It’s a beautiful day in the Candy Kingdom. The crystal guardians are relaxing and blowing bubbles that float into the sky, sentient balloons are also floating up into the sky (presumably into the mesosphere where they can finally die), and the boys are playfully breaking magic bottles with a wide range of effects including something called “Caturday Surprise”. This day can’t be all fun and games though! There is a darkness that lurks—fiendish villains that must be addressed! These villains are:
Princess Bubblegum’s enemy – The Duke of Nuts:
Ruler over the Duchy of Nuts. Shares a legume son with a nut-wife. Dog petter, baby kisser, lies with his wife (Duchess of Nuts), but if you’re not careful this bastard will steal all the loose pudding in your pockets. His wife suggests execution.
Jake’s enemy – Squirrel:
Comes with unique music. Quick to anger and takes things personally. Largely forgettable. Their weapon of choice? An angry letter. Second weapon of choice? Attempted murder.
Maybe the theme of this episode is owning up to your mistakes, as the Duke of Nuts so perfectly encapsulated, “Hey, it’s okay. People make mistakes. It’s all part of growing up and you never really stop growing”, or MAYBE it’s a lesson on how to manage your personal enemies. Princess Bubblegum and Jake both have their own methods. Finn, our resident human, gets tangled up in both their problems. And can Finn get through the day without making an enemy of his own? No.
Princess Bubblegum considers the Duke of Nuts a bad guy since it’s later revealed that the dude often clears out her pudding pantry. It’s probably the reason why she’s threatening him with a fist cookie at the start of the episode. How does PB manage her enemy in this episode? With extreme prejudice given the opportunity. The two witnesses were the perfect excuse to throw him in a cold dungeon (she wanted him dead in the storyboard), and it especially sucks because we know he is innocent.
We’re definitely seeing a new side to PB here, as even the closed captioning describes her laughing as “evil” and it does not go unnoticed by Finn and Jake. The episode really makes a point of it by literally changing her appearance to show this “ugly” side of her. On that note I really like her design here. She kind of looks like chewed up gum you’d find under your desk in elementary school—complete with the patches of hair and chewed gum colourization. Why would a bag of milk heal her? I dunno, but milk helps prevent “gum” disease. Anyway, it’s such a shift in character that I suppose its possible the potion she got hit with made her so extreme.
Jake the Dog considers the squirrel… well he doesn’t consider the squirrel at all. Jake is the complete opposite of Bubblegum where he doesn’t keep track of his enemies or holds grudges. Jake is much more interested in just living in the moment. In the episode’s B-story, a squirrel wants revenge on Jake for not having his letter answered in Jake’s apparent advice column, ironically named “Begs the Question”. Jake engages in question begging by insisting the Duke of Nuts should be guilty because he’s a bad guy (but its possible they didn’t intend it as the logical fallacy of question begging, but its more colloquial use of “raising the question”. Would be hilarious if that’s what the squirrel was trying to address in the letter!).
Jake’s absolute ignorance of the squirrel leads to a violent confrontation at the end of the episode, so that’s not good. There’s also a new enemy as a result of Finn embodying more of Jake’s approach to enemies.
Finn’s enemy – Marquess of Nuts:
Vengeful peanut. Nut father, nut mother, but legume physiology. Master of disguise and will seek alliances with an enemy of an enemy. Tough little nut that fills only half their she
Finn is way more like his bro than PB. He is not really aware of his enemies either—in this case he was too busy thinking about his friendship with PB! That’s where you went wrong, young man! Who care about friends?
Moral of the story then? Keep an eye on your enemies, but also just be cool about it. There’s also a lesser, but more accurate moral of owning up to your mistakes before the situation gets out of hand and being honest with people, I guess.
Art details:
- Nuts might go on trees but these trees grow on nuts.
- Not a lot of Jake shape-shifting in this episode unfortunately. In fact he only does some slight stretching chasing after the Marquess of Nuts, and makes an axe hand during the little show he put on for The Duke’s sake.
Other observations:
- Finn’s solution to make everyone happy obviously does not work, but it’s exactly the kind of thing you might see in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Sure, it’s stupid, but if your target has a low enough INT/WIS score then maybe they’ll be fooled and give you fun rewards!
- Maybe the duke’s pudding deficiency is a play on food allergies. There are people who must avoid nuts to live, but this nut NEEDS pudding to survive. Okay that was dumb.
Special thanks to Ralph, my posting partner this week! I appreciate your patience in this.
For the snail perverts
Gaze upon the visage of terror:
Magic Man. Yeesh. Dude scares me. Who is he? What’s his deal? Why’s he like that? How come his shoes don’t match? Why’s his nose like that? Is that really his name? What’s in that little bag strapped to his leg? Where’d he get that hat? What’s his problem?
None of these questions and less will be answered this episode! But, over the course of 11 and a half minutes, conflict is introduced, our hero struggles mightily, and then the status quo is re-established. Which means we have a story. Which means we gotta think about it. Such is our sorrow. Such is our joy.
Here’s what happens in Freak City (the episode, not the city): Finn is living his life, ham-boning around with Jake, when a shadow-cloaked beggar shows up and asks for food. Finn hesitates but hands over a sugar cube, which the beggar ingests. The beggar throws off his rags to reveal different colored rags underneath and declares himself, to Finn and Jake’s delight, to be Magic Man! He tosses confetti! The background explodes into a joyous prism! He whistles a gentle tune, coaxing a bird to light gracefully upon his magic finger! He does this:
And the delight fades.
Granting Finn a mystical magical favor as thanks for the sugar cube, Magic Man turns the boy into a big, gross, but pleasantly fragrant (to Jake, at least) foot. 1 And the wizard takes off, with a friendly parting message:
Finn has a hard time seeing the positives of his new situation. And I get it. Look at the poor guy:
Jake tries to reassure Foot-Finn, and, recognizing an opportunity for his bud to get his groove back, tosses his monstrosity of a friend into a nearby burning city, but the inhabitants proclaim him to be some kind of freak. They stick him with the other freaks under a nearby bridge. FREAK CITY ROLL CALL!
Gork, the (self-proclaimed) leader of Freak City!
Zap, the arm!
Trudy, the waist!
Wee Wee and Gorflax, the . . . uh . . . tonsils.
And Kim, the arm!
Following the advice of Jake—who has himself nestled passively into a pile of trash and allowed rats to skitter all over him 2—Finn briefly contemplates sinking into a life of despair before he sings (in a haunting auto-tune) himself back into action. As he snaps out of his funk, Finn sings that he’s going to tell life to, in the words of a wise jerk he’d recently met, “eat it.” The freaks Voltron themselves together and, with a newfound sense of collective strength, take the fight to Magic Man. Finn reassesses his assumptions about heroism and thinks that he should’ve been more altruistic. Is that the lesson he was supposed to learn? Nope! Still a foot! Finally, though, he gets it. He shouldn’t give stuff to jerks. Et voila! Magic Man turns him and all the freaks back into their old selves, and they go about their lives. Roll credits.
There’s some freaky stuff in Freak City, but it was even freakier before the suits at the network made them dial it down just a tad. At the end of the episode, Jake laments that he always wanted to be a foot. Finn reminds him that he could turn into a foot whenever he wanted. “You could be a foot right now!” he reminds him. “I saw you change into a foot twice yesterday!” To which Jake responds, “It’s complicated. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
But the original storyboards were a little different until Standards and Practices came in and said, and I quote,
We’ll need to tone down Jake’s dialogue so this seems less sexual in nature.
Cartoon Network Standards & Practices to the creators of a goofy cartoon about a boy and a magic dog.
Here’s documented proof:
Sexual? Whatever could they mean? Let’s look at the storyboards:
Huh. This original ending . . . is . . .
Huh.
My big brain thought is that Magic Man is a sadist in the sense that many villains and tricksters are sadists. And we are frustrated by them because they upset the status quo through their cruelty. And what’s sick is how much we fuckin looooooove it! We’re just a little masochistic every time we subject ourselves to a story like this. We don’t want our hero to suffer, but not wanting it makes us love it. It’s only fun if we don’t want it. Maybe we’re all sort of freaky inhabitants of Freak City. My little brain thought is that Jake’s just a little pervy.
What did we learn? Magic Man = scary. Jake = a little pervy?
What did Finn learn? His assumptions about heroism might be a little too simplistic. Some jerks are just jerks. And when someone tells you who they are you should believe them. Magic Man said he’d curse Finn until he realized what a jerk he (Magic Man) is. And, wouldn’t you know it, when Finn realizes what a jerk Magic Man is, the curse is lifted!
Who’s your favorite denizen of Freak City? I know it’s the safe choice, but I gotta go with Kim.
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