Original airdate: May 3, 2010

Director: Larry Leichliter

Written and storyboarded by: Pen Ward and Kent Osborne

My Two Favorite People brings some focus to Jake, specifically his relationships with both Lady and Finn. We open with Finn and Jake battling Science Cat and Sword Shark. Jake enjoys the fight and wonders why he’s never seen them before. Finn responds that they come out every day at 4:00, which is when Jake meets Lady Rainicorn.

Jake laments that when he spends time with Lady, he misses out on time with Finn. And when he spends time with Finn, he misses out on time with Lady. Shelby the worm (debuting here! Not a major character, but usually a delight) suggests that Jake can hang out with both of them at the same time.

After some initial challenges due to the fact that Lady speaks Korean, this ultimately works out all too well. After Jake, Lady, and Finn retrieve a universal translator from a lake guarded by evil Lake Knights, Finn and Lady become best of friends. But that ultimately makes Jake jealous, so he goes through his contacts and finds the perfect person to call: Tiffany.

Finn calls Jake out on this, saying he’s making Lady jealous. Jake’s response is that he’s trying to make both of them jealous. Why would Finn be jealous of Tiffany?

Because Tiffany is a boy! And it works. Finn flies into a rage and attacks Tiffany, while Lady and Jake make up and Jake admits he was being stupid and says they should never be stupid again. The episode ends with all three sharing a group hug, while Finn declaring that they should always be stupid – forever!

While Jake often takes on the older brother role for Finn, and can be the more chill, go with the flow person in their dynamic, sometimes his own foibles come into the spotlight. Jake can be petty and emotional himself, and this episode highlights these tendencies – while also highlighting his love and dedication to both Finn and Lady. 

Although the episode is, on its face, about juggling friends, the subtext is unmistakably meant to evoke cheating in romantic relationships. Jake’s jealousy of Finn and Lady feels like a spurned ex, and of course we are initially meant to think that Tiffany is an ex-girlfriend of his. The title card also amplifies this, by placing the hearts around Finn and Rainicorn.

But even when you approach the episode at face value, it’s a relatable. Who among us hasn’t at some point or another been stuck trying to juggle friends from different spheres and find time for both? Or perhaps been jealous as friends get close and hang out without you? Or is this one of those things where lots of people handle it with no problem and I’m just hella awkward? Maybe don’t answer that.

Nine episodes into the series, it is laying more foundation that the show will draw from as it goes on: Jake’s relationship with Lady, Jake’s past, and some of his own insecurities. And it is also the first episode in the series to be nominated for an Emmy! It was put up for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program, a category it would not win until season 6 with Jake the Brick. This isn’t my favorite episode of the season, but maybe there’s something I’m not seeing in it.

Lady in Translation:

• Lady’s response to Finn’s “Knock knock” joke about diarrhea: “Oh, I got it too. What was that? It hardly qualifies as a joke.” 
• Lady’s own “joke”, once translated, isn’t actually a joke. Instead she talks about the time she and Jake ran naked through a cabbage patch.

Connections to future episodes (click to expand – spoiler alert!)

• Jake and Lady’s relationship will continue throughout the show. Ultimately, they’ll have five children together!
• Tiffany will make several more appearances, as an ongoing foil to both Finn and Jake
• We’ll also meet most of the names in Jake’s contact list at some point, as part of his criminal past or his Card Wars obsession
• The universal translator will appear again when we meet Lady’s parents – and, most recently, in the Fionna and Cake spinoff

Memories of Boom Boom Mountain

Original airdate: May 3, 2010

Director: Larry Leichliter

Written and storyboarded by: Bert Youn and Sean Jimenez

Memories of Boom Boom Mountain is, in my opinion, the quintessential Adventure Time episode. It has a little bit of everything: a silly plot, a surprising amount of heart, an an abrupt ending that makes you go “wait what?” before laughing out loud.

The episode opens with Finn hanging out with some folks roughhousing when he overhears someone crying. Finn explains to the roughhousers that when he was a baby, he made a “boom boom” on a leaf, and then fell into it. Despite his cries, no one came to his aid. And because of that, Finn vowed that he would always help someone in need, no matter what.

Finn investigates the source of the crying to find that it’s a living mountain (whose tears are boulders, naturally) who is incredibly upset at all the roughhousing going on. When initial efforts to stop the roughhousing fail, Finn suggests that they just turn the mountain around – a perfectly sensible approach. But that is met with a protest by a second living mountain behind the first one, not wanting to lose her view of the first mountain’s gorgeous back. 

While Finn frantically tries to figure out a solution, he receives a cascade of additional requests for help, sending him to a near breakdown. “Everyone wants different things! And some of them want things that’s exactly the stuff others don’t want!”

Amid flashbacks to his boom boom embarrassment, Finn figures out a way to solve everyone’s problems: The roughhousers roughhouse to work a device that swats flies away from a fish; those flies fly into the ears of a coal man to give him the silence he wants; the coal man throws some coals on some levers that provide a toad his coveted plum and some blue creatures a triangle; which makes some mushrooms excited enough to dance; which release some pollen from nearby flowers to help a cactus creature grow its babies, which allow a dragon with an itchy butt to scratch itself; which excites it enough to breathe fire into a pond warming up a cold ice cube that wants to melt; which causes steam that a naked wizard to pluck for some covering (… of his head); and the steam also covers the mountain’s view so that the roughhousers can roughhouse and the mountain can no longer see it; which avoids the need to rotate the mountain and maintaining the second mountain’s view of the first’s back. Everyone is happy! 

… Except for Jake, who interrupts the celebration by exclaiming that now he has a problem of his own. “This dolphin fell in love with me.” Finn then delivers one of the all time great quotes from the series, “That’s the opposite of a problem!” and we smash cut to Finn and Jake riding the dolphin while he calls out “Adventure time!” and the episode ends.

In terms of continuity, this episode introduces us to Finn and Jake’s parents: Joshua and Margaret. In the final boom boom flashback, the two come across Finn crying in the forest. Margaret shows Finn the kindness he needs, and despite some initial disgust from Joshua (“You just kissed a boom boom baby, so don’t expect any more sugar from me sweetheart, at least not until you wash those lips”), the two take in Finn and raise him alongside Jake. 

Finn will go through a lot over the course of the show. He’ll experience love and heartbreak. He’ll reckon with who he is and where he comes from. His growth over the series is remarkable, but I think this episode illustrates a core tenet of his character that won’t change: Finn just fundamentally wants to help people. Sometimes he doesn’t think through a plan carefully, and sometimes he makes things worse before he makes them better (or sometimes just makes them worse). But ultimately he is a good hearted kid who is always going to try to help. 

So to me, this episode is some of the best of what early Adventure Time has to offer. It’s a great blend of sillness and character work. Does it hit the same high emotional beats that later episodes can? Of course not. But it lets us know a little more about Finn, and delivers some great laughs while doing so.

Connections to future episodes (click to expand – spoiler alert!)

• Although Joshua and Margaret have passed away by time the series begins, things they did during their life will affect Finn and Jake in later episodes such as Dad’s Dungeon and Joshua and Margaret Investigations. 
• This episode glosses over why exactly baby Finn is alone in the forest. The story of what happened to Finn’s parents, and how he wound up all alone, will be explored in the Islands miniseries
• The roughhousers will appear again a couple of times, and their village will be destroyed in It Came from the Nightosphere. Their village will ultimately become the site of Flame Princess’s house.