Storytelling:

This one is weirdly dark for such a goofy story.

Jake is sick, but it feels a bit like he’s malingering, playing up how sick he is to get Finn to do him a favor. Which, of course, Finn falls for completely, charging out into the world like the paladin he is.

In the original script, Jake is faking it so that he can get alone time to, quote, “do weird stuff”, but they changed it because it made the whole rest of the episode seem even worse, and I wonder if some of that tone is left around the edges. That said, Jake absolutely does seem like he’d be the kind of guy to become over the top pathetic from even a tiny little cold, so nothing here feels that far out of character for him.

Penn and co have said that a lot of their ideas for Adventure Time come from D&D, and it shows up a lot in little weird details, like the bit about his hero test including a part where he has to “slay an unaligned ant” in the Enchiridion episode. Here, this feels a lot like it’s making fun of a “we need to achieve this objective at any cost” paladin mentality. Tasked with finding a new story to tell Jake, Finn proceeds to disturb the peace, sexually assault a goose, punch a kid in front of his mother, and nearly escalate to murdering babies.

What’s remarkable is how little the show pulls punches on how much Finn is the bad guy here. Him making Mr. Fox and Boobafina kiss is unflinchingly presented as really fucked up.

And the little bit of cinematography when Finn considers threatening the nest of baby birds to generate suspense. As he slowly approaches his face falls into shadow, just a real great visual metaphor. They finally hit a thing they can’t even suggest he’d do, so instead they just have him panic and imagine threatening them, whereupon they all panic and die of fright.

At this point Finn’s conscience kicks in, though his ethical crisis is interrupted as he gets his butt kicked by the forest animals. The long shot where the Forest Wizard is just suddenly there before he cracks Finn over the head with a club is great, because it’s a hilarious way of introducing a character that I’m relatively certain we’ve never seen before, just suddenly an old man in a robe with a huge stick.

The whole thing wraps up neatly when Finn, desperate to salvage some kind of happy ending, shares his outsider perspectives on all the forest animals’ lives and offers them advice. This to me feels like a great example of how much a really good gag can pave over narrative problems, because the fact that the ending seems pat doesn’t really register once we get to this part:

I think what makes this work as well as it does it is how much this gag undercuts a lot of the cliches here, but from such an unexpected direction that it’s like your brain doesn’t even have time to register how annoyed you are with the show pulling an ending out of nowhere like this before the rug is pulled out from under you and the show has swept right onwards in the meantime. I also wonder if this terrible, terrible moment helps you forget that the rest of this is kind of messed up, too, because it really undercuts the expectation that this is supposed to have a coherent moral.

Random Thoughts:

• I’m surprised they got away with Jake just vomiting a tidal wave of soup on Finn.
• This is the first time anyone acknowledges the snail.
• The crying ant, lmao. I don’t know why this makes me laugh so much.
• I might say the “normal guy” thing to myself all the time.
• I love that we keep seeing Mr. Fox later, his weird awkward quiet voice is great. Apparently it was one of the writers doing the worst Christopher Walken impression but it was so funny they just ran with it.
• “Come on, Boobafina, let’s go.”
• Hulu transcribes the chant as “Ooh iggy boo boo”
• Finn talking the mob down is also one of the things that feels like D&D plotting to me, where a player’s last ditch attempt to talk their way out of dying with a Persuasion roll as they give some dramatic speech comes with a perfect roll of the dice.
• “Your cage is made of sticks, brother. Just kick it apart.” I have no idea why but this line floats through my brain like a zen mantra all the time.
• YO PUT THAT BAG BACK ON

Slow Love:

This one sometimes feels like they wrote it just to give Biz Markie a chance to beatbox, but it still manages to get way weirder than the premise would make it seem. It’s definitely elevated by Biz just utterly committing to this nonsense, his voice work here is excellent.

After a great title card that looks like a torrid romance novel the guys (and their house) pretty quickly get swept up into helping Biz’s hapless Snorlock find a girlfriend. Their advice to him to talk to someone goes about as badly as possible, though I love the tiny detail of the lady snail sucking in her gut and fixing her posture when she sees him coming. In fact, that she’s just straightforward and friendly and it’s Snorlock who clearly has the problem here goes a long way to blunting what’s annoying about these sorts of “we’ll help you talk to girls” type stories, taking it right to the most absurd length possible right away.

Which brings me to the other part of this episode that elevates the whole proceedings: it’s just extremely funny. In the long run, sure, Adventure Time wouldn’t have become as great as it was if it hadn’t eventually risen above vaguely cliched plots, but ultimately whether you’re building a lore dense story or tossing off a vaguely hacky plot as an excuse to get a musical guest the chance to show off, if it’s not funny and entertaining then it doesn’t matter.

Case in point: Finn and Jake roleplaying on how to date a snail is, to me, a spectacular piece of comedy writing. 

Jake is so clearly just having fun fucking with Finn. I laugh every time at “I’m just sitting here thinking about mating with snails.”

And then it keeps escalating:

And escalating:

Ultimately, they find something that Snorlock is good at and he attracts a massive crowd of ladies with his beatboxing, and their enthusiastic bumping and grinding threatens to level the guys’ house. Jake goes nuclear, risking getting slimed and/or grinded on to retrieve the salt shaker to threaten the snail with. I love Finn’s little gasp of shock followed by that little knowing nod. Snorlock is revealed to be a slug which is apparently why he broke down with anxiety every time he tried to hit on a snail, and before the weird fantasy anti-miscegenation moral can sink in the show has already swept past and straight to a pair of slugs the size of an apartment building noisily making out.

Honestly, the plot on this one is a little weak, but it really gets carried by the strength of the jokes and Biz Markie’s performance. Snorlock’s weird laughing is perfect, plus his beatboxing at the end is great. Apparently this one has a somewhat uneven reputation, and I can see it, but personally I think it’s hilarious.

Stray Thoughts:

• The episode really comes right out the gate with that goofy little bit of BMO refusing to cooperate with Jake playing a video game. I’ve had times I wish I could wack my computer with a newspaper and tell it to go sit in the corner, but I love the cut back to him just dancing.
• For some weird reason, Snorlock is listed in the credits as voiced by John DiMaggio, but that’s absolutely Biz Markie. The internet backs me up on this, though I couldn’t find an answer as to why he’d be uncredited.
• Two PHIL FACEs in a row between these two episodes!
• Caught the snail by accident, trying to make one of those gifs.
• The brutality of the salt crystal hitting Snorlock is shocking every time.