City of Thieves

Air Date: May 24, 2010 | Written and Storyboarded by Bert Youn & Sean Jimenez

Reviewed by AI-Generated (dis)Content

I’m going to skip a story recap as you’ve probably seen the episode – if not, then that makes this spoiler free!  (*”not legally spoiler free,” according to my lawyers)

“City of Thieves” was Adventure Time’s lucky thirteenth episode, casting Finn as Peter Pan against the city of selfish adult Captain Hooks – “City of Adulthood” if you will, as our young boastful Holden Caulfield who knows he’s better than anyone else in this city of phonies follows his hubris into a literal den of thieves and to his own corruption, despite Hag’s warning.  She warned Finn and Jake that they will become part of the city if they enter it, and everyone Finn interacts with in this story is indeed an adult of one form or another, and also selfish because what else is thievery than selfishness?  As a metaphor, turtles are much like adults aren’t they, both slow and dull to play with, and, being old, also closer to death.  

The oldest adult here is the Thief King, who’s also the most successful (i.e. selfish) adult, as well as dead.  The next oldest adult, Hag, doesn’t steal anything (other than Finn’s dignity later), but seems to intentionally set Finn on the path to his downfall, so as a grown up she’s also clearly a “bad adult.”  Jake is also older than Finn, so it makes sense that he corrupts sooner.  Penny may be younger than Finn, but both her duplicitousness at the beginning of the story and rejecting her redemption at the end shows us that she’s obviously “grown up too fast.”  Even that little skull-faced baby-thief who stole the ruby from that one guy’s tooth is already facially marked for death!  

What do these adults even gain from stealing?  The stolen and hoarded riches are obviously meaningless to the now-dead Thief King, and Jake’s new boots are impractical, restricting him to laboriously walking up all those stairs instead of stretching up them as he usually would.  Everything stolen gets immediately re-stolen by someone else, it’s all just selfish grasping for its own sake.   

The story’s visual metaphor for stealing/selfishness is physical dirtiness: Penny’s already dirty in her first close-up, Jake gets dirty when Finn tackles him to stop him from stealing those “super babe style boots,” and Finn’s dirty after his literal fall from grace into the tower while on his way to steal from the Thief King.  Hag may have tricked him into that folly, but Finn later blames Penny for stealing his innocence.  Jake also denies responsibility for his theft and blames the city.  So they’re hiding their corruption to trick others, stumbling into corruption through hubris and good intentions, and hypocritically giving in to corruption they sure sound like selfish adults don’t they?

But… after Finn sees himself reflected in the tower’s force field and is horrified to find he’s also corrupted, that same hubris based upon his need to be the hero remains and provides him the path to redemption.  He doesn’t just give into pointless theft like everyone else, he resourcefully turns thievery into the means to gather the tools to redeem Penny by literally cleansing her of dirt (as a form of revenge mind you, which is a funny thought), which in turn accidentally redeems both himself and Jake.  We know he’s been redeemed because Penny easily takes advantage of his naivety again.  Penny just remains a citizen of the city of thieves, while Finn probably resumes his directionless fun in the woods without having learned any real lesson, but hey, he’s still just a kid.

Ha ha! Nah dude, I’m yanking your chain, this is just a really fun 11 minute cartoon.  

I mean, how many other cartoons can you easily spin that amount of plausible guff about?  That opening scene of Finn and Jake faffing about in the woods is pretty telling, as well as demonstrating Finn and Jake’s easy friendship, telling us that their being far enough from home to find a city they’ve never seen before, and even foreshadowing Finn’s “fall from grace” – which he’ll happily bounce right back from, despite his brief trembling-lips histrionics. All that in thirty seconds.  If you only have 11 minutes to tell a story, you’re not going to waste a full 30 seconds on an unimportant scene right? 

And take a look at Hag (I like think of her as “the Wood Witch” seeing as how she appears by morphing out of some nearby wood): she’s very much like the three witches in Macbeth who show up to prophesize, thus beginning the descent into chaos; unlike those witches, she only shows up once more for a smug “I told you so” (great line reading from Maria Bamford there), and gets tossed out of the scene and story with a loud crash like a bit of Warner Bros. slapstick.  How many cartoons can competently steal (ha ha!) something from Shakespeare, or just randomly hit the same nail on the head the way he did?    

This episode is also loaded with the show’s usual visual and silly invention with all the city denizens like that overly dramatic bathing horse (that bit always makes me laugh), and most importantly, teaches us that saying the word “pancake” three times will change you into a cat. 

Adventure Time is at its best as a madly-spinning whirligig tossing off great characters and ideas one after another, “no time to stop on this one, we’ve got five to show you in the next three minutes!”  And how isn’t that enough for a show?  Can’t it just be enough to have a fun eleven minutes, isn’t that what that opening scene was all about?  We don’t need to know why Bugs Bunny isn’t singing at the opera anymore, a multi-episode arc about Scooby Doo’s backstory, or to find out that Spider-Man’s dead parents were secretly spies… or at least we don’t when the storytelling can find anything better to do than just doubling back on its own tracks.  Such self-referential lore hasn’t yet begun to dilute Adventure Time’s creativity, and it’s glorious just the way it is, and continued to be for several seasons.  Let kids enjoy being kids before they grow up.  “We can wander through the forest, and do so as we please.”

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The Witch’s Garden

Air Date: June 7, 2010 | Written and Storyboarded by Kent Osborne, Niki Yang, & Adam Muto | Reviewed by Mrs Queequeg

Our story opens with Finn and Jake following a frog carrying a crown (see: New Characters tab.) It walks into a gated garden and Jake steps into the middle with Finn on his back. The garden is made up of donut bushes. A witch comes out and teleports the boys away from the bush (‘Razzamafoo’ makes a return) and yells at Jake for eating a donut. Jake blows her off and she strips him of his magical powers, giving him a man-baby body.

“Listen, Mrs Witch”

“I never married!”

Flaradulcina 1I had no idea the witch had a name. It’s in Adventure Time: The Enchiridion & Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook will only change Jake back if he apologizes and means it, because she can tell the difference. Finn and Jake are huffy that she’s overreacted and refuse. Back at the tree house, they brainstorm how to fix Jake on their own.

According to Jake’s memory, he bathed in a magic mud puddle as a pupster. The effort of remembering tires Jake out, making him awkward and sweaty. Finn’s ready to do whatever it takes to restore Jake’s powers, but Jake’s even lazier than usual.

“That’s nuts, man. You got any idea of how many there are in the Land of Ooo? Four? Maybe even five?”

Jake the magic-less dog

Jake, who was under the impression that running was some sort of “leg magic,” manages an awkward waddle for a little bit before declaring running to be evil, which is a fair cop. Finn gives Jake a piggyback ride to a river of junk. Finn’s upbeat and cheerful, while Jake meets his subconscious and get an adorable hat. The puddle is a bust, and Jake decides that he’s just a regular dog now.

Finn gets hit on by the beautiful mermaid of the river, and having learned nothing from his prior encounter, rebuffs her rudely, causing her to attack them. Jake decides he wants a belly rub while Finn is taken to the mermaid’s nest to feed her young. Jake can’t save Finn as a regular dog and is finally motivated to apologize to the witch.

Flaradulcina rejects the apology because he took too long, adding additional terms: a series of humiliating tasks. Jake’s subconscious gets roped in after he appears in her garden. Even with Finn’s life in peril, Jake protests repeating the dance so that the witch can record it on a camcorder, for her newsletter. His subconscious dies after being separated from Jake’s original self for too long, causing Jake to break down.

Flaradulcia senses victory, and after taking a few moments to gloat, returns Jake’s powers to him. In return, Jake knocks her cane out of her hands, eats a donut, and runs off with his subconscious, denying that he learned any lesson.

Jake returns to the nest, beating up the mermaid and scaring her chicks. He tells Finn that “he would do anything for Finn, but denies that he apologized to the witch.

Thoughts: We’ve got a prime Jake episode. I said last time that I love when his look is changed, and him as a shaved humanoid dog in tighty-whities delivers. It’s such a silly look and Jake dancing with his subconscious in this form is just *chef’s kiss* Everything about Jake’s physicality in this episode cracks me up. He’s so ungraceful. It took me so long to get through this episode because I kept pausing to laugh and write down my favorite things.

The boys do not come off well in this one. They refuse to admit fault, and while the witch overreacted by stripping Jake of his powers, I still side with her because of their consistent disrespect. Jake immediately bottoms out, showcasing his laziness at its worst. Finn gets increasingly frustrated with Jake’s attitude. The show does well to balance Jake’s behaviour with the physical comedy. Flaradulcina has mood swings from the get-go, which a more experienced adventurer would know to be cautious of, knowing to not escalate the situation. Finn’s too young, and Jake is too much of a bad role model, as we’ve previously seen. Jake’s even accidentally stealing, like he did in the City of Thieves.

New Characters: Crown Frog, The Witch (Marie Bamford), and Gary, the Mermaid Queen (Kerri Kinney)

Quotes & Notes:

This episode contains of my favorite passages, which I quote out of context all the time:

I never married!

I don’t know why, but it makes me laugh every time. Maybe because I’m constantly clarifying that I use ‘Ms’ not ‘Mrs’ at work. You don’t know if I’m married!

Flaradulcina finds an imposter in her donut bush and transforms it into a humanoid bagel with legs

Finn swimming the river of trash is fantastic animation

Jake, looking at his nipples: What gives? I used to have like 8 more of these

Spells:

• Razzamafoo
• Magicus no moricus
• Go backicus from whence you camicus

“Aw, now you’re just making these up”