Adventure Time Recap: “Betty” – Simon’s Return and Strength in Nostalgia

Check out my full recap here!

“This marks the third episode in which Hambo takes centerstage, or more specifically, the sentimentality behind Hambo which everyone (Ash the ass, Maja the Sky Witch, and now Simon) wants to harness for their own ends. Which leads one to wonder: what’s the big deal, what’s the mojo of sentimentality that makes it a currency of power, as an ingredient for potent wiz-biz, even as fuel for time-bending apparati?  It’s a piece of symbolism that cuts to the core of what Adventure Time is all about: a conception of nostalgia, sentimentality, and childhood memories as a foundation of personal strength, but also the danger of sentimentality’s perversion …”

Adventure Time Recap: “Rattleballs”

Banana guards enjoying their new minimalist furniture made from dead robots.

Of course, Finn misses the point about pointless devotion and unfettered zeal entirely, choosing instead to obey an oath to PB that exists mostly in his head. He turns Rattleballs in to PB, confident that they’ll be able to talk it out, because PB was so good at talking it out with James and having everyone in on her ruthlessly efficient plans . . .

. . . Hence, we get to see more of the dangerous game that the Princess has set up for herself–absolute authority is convenient as sliced bread, but life is never that simple, and rarely tolerates such straight lines. At this point, I see her belief in authority and control as a result of witnessing the Mushroom War, surviving it, and determining to build a society in which it cannot be repeated.

Read my full recap here!

Adventure Time Recap: “Blade of Grass”

Pillow Vendor!

Grass sword, how can I sing your praises properly? You ring like a bell when swung, you have a lawnmower mode, and you slice the bearer’s image into the target, which is all nice and dandy until you attached yourself to Finn’s wrist. To his wrist. The same wrist that he was missing in the Pillow world . . .

With the breaking of the demon bloodsword, Finn is moving out of the shadow of his foster-father Joshua, a complicated relationship explored back in “Joshua’s Dungeon” when Finn’s crybaby-ness was on trial. The discovery of the grass blade is the next step in Finn’s process of individuation, in becoming his own hero instead of a copy of his father.

Read my full recap here, and lemme know whatcha think.

Adventure Time Recap: “Apple Wedding”

Ohh, “around for us!” I thought you said “walk to the zoo and back.

BOLOGNA FACTORY BOLOGNA FACTORY

Poor Finn . . . Don’t you know? Every party. . . is mah parteh.

. . . Adventure Time does a better job than most shows of exposing the superficialities coating our idea of ‘wedding.’ It’s a maelstrom of crap not only on emotional spheres, but on civic ones as well, as we’re all too familiar with nowadays. Who gets to point and say ‘they’re married’ and have it be true? Who’s the center of attention? Is it wrong that their love accentuates my loneliness? Egos cast long shadows, and one couple’s sunshine day is an emotional eclipse for the un-coupled. Hence Tree Trunk’s trio of exes, and especially Wyatt, my god . . . run faster, BMO . . .

Read the full recap here!

Adventure Time Recap: “The Pit”

Highlights!

• 
  “Boo-YEAH! How does it feel that I’ve juiced your body and turned your blood into man-dazzle?”

• 

• Let’s . . . just never discuss this part ever.

• 
  Try as I might, the only thing I could make out was: “Heeey Lady . . . You asked me to make you a video [something something] won’t change his doggy ways . . .”

• 
  THE RETURN OF “CHECK PLEASE,” it’s the return of “check please” god yes yes ugh ugh yesssss . . . 

• 
  Jay T. Doggzone, workin’ his lady magics.

But Joshua wasn’t the hopelessly-outdated dad – he was a man’s man, from a magical time with soda jerks and a day’s pay for a day’s work. Joshua was an adventurer before Finn and Jake could make boom-boom by themselves; he was mapping dungeons and organizing them by his own Dewey Decimal system; he was summoning demons, imprisoning them, and making off with their loot (with spare time to make wee-wee), all with the same craftsmanship you’d see in your own dad when he’s, I don’t know, building a deck, or changing a tire or something.

Read my full recap here!

Adventure Time Recap: “Play Date”

Highlights!

• Unexplained pterodactyl ally
  
• Those who’ve never had roommates will never understand . . .
  
• Abracadaniel can now add floramancy to his assuredly voluminous spellbook
  
• “That’s just a binklemeyer.”
  
• “C’mon best friend, let us not betray Finn. Let’s fight Kee Oth ourselves.”
  

For much of the series, Ice King’s decrepit emotional state was the true archvillain of the show because it was unassailable, and devastating to behold. He’s a creepy, lecherous old man with skinny eel-like legs, pathogenic beard-dandruff, and an unbearably sad backstory that he can’t even recall. And the absolute worst of it is that he isn’t a villain at all . . .

The Ice King/Abracadaniel duo, while hilarious, is also a wildfire waiting to start – neither has ever had a source of unconditional bro-rapport, and now that they do, there’s no telling what can happen. Ice King might even start snatching princesses again, except with a phallus-shaped sidekick this time around . . .

Read the rest of my recap here!