Power Animal

Air Date: November 22, 2010 | Written and Storyboarded by Adam Muto & Rebecca Sugar | Reviewed by Mrs Queequeg

Power Animal or How to Function with ADHD starring Jake the Dog.

The first of two Jake heavy episodes starts out with a roof party. Finn triple flips the chips into the dip and Jake tries to mimic the trick, but he loses focus midway and dumps the ice chest awkwardly, with a hot dog pup(?) inside. Party attendees are the main ladies, Hot Dog Princess, Cinnamon Bun, other denizens of the Candy Kingdom, and a strange man who invades Finn’s personal space. Neither Jake or Finn knows him, and in a bit from real life, he eats bean dip out of the bowl with his hands. The boys forget him by the end of the night, and this is where their stories diverge.

Jake wakes up to a punch from his own gut in a perfectly imagined hunger pang. He starts to look for Finn, but then makes up a song and dance with BMO.

Jake: Where’s Finn? Where… is… Finn? Is he in the kitchen?
BMO: Does he have a pumpkin? Rima tima tin tin
Jake: Dooba dooba dumplin
BMO: Poopy doopy pie tin
Jake: Monkey watermelon

Cut to Jake and BMO sitting on the front step, while Jake alternates yelling for Finn and taking bites of his sandwich. I ate my dinner the other night bite by bite while putting away laundry and other things, so I get it. Jake is still focused mainly on Finn, and I won’t count the sandwich because it’s important that he takes care of himself before he goes on; apply your own oxygen mask before helping others.

But when a juke bug strolls up, Jake is completely taken in. “You’re shaking it all wrong!” “But shaking it’s all I do!” Distraction #2

Meanwhile, Finn was kidnapped from his bed by the creepy man, who turns out to be a collection of gnomes1I’m not sure if gnomes have this reputation elsewhere, but the gnomes of the Beneathaverse and the gnomes of Gravity Falls have a lot in common. His boundless energy, which he bragged about at the party, is being put to the test as the ultimate power source. Finn’s bound and forced to be active through the threat of electric shocks. His story continues to darken while Jake’s dancing draws a bug party. We cut back to the chants of “Chug! Chug!” while Jake downs grass smoothies.

Once the smoothies are gone, Jake remembers that he’s looking for Finn. He uses his senses to take note of the area and is able to deduce that small footprints might be those of gnomes carrying a burden. I was a little disappointed that Jake didn’t go full dog and sniff his way on, but the he was only a magnifying glass short of Inspector Clouseau.

Jake comes across a couple of water nymphs, one of whom tells a nonsensical joke which offends him. He tells them a good joke and then laughs so hard that he blacks out. This is the Jake laugh I hear in my head and one of my favorite jokes of the series. Distraction #3

Finn’s stakes have continued to rise, and in a joke that I’m shocked was allowed, he’s forced to pole dance for “sexy fun dancing” and is put on a brain machine to suck power from his thoughts. This is the last straw for Finn, who breaks free, and when I saw newly buff Finn, I realized it was a fantasy. Sure enough, Jake busts through the walls and they’re free in less than 11 minutes. Unfortunately, poor Finn is being tortured for his boundless energy and thoughts, but he never wavers in his belief in Jake. I feel the most for him when we see the reality of the situation and Finn’s whimpering.

Cut back to Jake in sunglasses, partying in the Cloud Kingdom. He has no memory of getting there, which is one of those moments when you come to while you’re awake and you realize you’ve been on an autopilot mode. Distraction #4. Party God, a giant floating wolf head in an angled snapback, declares that Jake has won his favor with his gut waving. In the process of figuring out his deepest wish, Jake remembers that he’s looking for Finn and asks for the ability to focus.

Jake’s wish is conveniently powered by the power of a thousand partying demons, which means he will demolish everything in his path. We are also treated to John DiMaggio’s bro voice while Jake destroys the Beneathaverse and rescues Finn.

Let’s go eat Cinnamon Bun

I saw a comment about this episode that enjoyed Jake’s flaws on display after seeing Finn’s more than once, and we got a good contrast to last week’s. It reminded me of Victor and Valentino2Zavlav’d but not forgotten. If you get a chance to watch it, DO! And then look up the outline for the cancelled 4th season. Here’s to hoping that can get made in the future when I first started watching. I was getting increasingly irritated with Victor as the consummate annoying little brother archetype until I got an episode highlighting Valentino’s flaws and it balanced the storytelling for me. Both brothers were imperfect but willing to grow. Stars, I’m sure you’ll hit this point soon.

We’re reminding that Jake’s nearly godlike and he could be utterly terrifying if he wanted to be. Sharon chose well when cosplaying his design as the Gut Grinder. Finn’s limited by mortal powers3Last week on the commentary, someone said that everyone in Ooo is mutated. This is why some animals can talk or have other attributes. Finn’s not divergent from our humans at all, is he? but he’s actively drawn to be heroic and affect positive change. The only reason Jake doesn’t dominate everything is because he’s chill. (And because he can’t spit and is distracted by laser pointers.)

Quotes & Notes

There’s a quick wordless scene of the boys cleaning up after the party. I’m not sure why I found it so intriguing. It’s a departure from the regular storytelling and a nice little moment of domesticity, a calm before the storm

The brand of potatoes is “U-Say Potato.” The potato has five mouths, but blessedly, no eyes. Potato eyes creep me the math out

I love the way the Beneathaverse is lit with a spotlight on the gnomes, which suddenly brightens to show the whole underground

The design of the party bugs is striking because we rarely get dark character designs with light details

This is the first time Rebecca Sugar attended line readings and then felt guilty that she’d written Jeremy Shada screaming over and over

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Crystals Have Power | Aired: November 29th, 2010 | Reviewed by Ralph

I picked this one so that I could continue to explore the life and times of the adorable, loathsome, sweet little wretch, Tree Trunks. Last time we saw TT she had just bit into a crystal apple and poofed out of existence. We then caught a quick glimpse of her strolling happily around in some kind of crystal dimension.

“Wither Tree Trunks?!” the world cried out in unison. “Whatever have you done with our beloved Tree Trunks?!” they bleated into the night.

Jk. I’m sure no one actually did any of that. I really doubt anyone cared very much about this little elephantine anomaly. But Pen Ward cared. He cared so much that he insisted on bringing her back this episode. Jesse Moynihan and Cole Sanchez wrote and storyboarded this one, and Moynihan admitted that he didn’t know that the illustrators would be straight up tracing what he drew. He thought they’d translate his drawings into the Adventure Time house style, but they didn’t. So if you noticed that Jake looks a little weird, that’s why. Moynihan blogged about it after the episode aired:

The “Crystals Have Power” episode I worked on (with Cole) generated quite a bit of internet division regarding my messed up, “off model” drawings. Of course I was monitoring all of it on 4chan and elsewhere. Some peeps seemed into it and others couldn’t deal with how far I took it down my back alley of outsider art. I’m glad the detractors didn’t see my first pass on the board, when Pen told me to scale back on some of my poses. I’m glad he did.

According to some other stuff I found on the world wide web, this episode was apparently a couple different story ideas kinda smooshed together at the last minute. 4There apparently was gonna be this whole other recurring character named Googax that was a sort of internet guru who taught Jake to practice non-violence. They kept trying to find ways to work in Googax throughout the whole series, but they could never quite make it work. Alas, poor Googax. We hardly knew ye. 

One story is about Jake getting too rough with Finn, regretting it, and taking a vow of non-violence. I got sad when Jake got so sad about hurting Finn, who was also sad because he was hurt and had to ask his bro to cut it out. My own sweet baby puppy would get a little too rough with me sometimes when we were playing, and then he’d look at me with those big regretful watery dog eyes and I wanted to say, “It’s okay, bud. We’re playing. In fact, bite me as hard as you want whenever you want. Never feel sad.” He was a little bit of a wild animal, after all. I was also the least rowdy of my friend group growing up, and so when the roughhousing got too rough I’d have to tell my friends to dial it back a bit. It often felt like I was raining on their parade, but I don’t like titty twisters. Ok? I just don’t. Leave my titties un-twisted, thankyouverymuch. Not fun for me. But it’s also not all that fun being the “let’s not get carried away” guy, either.

The other story is about Tree Trunks’ transformation into Quartzion the Crystal Queen in the Crystal Dimension. Having munched on that crystal gem apple, Tree Trunks has, as Finn astutely observes, “gone bananas with crystal power,” and she’s sent some of her crystal guardians to kidnap Finn so she can turn him into her “sexy crystal king.” Jake tries non-violent, “controlled” solutions to the problem but they don’t work. Much to his dismay, Jake thought his dad had once prophesied that he (Jake) would “hurt everyone,” but he eventually recalls that his father’s real prophecy was that he’d hurt everyone who’s evil. That convinces him that he should resort to violence in this case, and so he kicks TT in the gut so that she barfs up the crystal that’s driving her nutso.

Apologies all around and, in my favorite scene from the episode, they fly off back to Ooo to a quick little auto-tuned hyper-pop ditty. 5I learned that Pen Ward’s original ending for this episode was going to have the portal split off into two dimensions, and a lightning demon was going to grab TT and drag her to another dimension so that Finn and Jake would have to go rescue her there later. That could’ve been cool.

I didn’t think I’d have much to say about this episode, but then I got to thinking about feelings, and what’s going on when we control–or lose control of–our feelings. I also wrote a lot of this review while eating lunch at my desk with a copy of the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s book, The Managed Heart, in front of me. 6This is the book where she coined the term “emotional labor.” So let’s talk about feelings. There’s something in here about how people (and dogs and pygmy elephants) control their feelings (or don’t). Jake thinks it’s in his nature to lose control. “Why am I like this?” he asks himself when he gets too rough with Finn.

Jake’s answer extends back to early memories of over-doing it with his brother, Jermaine 7Not yet voiced by Tom Scharpling. Over in the Crystal Kingdom, TT loses control when the crystal gem apple gives her crystal powers. She is driven by her desire to love (lust?) and be loved (lusted after?). She’s basically gone mad with horniness. Totally relatable.

In both cases, the basic assumption that makes this all make sense to us is that we have these deeper, private impulses—our true feelings (or truer, at least, than what we publicly project to the world)—that we have to keep in check. And if we don’t keep them in check we risk social isolation and embarrassment.

There’s a tension between “what I do feel” and “what I should feel” that comes up sometimes. Hochschild says we should examine this tension (or, as she calls it, this “pinch”) to understand what she calls “feeling rules.” These feeling rules are the culturally upheld moral stances we take toward our emotions. These feeling rules are semi-stable emotional scripts that we need to follow to fit in. “How do we recognize a feeling rule?” Hochschild asks. “We do so by inspecting how we assess our feelings, how other people assess our emotional display, and by sanctions issuing from ourselves and from them.” Jake does exactly this when he sees Finn’s sad-sack ass ascend the treehouse ladder all beat up and sad. 

Finn doesn’t impose any sanctions on Jake’s behavior—in fact, he hides his hurt feelings so that he doesn’t hurt Jake’s feelings about hurting his feelings. But Jake imposes sanctions on himself. He asks, “Why am I like this?” He searches his past, where he finds a perhaps genetic or psychological answer in his dad’s assurance that “having no self-control makes you a tough galoot. Like me!” and his prophecy that “you’re gonna hurt everybody.” And Jake decides he needs to somehow break this cycle of galootness by keeping his salubrious galootish exuberance from becoming a disturbing perturbance among his acquaintances.8Preposterous! He makes a vow of non-violence. The feeling rule here is something like: Roughhousing is good fun, but you should control your violent impulses so as not to hurt anyone in a way that diminishes their fun.

Tree Trunks similarly experiences the pinch between how she feels and how she should feel when she snaps out of her crystal-induced madness. More precisely, she experiences the pinch between how she feels and how she should display those feelings. There’s a basic assumption here that people with power are less inclined to suppress their public displays of their feelings. And the feeling rule here is something like: Horniness is good fun, but you shouldn’t force that horniness on others.

Most of us figure all this “feeling rules” stuff tacitly, without thinking about it too much. We absorb it like we absorb the ideas that give us a sense of the world. I feel like it’s sometimes helpful to try to take a step back from all of it and look in on it. The questions about “why do my feelings—or my presentation of those feelings—not seem to match up with how I’m supposed to feel, or how I’m supposed present those feelings?” make explicit some of the unspoken rules we absorb about what counts as appropriate or inappropriate behavior. Those rules are everywhere!

And we break these rules a lot. And it can be embarrassing. But Jake teaches us an important lesson in understanding and forgiveness when he comforts Tree Trunks:

So I didn’t think I’d have a lot to write about this one, but “Crystals Have Power” kinda opened up for me. It made me think of another episode that I didn’t care much about until rewatching it for this series—“Donny,” which struck me as profound this time around. It’s another episode where the conflict lives in that pinch between what you feel and what’s appropriate to feel. The more I think about it the more I think about it.

Anyhoo. Glad to see TT head back to Ooo. I’m sure everything’s gonna be just fine with her from now on!