedom to go find water!”) and just about dies.
He slowly realizes he needs other people for life and fulfillment, and, in turn, others need him, and that he’ll never be free in his head as long as he has a debt unpaid.
But then when he saves the Earldom, he drops the bomb: “I mostly came back here so I could stop thinking about y’all all the time.” It’s an almost cynical, almost upsetting turn of events, but despite that and the wonderfully grating voice acting of Justin Roiland, “Lemonhope,” particularly its gorgeous closing sequence of Bubblegum’s song, is a sublimely beautiful, meditative episode of television.
Funniest line: “In conclusion, no one needs to come here ever especially Lemonhope and I ate my brother goodbye!”
3. “It Came from the Nightosphere”
Season 2, Episode 1
Adventure Time took a huge step with its second season premiere. We’d never met a villain as potent as Marceline’s father, now named Hunson Abadeer, and we’d never explored a character’s relationships outside of Finn and Jake nearly as much. The episode established Marceline as not just a fan favorite, but as a powerful element the show could bring back when it needed an emotional edge.
True to the show’s early form, it seems like a lesson might be learned when Finn plays Marceline’s fry song to stop her dad on his path of destruction. When it seems like a reconciliation might be the resolution, Finn flies out of nowhere screaming like an animal and slices the crap out of the soul-stealing, deathless demon before sending him back to the Nightosphere. Another moment of learning prevented with violence.
Funniest line: “Oh my Glob, drama bomb!”
2. “Bad Timing”
Season 5, Episode 49
“Bad Timing” makes us feel for a character with few if any redeeming qualities, and it shows us the action in a small circle reminiscent of Princess Bubblegum’s time orb. Lumpy Space Princess, while moping over her long-gone ex Brad, meets her high school lab partner, now entrepreneur, Johnnie. They hit it off at his place. She feels happy again, and he feels a newfound respect for himself. But after a small tinge of jealousy, she steals Princess Bubblegum’s time orb and tries to take Johnnie back to a time she thought was better but accidentally erases him from existence.
We eventually see Johnnie appear in the area outside the circle of action in which the episode takes place, and he can only watch in sadness as LSP asks PB to get rid of her pain by returning her to a time before she had even met him. Meanwhile, Tree Trunks is apparently singing “Slow Boat to China” in the background, forever.
Funniest line: “So Bubblegum thinks she can horn in on my territory? Sip from my soup after I cut all the onions? Yo, think again, tranch!”
1. “I Remember You”
Season 4, Episode 25
Finn and Jake just gawk on in confusion, a bit as we do, as the two true emotional centers of the show, Marceline the Vampire Queen and Ice King, come together for a jam session that slowly reveals their shared past and, most forget, the long-held assumptions that Adventure Time takes place long after a near-apocalyptic event.
Marceline sings Simon’s thousand-year-old writing as she reads it for the first time: “Marceline, is it just you and me in the wreckage of the world? / That must be so confusing for a little girl / And I know you’re going to need me here with you / But I’m losing myself, and I’m afraid you’re going to lose me, too / This magic keeps me alive, but it’s making me crazy / And I need to save you, but who’s going to save me? / Please forgive me for whatever I do / When I don’t remember you.”
It’s sad stuff. And it’s sadder that Ice King doesn’t remember what it means. But it’s hopeful, too. We see two old friends finally rekindling a friendship that we didn’t even know existed, and we’re flashed back a thousand years to their first meeting, when the man who would become Ice King sees a crying young Marcy alone in a post-apocalyptic world and gives her a stuffed bear. She feels better.
Funniest line: “Bad biscuits make the baker broke, bro.”
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2PsADo11E]
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