By Luke Sisson
Boom! Comics “Adventure Time #5” alternate cover image courtesy of comicsalliance.com
Created by Pendleton Ward
Starring Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio, Hynden Walch and Tom Kenny
Six Seasons on Cartoon Network, 2010-Present
Where to watch: Seasons 1-5 (and the first half of season six) available on Hulu Plus, stray episodes available for free on cartoonnetwork.com
The Setup: In the post-apocalyptic acid-soaked fantasyland of Ooo, a young boy named Finn (Shada), presumably the last human alive, and his magic dog Jake (DiMaggio), go on various adventures to help the less fortunate, the unfortunate, the more fortunate, and, more often than not, themselves. They cross paths with the sociopathic and mentally unstable Ice King (Kenny), the megalomaniac ruler of the Candy Kingdom, Princess Bubblegum (Walch), 1000-year-old self-proclaimed Vampire Queen, Marceline (Olivia Olson), and any number of wacky weirdos across their episodic adventures.
When Pen Ward first created the Adventure Time with Pen and Jake short in 2006, he was still just a fresh-faced CalArts grad with a multitude of ideas, trying his hardest to find a home for them, and Nickelodeon passed on his original pilot because they thought it would be too weird for the kids out there. Now, you can’t look at the state of children’s television without playing “spot-the-Adventure-Time-influence”. Adventure Time is the elder statesman of this new wave of generation-crossing animated shows. Now shows like Steven Universe (created by Adventure Time veteran Rebecca Sugar) and Gravity Falls (which reads like a version of Twin Peaks for kids), along with the phenomenal miniseries Over the Garden Wall (created by another Adventure Time veteran, Pat McHale) have taken up the torch, but for a time, there was just Adventure Time.
The success of the show can be chalked up to a few things. The first is the Internet: the original short was one of the first videos I remember watching on YouTube, and, at 16, I was hooked. It was one of those things that, even though it was just a short little seven-minute video, felt like something more important. And others saw it that way too: the short was nominated for an Annie Award before even airing on television; fan artists immediately latched onto its main characters; the video has been shared and watched innumerable times by innumerable young adults and kids who want to feel like young adults, not to mention adults who want to feel like young adults.
The other reason for the show’s incredible success? It’s just really, really, really good. Pen Ward’s vision, helped along with some veterans of other shows, such as Spongebob Squarepants and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, gave the series an impressive pedigree of solid writing, animation, and world-building. There is no other show out there as creative as Adventure Time. Any time you think that the show has nothing more to show you, it shows you something you wouldn’t have even thought anyone would think of, not even in some fever dream.
Adventure Time often throws out the usual formula of children’s television, which is what makes it utterly unique in its field. Most shows aimed generally at kids are rigidly bound to their formula, as to keep things from being too hard to digest. I mean, if you’re a kid, you just want to watch Spider-Man punch The Joker or whatever until the day is saved, right? And then you want to see that again next week, and the week after. Pretty simple, right? Not so with Adventure Time. The show very rarely follows a set structure, and often each episode feels like an independent animated short, unbeholden to any previous or following episode. That can make it difficult to choose which episodes are essential, as the tone and content of various episodes can vary so wildly, but I did my best.
Mostly, with Adventure Time, you just sit back and watch the beauty and madness unfold. If you just do that, the show will not disappoint, and, more often than not, it will offer something more, if you really look closely.
Should you watch the pilot?
Adventure Time’s original iteration was an animated short produced for Nickelodeon’s Random! Cartoons showcase, which produced very little of interest besides Adventure Time, The Bravest Warriors (another Pen Ward series, available on YouTube), and a forgettable Nickelodeon cartoon called Fanboy and Chum-Chum. But the original short of Adventure Time made a huge splash, helped along by the very beginnings of viral video culture.
That said, it’s inessential. Even ignoring the fact that Finn is called Pen in this version (after the short’s creator), the short has very little in common with the rest of the series. The animation is superb, sure, but you don’t need it to get a read on the rest of the series. I say you only need to watch it if you have a vested interest and want to see the show’s humble beginnings.
(You can watch the short on YouTube here.)
Now let us really begin! Oh, and just to let you know: since each episode is only 11 minutes, I decided to include a few extras beyond the usual 5-7. But since they’re quick and easy, I’m sure you can handle it!
The Essential Episodes
Season 2, Episode 1 “It Came from the Nightosphere” (original airdate: October 11, 2010)
Plot: Finn inadvertently summons Marceline’s demonic dad from the Nightosphere (the Adventure Time cosmology’s version of Hell), forcing her to confront some unaddressed daddy issues.
For starters: Yes, you can skip season one. Season one is fun, but it’s very different from what comes later, and doesn’t quite have the same breadth of world-building and emotional resonance. Sure, there’s some evidence of the cataclysm that destroyed the world (like the ruined skyscrapers in the ocean from “Ocean of Fear”), but mostly the first season is just Finn and Jake going on zany adventures. Fun, but not filling.
But “Nightosphere” changed all that. I remember when the show was first on, I watched it now and then, but wasn’t really “into it.” It was a good show, sure, and I liked the art and some of the jokes, but I wasn’t fully hooked. This episode changed my mind, and I haven’t missed an episode since.
Yes, Jake isn’t in the episode at all (although he sort of is, in the end), and it focuses mostly on Marceline. So maybe it seems like a weird starting point, but, like I said: each episode is unique, so it doesn’t matter. This episode hits all the hallmarks of what makes the series great, starting with the song at the beginning of the episode:
A major part of Adventure Time is the lo-fi and deceptively simple music throughout, and the fries song is one of the best in the series. Plus, it shows that as zany and weird as the show can be, it can still deliver in unexpected emotions: does one really expect a tearful moment caused by some selfish fast-food habits? Probably not. But does one usually confront their father, a deathless soul-sucking demon in a business suit with an unsettling number of extra joints on his arms and legs, by throwing “bug milk” on a smiley face drawn on the wall? Probably not.
Some other observations:
- This episode raises a very important question: if Marceline is a vampire, and therefore dead, how does she blush?
- Marceline’s dad, whose real name is Hunson Abadeer, is voiced by Martin Olson, who is the real life father of Olivia Olson, Marceline’s voice actress. Those were probably some fun recording sessions.
- There are a lot of classic quotes in this episode. “That’s what I think of expanding earth theory!”, “Drama bomb!” and “How could I…embarras-save you?” come to mind.
Season 3, Episode 17 “Death in Bloom” (original airdate: February 28, 2011)
Plot: Finn and Jake journey to the Land of the Dead to rescue the soul Princess Bubblegum’s Princess Plant.
“Nightosphere” was very Jake-lite, but this one is all about Finn and Jake bro-ing out. “Finn and Jake bro-ing out” is the central action of the show, essentially, with a few variations here and there, of course. But this is a good intro to one of the general formulas of the show: Finn and Jake go on some sort of adventure to one of the far and seemingly infinite corners of Ooo, running across some weirdos and wacks along the way.
In this case, they visit one of the many planes of the Adventure Time cosmos: the Land of the Dead (which, I should mention, is different from the Nightosphere).
This episode shows off the creativity of the environments the show takes place in. Generally, everything is all brightly colored and lighthearted. But the Land of the Dead is darker and dreary, with strange debris scattered across the landscape (including a few police cars–social commentary or just weird background detritus? You decide). The background art of Adventure Time, the work of the phenomenally talented Ghostshrimp and an excellent staff of colorists and other artists, show off the “indie comics” sensibility that the show has, where things are a little rough around the edges and everything exists in a sort of heightened reality.
The background style, where everything is drawn with the same thick lines and cartoony gradient-free colors, makes everything feel alive, as though Jake could stretch onto one of those floating islands at any moment. Plus, everything always seems grounded in the show’s reality: despite being a cartoon, things are, seemingly, concrete.
Some other observations:
- Death (voiced by Miguel Ferrer) is my favorite deity in the Adventure Time pantheon. Something about his Mennonite farmer-like design, coupled with the horse skull face and the zen garden makes him scarier than he should be.
- The montage of Finn and Jake killing the Princess Plant encapsulates the two of them perfectly: well-meaning, but often totally stupid when it comes to problem-solving.
- Finn and Death’s musical battle is a great twist on the old trope of musicians facing down the Devil in musical competition. Usually you expect both parties to know what they’re doing, not to have one be a 13-year-old kid waving around some sleigh bells.
Season 3, Episode 4 “Hitman” (original airdate: August 1, 2011)
Plot: Ice King hires a hitman to “hit” Finn and Jake.
Ice King.
In a lot of ways, Adventure Time is more about him than any other characters. That’s something that sets Adventure Time apart from a lot of shows, especially kids’ shows: its villain is just as interesting, complex, and sympathetic as its heroes. That might not come through in this episode because it’s mostly goofy antics, but still, it’s a great introduction to the Ice King. We see his predilection to trying to kidnap princesses, his manic psychoses manifesting themselves, and the fact that he’s ultimately well-meaning, but just too crazy to do the right thing.
Also, this episode deals with something majorly important to the show: the importance of rules and agreements. Finn “grounds” Ice King for a month, and Ice King follows the rules, but finds ways to worm around them. Scorcher, the hitman that he hires, is contract-bound and no amount of bribery can turn him from his purpose. Adventure Time was inspired in many ways by Pen Ward’s Dungeons & Dragons sessions when he was younger, so it’s no surprise that the world of Ooo is built on specific rules that must be followed. (See also: Marceline saying “You literally can’t kill my dad, he’s deathless” in “Nightosphere.”)
And on top of all that, this episode has one of the best jokes in the entire series.
Some other observations:
Season 3, Episode 8 “Wizard Battle” (original airdate: August 29, 2011)
Plot: Wizard battle!
Like how “Death in Bloom” showed off the creativity of the environments of Ooo, “Wizard Battle” shows how incredible the character designs in this show are. So, since this episode is generally fluff (and I mean that in the absolute best way possible), I’m going to just link to a page with some production art for the wizards.
Wizards only, fools.
Well, okay, it also bears mentioning that this episode deals a little with Finn’s relationship issues. Since Finn is just a thirteen-year-old kid, he’s full of all those weird and confusing feelings that kids that age go through. Adventure Time tackles those issues in a pretty real way, even if it’s in the context of weird post-apocalyptic magical gladiator combat with sentient rocks and tornado cyclopses and the like. Since the prize of wizard battle is a kiss from Princess Bubblegum (“Is it an open-mouthed kiss?”), Finn decides he needs to win. But he doesn’t want to admit that it’s because he likes her. (And besides, PB is an ancient immortal bubblegum creature, so the age difference is a little too great.) Does he even like her? What does it mean to like someone? Will they like you back? Are you willing to break the sanctity of wizard battle for them? Finn has to grapple with those issues, forcing him to use “the most shameful of all magicks: a power shriek.”
Some other observations:
- Abracadaniel (pictured above, and voiced by Steve Little) is one of my favorite side characters in the show. “Well, I’m going back into my cave to wait for someone to kill me.”
- Once again, I love the designs of the various wizards. Not much of the boring pointy hats and beards and robes here.
Season 3, Episode 25 “Dad’s Dungeon” (original airdate: February 6, 2012)
Plot: Finn and Jake find a tape recorded by Joshua, Finn and Jake’s (adoptive and biological, respectively) father, which leads them to a dungeon which he built to test Finn.
The dungeon crawl! Wouldn’t be a fantasy show without a couple of them. “Dad’s Dungeon,” I think, is the best. It’s got it all! Traps, monsters, loot, emotional catharsis…the works.
But the main draw of this episode is a scene towards the middle, where one of the traps in the dungeon takes an unexpectedly horrific turn:
Here we have two demonic “fruit babes” (as Finn calls them) eating the third one after she was transformed into a giant apple. The contrast between the soft warm colors and the rotten browns in this scene makes it pretty terrifying by the standards of any show, let alone a kids’ show. That’s some Junji Ito-level body horror, there.
But then, of course, Jake defeats the demons by farting on them:
This whole sequence goes to show how well the show can juggle various different tones without feeling like it’s being pulled in too many directions. It goes from pure horror to juvenile humor without a second thought, while also retaining some emotional resonance, considering as well that Finn is having a real heart to heart with Jake about how Joshua didn’t think he was tough. While Finn says that his “whole body is a callus,” does that really make him tough? Or is there more to it than that? That’s a central question to the show.
Some other observations:
- That monster at the end of the episode is pretty freaky as well. Not as bad as the fruit babes, but he’s up there.
- Are hot dog and hamburger golems included in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual?
Season 4, Episode 10 “Goliad” (original airdate: June 4, 2012)
Plot: Princess Bubblegum genetically engineers a psychic sphinx-like creature to rule the Candy Kingdom in case of her death.
There’s another major character in Adventure Time that we haven’t really touched on yet: Princess Bubblegum. Described by her voice actress, Hynden Walch, as a “benevolent fascist,” she is one of the most interesting and nuanced characters in the series, and this episode really shows how she goes from being simply the benevolent ruler of the Candy Kingdom to an unscrupulous mad scientist without a great moral compass, for whom science trumps any sense of morality or good and evil. While early in the show she was more “princess-like,” simply being there to send Finn and Jake on adventures and be an on-and-off love interest for Finn, as the series progressed, she became so much more than that.
This episode also shines a light on one of the major themes in the series: the balance between appearance and reality. Often in Adventure Time, things that look cute turn out to be horrifying, and vice versa. Marceline and her dad, despite being “evil,” ultimately aren’t so bad, and the Ice King is a creep but also somewhat lovable; on the other hand, Peppermint Butler (who we met in “Death in Bloom”) is secretly demonic. Meanwhile, Goliad, an adorable pink blob, uses her psychic powers towards pretty horrible ends, and Princess Bubblegum, Goliad’s creator, isn’t much better, though she may have the Candy Kingdom’s best interests at heart. The show often asks if Finn and Jake’s black and white “alignment“-based view of the world the right way to approach their problems, here more explicitly than usual:
FINN: You can’t just control people or whatever! It’s messed up!
GOLIAD: No, Finn. This way’s good. Everyone did what I wanted: really fast, no mistakes, calm like you said. This definitely is the way to lead.
FINN: Uh…no, no…Wait, is that true? Hmm.
Like with “Dad’s Dungeon,” there’s a lot of, in the parlance of the internet, “nightmare fuel” in this episode. Episodes like this make you question who exactly the show is aimed at: do kids really want to grapple with horrifying death and complex morality and things like that? Maybe they just want to be freaked out sometimes. And then when they get a little older, they’ll start to get really freaked out.
Some other observations:
- PB: “I’m not gonna live forever, Finn…I would if I could.” A scary thought.
- I wonder how much therapy Goliad’s voice actress (Wendy Linehan) will need in a couple of years.
Season 4, Episode 25 “I Remember You”/Season 5, Episode 14 “Simon and Marcy” (original airdates: October 15, 2012 and March 25, 2013)
Plot: In “I Remember You,” Marceline and Ice King play some music together and reminisce on their past; in “Simon and Marcy,” a young Marceline and pre-insanity Ice King struggle to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland 1000 years ago.
These two episodes act like a two-parter, so I’m going to tackle them both at once. I’d say watch one right after the other, and you’ll sort of see how they thematically line up.
Like I’ve mentioned before, the Land of Ooo is decidedly post-apocalyptic. Early in the series, it was only vague hints that seemed more like stylistic choices than world-building, and it seemed like they had swords and sorcery next to broken computers and unexploded nuclear bombs simply because it was cool.
But there’s much more to it than that. These two episodes tear away the bright colors and the wacky situations and get to the nitty-gritty of post-apocalypse. Sure, now, there’s a Candy Kingdom and fun times to be had in the Land of Ooo, but a thousand years ago, there was just a little girl and a lonely man who was slowly losing his mind trying to scavenge some semblance of a life, through chicken soup, stuffed monkeys, and forgotten TV show theme songs.
Simon singing the Cheers theme once again raises the question of who this show is made for. How many kids are going to get that reference? Probably not many.
Speaking of songs, the songs in “I Remember You” are probably the best in the series, and that’s saying something, considering how great all the songs in the show are. And Ice King is once again shown as somewhat sympathetic, but also still a creep. But now we know why he’s a creep, and we start to sympathize with weirdos and creeps and villains and vampires.
Some other observations:
- “Simon and Marcy” creates a better post-apocalypse than five seasons of The Walking Dead in about fifteen minutes.
- Those radioactive mutants remind me an awful lot of Jake. Probably not a coincidence.
- Once again, the weirdness of Adventure Time’s morals are on display, when Simon throws a chair through a window and immediately follows it up by saying “Vandalism is wrong, Marcy.”
Season 5, Episode 28 “Be More” (original airdate: July 22, 2013)
Plot: BMO (Niki Yang) needs a system reset and goes to the MO factory where he was born to get it.
This one is my favorite episode. That’s the main reason why I’m including it. But aside from that, we haven’t talked much about BMO , who is definitely a fan favorite, and for very good reason. BMO has some of the best line deliveries in the show and is just generally adorable. So why not dedicate an episode to him (or her, seeing as the creators have labeled BMO as genderfluid)?
Also, it is pretty different from the formula of some other episodes. Well, okay, it is and it isn’t: it’s another “Finn and Jake go on an adventure to some exotic locale in Ooo” episode, but for some reason it feels different. I think it’s something to do with the character of the MO factory itself, a more obvious example of the disrepaired state the world is in than the show usually offers:
DMO (voiced by Aziz Ansari): We are now passing over the famous factory floor […] Behold! The gleaming machinery! Teeming, wild with the throes of real creation. From this unlikely chaos arises every shining new MO.
JAKE: But…nothing’s moving down there! It’s all shut down. What happened to this place?
What happened, indeed. But in this episode we also see what has survived from the old world, and it’s one of the most beautiful shots in the whole series, thanks to the music and the colors and the composition:
I don’t know why, but seeing the withered old creator of the MOs (voiced by Chuck McCann) slumped over at a workbench for the past thousand years is like the ultimate statement on art. No matter what happens to you (and in Moe’s case, it’s a thousand years of being kept alive by his creations), what you’ve done will survive. And that’s what matters. And you can’t just keep your creations below the surface, you have to send them out into the world:
MOE: BMO’s one of a kind […] I sent BMO off into the world alone, hoping to find a family of his own […] I must’ve built like a million MOs, but BMO is very very special […] You see, I built BMO to be more.
And isn’t that what every artist does? Try a million times before creating that one thing that becomes this whole other thing that you never would have thought it could be. And that’s what Adventure Time is. From the humble beginnings of the brilliant imagination of Pen Ward, released into a world full of fans, Adventure Time has become a touchstone. And maybe in a thousand years, after we’ve annihilated ourselves in a Great Mushroom War, they’ll find some tapes of it, and it will be fresh and new all over again.
Some other observations:
- Another show that I’ve written about with a great cameo by Paul F. Tompkins! “You know the world these days. All goofs.”
- Do computers get off on deleting non-essential files? Because BMO sure seems to enjoy it.
Further viewing:
Season 6, Episode 7 “Food Chain”: Not essential, but worth watching. Once in a while the show brings in guest animators. This one is directed by Masaaki Yuasa, director of the brilliantly bizarre film Mind Game (coming to Netflix soon!) and a couple of especially mind-bending episodes of Space Dandy (a show which also comes highly recommended). The animation is fantastic, and it also has another one of the show’s best musical moments.
The Bravest Warriors: Another show created by Pen Ward that, sadly, never made it to TV. But thankfully that means it’s all available for free on YouTube! I haven’t watched much of it, but it has similar sensibilities to Adventure Time but in a more straightforward sci-fi setting (I think). And each episode is only about 5-6 minutes, so you can watch them all in a couple of hours.
Prison Pit: Not “viewing,” per se, but instead reading. Prison Pit is an indie comic series created by Johnny Ryan that, stylistically, at least, has some similarities to Adventure Time. I’ve always thought of Adventure Time as “Prison Pit for kids” (or Prison Pit as “Adventure Time for somewhat disturbed adults”), especially episodes like “Wizard Battle.” It has the same bizarre character design and sketchy but concrete backgrounds, with similar indie-weird sensibilities. Be warned that it’s incredibly vulgar (the main character’s name is “Cannibal Fuckface,” to give you an idea), incredibly violent, and occasionally very disturbing. There’s also a 15-minute animated adaptation of the first book, if that’s more your speed.
Oh, and also, if you’re really interested in Adventure Time and animation in general, the book The Art of Ooo is really great and has a lot of cool insights into the show and the industry.
Thanks for reading! Tune in next time for an examination of our good friend Alan Partridge. Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!
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