Mystery Train
Air Date March 14, 2011
Written & Storyboarded By: Kent Osborne and Somvilay Xayaphone
Review by Katie
It’s Finn’s birthday! Our little guy is now 13 years old, and his big brother Jake has a special surprise gift for him: a murder mystery. “Murder mystery on a train” is a common episode archetype for cartoons, an idea that’s been around long enough that it feels less like a direct riff on Murder on the Orient Express and more just a thing that you do. And mystery episodes can be fun! There’s an undeniable fun in following a whodunit, trying to figure things out before the story gets there, and seeing in retrospect how the clues were laid out just so.
Unfortunately, it’s not a genre that Adventure Time can handle very well. A good mystery is pretty heavily reliant on plot, rules, and consistency. AT, especially in these early years, is a show with a defiant anything goes attitude, where nothing is as it seems, except when you’re expecting it to not be as it seems and then it is as it seems, except once you’re used to that etc. Constantly flipping moral calculus ending with a non sequitur joke is by far the most common structure at this point of the show.
It’s not a complete disaster, of course. There are certainly clues as to the conductor’s true identity. The first two times he appears, Jake leaves the scene immediately before. In his third appearance, Jake is on screen, but his face is hidden by the schedule. The conductor knows Finn’s name without being told, and Jake seems to take offense to the conductor being called weird and creepy.
But also, even if you don’t catch the double-identity, it’s still obvious the conductor is up to something because who else could it possibly be? Any candy person who speaks for more than 5 seconds gets skeletonized immediately after. And the mid-episode clue-gathering montage is a collection of obviously absurd nonsense, with Finn trying to make hay out of sheet music, a dictionary, and some cabbage fish and eggs. Classic Adventure Time absurdity, but it just doesn’t work here.
It’s good to see the show try to branch out so early. This tendency will eventually pay off for the show, which as early as next season becomes more willing to take things seriously when appropriate. But sad to say this one’s a miss. It’s weird, because train mysteries usually aren’t that hard. Mystery stories are a well-defined genre, and in a kid’s cartoon you don’t even have to try and outsmart an audience who’s read all the same classics as you have. Hell, My Little Pony did one with the exact same twist as Murder on the Orient Express because they knew that to their audience of 6-year-olds (slash 20-somethings who don’t read books) it would be fresh.1Er, spoilers for Murder on the Orient Express and/or MMMystery on the Friendship Express, depending on your frame of reference But in this instance, AT‘s commitment to being weird bites it. A more disciplined show could never reach the heights of Adventure Time, but it would be able to make a competent mystery from the word go. There are trade-offs to everything.
Stray Observations:
- Finn’s investigation method is very meta. He rules out out Colonel Candy Corn because he’s too obvious, and rules out the conductor for basically the same reason. This sort of “I know the audience knows basic genre expectations, so let’s cut to the chase” thing is in lots of places, and I almost never like it. Characters shouldn’t act like they know they’re fictional!
- Candy Corn saying “I’m going to kill you!” is one of the more subtle tells that Adventure Time is a PG rated show with some leeway. Standards and Practices are infamously nervous about kill/death/die language. Once you learn this you’ll never hear the word “destroy” quite the same way
- I like Dr. Donut’s whole vibe. “I think it was the guy who screamed ‘I’m gonna kill you'” like, when you’re right you’re right
Go With Me
Air Date March 28, 2011
Written & Storyboarded By: Ako Castuera and Tom Herpich
Review by Katie
We’re back with an episode about the only recurring storyline this early in the show’s run: Finn’s crush on Princess Bubblegum. I’ve noted many times before how Jake has a lot to answer for here: Finn is just barely 13, he’s still a kid. Jake’s supposed to know better, not egg his younger bro on in wooing a grown-ass woman.
So it’s nice to get an episode that’s just directly about this dynamic. Finn wants to go to the movies, but it’s couples night, so he needs a date. For once Finn isn’t even trying to woo PB romantically, he literally just wants to go to the movies with a friend. But here’s allonormative2“Allonormativity” is the idea that all people both do and should experience romantic and sexual attraction, and that any deviation from this supposed norm is something to be cured or purged. I will put queer theory even in the early seasons do not fucking test me. Jake insisting that Finn bring a smoochable date. Jake also gives Finn some spectacularly poor advice, a mixture of PUA negging and a doofy lute suit playing to some idea of courtly romance. Maybe that stuff works for Lady Rainicorn, I’m not here to judge, but it was obviously doomed to failure.
What’s new here is Marceline. Initially roped in by Jake for his jealousy strats, the vampire queen tries to give Finn advice of her own, and her advice stinks even more! “Women don’t like this formal shit, they like to have fun!” is, though better sounding, still just as dehumanizing as Jake’s plan. PB is being treated as an instance of class Woman, rather than an independent being with her own likes and junk. Marcy’s advice (fun roughhousing, exciting danger) is appealing to her, but obviously upsetting to the princess.
Except…maybe that’s the point? Marceline likes to mess with our boys, and tricking a poor gullible kid into disastrous flirtation techniques seems like her idea of a good time. And, well, what if Finn was never her target? When PB sees Marceline outside her window, her mood immediately drops. She recognizes the vampire, and she isn’t exactly thrilled to see her. And Marceline responds by calling her “Bonnibel”, the first time we ever hear Bubblegum’s first name. There is clearly a history here.
Some spoilery words about said clear history
As full series viewers know, that history is romantic; PB and Marceline dated, and broke up, some time before the start of the show. They haven’t interacted much since then, and maybe my favorite long-term story arc is them rekindling first their friendship and then their romance.
Back in 2014, before I started watching AT, I saw a clip from a convention panel, where Marceline voice actor Olivia Olson mentions how PB and Marcy are exes. At the time this was not explicit in the show itself, due to decree from Cartoon Network. When I first watched AT, I was curious to see when this history would become apparent. After all, I knew the show was not exactly planned out, how it developed an identity from storyboarders and writers independently yes-anding the bits of the show they liked best until it became something wholly unlike its S1E1 self.
So it was more than a little surprising to realize that this history was obvious from their very first encounter. And what an incredible long game that must have been. Gay kids cartoons saw a massive boom throughout the 2010s, but it was an iterative process, constantly pushing back against conservative network executives. The Legend of Korra barely got away with two girls holding hands in a season finale, Gravity Falls straight-up wasn’t allowed to have two lesbian grandmas in the background, Steven Universe had to make Garnet a metaphor to sneak her in (and having her get married cost the show an entire extra season, even in 2018), on and on and on. There was simply no way, back in ~2010, that the creators ever would have thought they could make this queer romantic history text. Yet they went for it anyway, and here we are. The magic of the Queer Arms Race era of kid’s cartoons.
Ultimately, Marcy’s plan fails too, and after some confusion about Finn’s intentions they go to the movies as friends. Only to discover that, because it’s couples night, they’re showing some cheesy romance to give the couples and excuse to get to smooching. Finn and Marcy are bored and a little grossed out, and instead have their fun by attacking the theater with wolves. A happy ending for all!
Stray Observations:
- Like the split screen gag with Jake and Marceline for showing her mischievous side, and also for the unexplained “wait, why was she hiding in the treehouse in the first place?”
- Fun little Akira slide from Marcy here. Rare to see one without a bike
