What is Life? | Aired: June 14, 2010 | Reviewed by Josephus Brown
I’m so excited I get to cover an episode that introduces such a vital and interesting character with as many layers as this one. Adventure Time builds up a huge cast over its runtime, and a lot of these early episodes work as an introduction to different people- though the show keeps building its world through all the seasons, we don’t get as many important character introductions as we get in these first couple seasons. I didn’t even request this one specifically, but boy am I glad it gets to be me who introduces…
Wenk
That’s right! This episode is the introduction of everyone’s favorite cuddly penguin (SPOILER footnote)1And incomprehensible eldritch horror, Gunter!
What?
Oh, yeah.
“That’s right. I’m a NEPTR guy!”
This one opens with Finn playing what looks like Galaga or Space Invaders or something on BMO, as Jake enters with a garbage bag full of butter, which he hurls at Finn.
Finn vows revenge but can’t come up with a better prank than just hitting someone with a big garbage bag full of butter (Which, according to my rough calculations, assuming it’s one of those big 35 gallon lawn and leaf bags, should be around 280 pounds of butter), and he goes to a book for inspiration.
A picture of a pie gives him an idea to make a never ending pie throwing robot to throw pies at Jake forever, which would be a pretty funny prank but does seem like an escalation from 280 pounds of butter.
He goes into their junk heap- in a fit of peak 12 year old boy-ness- and slaps a bunch of spare wires and a circuit board on what looks like a toaster oven with tank treads and then is upset when it’s not immediately a robot.
He throws it in a fit of anger and sadness and it gets struck by lightning and comes to life, identifying itself as NEPTR, which stands for Never Ending Pie Throwing Robot.
“Perfect! You’re exactly the kind of robot I was trying to make.”
This next bit is one of those moments that made me feel like this show was doing more than being a cute kids’ show, because NEPTR’s little speech is amazing.
“My pie hucking appendage… Is malfunctioning. And my oven lamp… Is cold. And my tank treads do not roll! They only do skids! WHY CREATOR?! Does it please you to watch me struggle?!”
Finn gives NEPTR a real cute little motivational speech and vows to get him working with some more lightning. I love this show’s moon logic, honestly. So Finn takes NEPTR to the Ice Kingdom to steal some of the Ice King’s ice lightning.
They float in on some anthropomorphic balloons who are my favorite part of this episode, and they sneak into the Ice King’s place, giving us another little glance of Ice King’s sad day to day life as he flails at a video game and criticizes Gunter’s weight.
Like 90% sure that’s meant to be a porno mag
Finn and NEPTR evade him with great stealth until they slip off an icicle and skid down some ice stairs, setting off alarms and getting chased by an ice bull that upsettingly is full of actual organs.
Finn skids up the wall and the bull crashes into the door to Ice King’s lightning storage before shattering into a pile of ice and internal organs. Finn and NEPTR go for some lightning only to be followed in by the IK with a giant laser-wielding iceapede. In the fracas Ice King sees NEPTR, shouts “An innocent bystander!”, and zaps him, leading to this great moment:
After this NEPTR is fully functional and destroys the iceapede with pies that are boysenberry and poison, and when he explains this he chuckles creepily and Finn wonders if something is wrong.
Back at the treehouse, as the balloons drop him off, the show has one of my favorite jokes:
Finn, to the balloons: “Your blood oath is fulfilled!”
The balloons: “Yay! To the mesosphere! Finally, we can die!”
Suddenly NEPTR says he wants to kidnap princesses, and then the Ice King ambushes them and addresses NEPTR as his son, saying that the lightning infused him with his “private particles”. This show, just dancing wildly right up to the line all the time.
The Ice King takes NEPTR (and Finn, who grabs ahold of the Ice King’s foot) into his “Imagination Zone”, and shows him how many beautiful princesses he can kidnap, as well as how terrible his life would be with Finn and Jake.
This episode also introduces like a good dozen of these princesses, almost all of whom show back up again. Though Muscle Princess’s model gets redrawn.
Back in reality, Ice King forces NEPTR to choose whether he wants to kidnap princesses or pull pranks, and after a fakeout he goes with Finn and pastes the IK in the face with a pie. I like that even though he wants to live with Finn he still addresses addresses the IK as his father. As the sound of Jake having pies catapulted into his face forever fades into the background, we get a close up of the Ice King, a single tear on his cheek, and we see that he’s dreaming of happily sitting with NEPTR and watching the sun set as NEPTR says he loves him.
So I actually think NEPTR (N.E.P.T.R.? I’m not typing that a bunch of times, he’s lucky he gets capitalized) is a pretty adorable character, even though he vanishes from the show for like the next three seasons. And this episode, in particular, is one of those that made me start to think this show had a lot more going on under the hood than just being clever and goofy.
First off, this episode is definitely the show firing on all cylinders. It’s rapid-fire jokes right up till the rug gets pulled out from you at the end, just real clever writing start to finish. I could quote almost this whole episode for “favorite lines”.
But more importantly, it pretty clearly has some adult sensibilities at it’s core here. NEPTR pointing out that Finn is basically being a bad guy here breaking into the Ice King’s home. The line from the balloons implying that they’re somehow cursed and their lives are agony and they only crave death. And, most of all, the way it pretty unflinchingly has the Ice King just be pathetic, but in the proper dramatic sense of the term of “invoking pathos”. Like he’s just a sad, lonely dude here, but he’s also still a huge jerk.
“See, Gunter, that’s what I’d say if I had a wife.”
“An alarm! Maybe it’s a princess like in one of my poems.”
“Finn?! Why can’t you ever be a princess?!”
And then of course the fact that the show has the courage to end on the character who is ostensibly the show’s main villain at this point crying and thinking of how all he wants is to be with his “son”.
SPOILER
Of course, he’s still the Ice King, and eventually in the Mystery Dungeon episode it’s revealed he’s completely forgotten about NEPTR. NEPTR even gives him grief about it, but still clearly loves him.
The whipcrack writing, the bizarre yet perfectly sensible non-logic of the plot, the weird veers into darkness out of nowhere, the weird, downbeat ending that just floored me the first time I saw it. I know it wasn’t the first episode of Adventure Time I saw, but it’s definitely the first episode I *remember*.
STRAY THOUGHTS:
Again, so many good lines:
“Book! Rewind!”
“I’ll love you forever, Creator.”
“I know you will.”
“… I got his wallet.”
“Sneaking…”
“Shh!”
“SNEAKING!!”
“Shh, NEPTR!”
“SNEAKING!!!”
“He could wake up from his nap at any second!”
Cut to Jake: “I could wake up at any second!! Nah, I’m still asleep.”
“Nah, that wasn’t my plan. We got lucky.”
“Crush him! Crush him like you almost crushed me!”
“Come to Poppy, son. I won’t attack you. … UNLESS PROVOKED!”
Going clockwise around the Princess Circle from the left, I see:
Embryo Princess
Turtle Princess
Princess Bubblegum
Emerald Princess
Engagement Ring Princess
Princess Princess Princess
Muscle Princesss
Ghost Princess
LSP
Jungle Princess
Space Angel Princess
Lizard Princess
Mini Queen
Laurel Princess (Who’s never been used anywhere else and is apparently based on a receptionist at Cartoon Network)
Peanut Princess
Bee Princess
Wildberry Princess
Skeleton Princess
Purple Princess
Grid Face Princess (SPOILER footnote) 2Who apparently is head of some kind of tech kingdom given that she’s the one who provides Princess Bubblegum with the giant shield generator she uses to trap Darren the Ancient Sleeper in the episode “Something Big”.)
That we just hear Jake yelling in the distance as pies are catapulted at him is great. It’s a great use of off-screen space, is way funnier than any visual of him getting hit with pies could be, and it subtly establishes that a tonal shift is coming. We’re not watching wacky fun time adventures anymore, we’re focusing on something else now.
There’s an interesting thought I had reading the storyboard, because in it, the pages in the book Finn looks at are *wildly* different from the ones we see in the episode. They’re not labeled with different things than Finn says, and the “horse in a party hat” in the end product is just a unicorn in the original storyboard, which tells me that the whole joke about him not actually reading the book was worked into the episode after it was written and in the polishing and animating process. For another… Well. Here.
Here’s the storyboard for the final page that Finn reads as “a young girl in love”:
And here’s the final page in the episode:
I love that she has one shoe off and one shoe on.
I don’t have anything to back this up, but I feel like this is a good demonstration of how beneficial a diverse writing room can be, because otherwise there might not have been anybody to go, “A cheerleader? Really?”
Ocean of Fear | Aired: June 21, 2010 | Reviewed by Grumproro
When I was a kid I had a recurring dream where my family was at the beach on a beautiful summer day. At some point, I turn away from my family and begin staring out at the ocean very intently. I notice how vast it seems, and my eyes are drawn to the horizon. The longer I stare the more the ocean appears to be endless. The water is still, so the horizon line appears to be perfectly flat. I’m suddenly aware of how terrifying the thought of an endless ocean is, and so I turn around to find solace in my family. But they are not there. Because I am not simply staring at the ocean; I have somehow wandered INTO the ocean, and I am being drawn out into that vast, endless horizon.
“In the dark recesses of the mind, a disease known as FEAR feasts upon the souls of those who cannot overcome its power…”
– Pat McHale
I have no idea why I had this dream. I have no vivid memories of being at the beach as a child, and I was never particularly afraid of swimming or the ocean (beyond a healthy fear – I mean, the ocean is pretty intense and shouldn’t be taken lightly). The dream probably had nothing to do with the ocean at all, but as a child so many things were unknowable and so much stronger than me, and I feel like the ocean is a pretty good representation of that. When I watch this episode I’m reminded of that dream, and I’m reminded of how it felt to be a child. And while a fear of the ocean isn’t a universally shared thing, I do think the problem Finn faces in this episode is probably very relatable to most viewers whether you fear the ocean or not. And I am fascinated by the very Finn-like way he solves this problem.
We start with what appears to be the final moments of an adventure involving a huge newt-like monster. They’ve chased the creature to the beach, but when Finn tries to join Jake in the water he suddenly realizes he is afraid.
Understandable, really. But this seems to be the first time Finn has considered the ocean as something to fear. He notes that he isn’t afraid of any other bodies of water, so why should he fear the ocean? After all, it’s just water, and he is a great hero who has faced all kinds of scary stuff. But no matter how much he tries to use reason and logic, the fear remains. It even manifests into a physical entity: the Fear Feaster. Admirably, Finn wants to overcome this fear, and after some prodding Jake agrees to help.
Jake’s methods are a bit extreme, but his heart is in the right place. His approach seems to be all about exposure, thinking that once Finn is forced into the ocean his heroic impulses will kick in. And once he overcomes that first hurdle, his fear will disappear. Simple and effective!
Okay, that face is clearly telling us that it is not simple or effective! Things quickly get out of hand, and Jake ends up on the bottom of the ocean unconscious. What will our hero do?! The Fear Feaster is all too happy to pop up and point out how cowardly and useless Finn is because he’s failed to overcome his fear of the ocean. After all, how can a hero be afraid of something? Heroes are supposed to be fearless and perfect! Right? Right! With that belief in his mind, Finn does the most Finn thing imaginable.
It’s obviously an incredibly reckless plan with very little chance of success. But I kind of love it? Finn has to save Jake, but he’s paralyzed by the thought of entering the ocean, so he decides the best solution is to shut off his brain because that’s the source of his fear. Sure, he might just die at the bottom of the ocean alongside Jake, but that’s not going to stop him from trying! And of course it all works out and they both survive the ordeal. At which point we meet the Three Wise Men, and Finn (and the viewer) learns the truth about fear and what it means to be a hero:
“Finn, you are wrong. The mark of a great hero is his flaw.”
Rather than overcoming his fear in the traditional sense (Finn is still very much afraid of the ocean), he comes to accept that part of himself. He learns to see a supposed flaw as an asset, something that makes him an ever greater hero. Finn adds another layer to his understanding of heroism, and he moves forward to the next adventure. Will he need to deal with his fears in the future? Maybe. But for today, this is okay.
“And so fear is forced deep within the soul of a hero. Conquered…at least, for now…”
– Pat McHale 3I am so intrigued by these quotes not only because they perfectly frame the episode, but also because they are attributed to one of the show’s writers. I don’t know what to say about that exactly, but I think it’s neat, so I wanted to note it. In this footnote. That you’re reading right now. – Grumproro