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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
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“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.”
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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.
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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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