Belly of the Beast

Air Date: April 4, 2011

Storyboards: Kent Osborne & Somvilay Xayaphone

Coverage: CedricTheOwl

Sorry to fill in at the last minute on this review, but I hadn’t heard from my review partner for this week, so I threw this together. Deadlines wait for no one!

Our episode opens with Finn and Jake awakening to the sound of a rampaging monster, scarfing up trees and belching out fireworks. Still in a half-asleep dream haze, the boys go out to frolic among the mayhem, breezily dodging stomping feet and pounding fists. It takes a solid hit on Jake for them to realize they’re not actually dreaming, at which point they get their game faces on and start fighting for real. Hearing cries of help from the monster’s belly, they hitch a ride on one of the trees the monster is devouring and go to the rescue.

The rescuee is indeed in need of help… hanging up streamers for the party they and their fellow bears are throwing in the monster’s stomach! Finn is aghast at the sight of these hapless partying bears, clearly unaware of the danger inherent in throwing a party in the intestines of a giant predator. Jake, characteristically less willing to engage in other peoples’ business, is more than happy to leave them be. Finn walks Jake through the process of digestion and reminds Jake of the grisly fate that awaits these bears: left to their own devices, they will be turned into The Stuff.

Unfortunately, the boys have little luck in communicating the danger to these obliviously partying bears with the exception of the youngest bear, Cubby. Cubby points them towards the bears’ chief, Party Pat (voiced by Andy Samberg), the only one whom all the bears will listen to. Party Pat is a self-styled party guru, championing the mind-expanding possibilities of pancakes, karaoke, and honey-flavored energy drinks. Naturally, he is unreceptive to the idea of killing the vibe just because he and his tribe are in mortal danger.

Fig 1: The hedonistic shepherd of a doomed flock

Finn and Jake retreat to the monster’s mouth to regroup, and in the process accidentally give the creature the idea to flush the bears out by drinking hot lava. Faced with a much more pressing deadline, the boys try to kill the party by singing a maudlin country song about dead food. They successfully bring the mood down, but the warning to flee comes a little too late. Finn, Jake, and all the partiers are forced to escape the torrent of lava through the only exit left to them: the “butt intestines”.

Singed but alive, Party Pat and the bears are undeterred in their desire to party in a monster stomach. Jake, much more reasonably this time, resigns the bears to their fate, but Finn suggests an alternative: use laser pointers in place of fireworks for their exuberant lighting needs. The bears are happy, the monster is happy, and Finn is off to join Jake in watching TV.

I’ve always thought of “Belly of the Beast” as a fine episode, a pretty standard wacky adventure by the standards of season 2 episodes that’s mostly notable for having one of the early guest stars. But upon rewatch, something struck me about it. The bears are completely swept up in their hedonistic party mentality, oblivious to the damage they’re doing to their environment and to the gradually approaching fate that threatens them unless they change their ways. Only the youngest among them recognizes the danger, and their objections are shouted down by their elders. It takes the threat of imminent fiery death to move them to any kind of action, and even then they’re more focused on returning to their normal life than fixing the issue.

For some context, this episode was released in the spring of 2011. America was two years and then some into the Obama administration, and popular music was at the crest of a delirious high of party anthems and high concept, energy tracks; “poptimism”, as it was known. The Top 20 songs of the week this episode was released paint the picture well enough: Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Pitbull, The Black Eyed Peas, and the cast of Glee saturate the top spots. There’s an inescapable sense that the world of popular culture was locked in an endless party high even as the world’s problems compounded on themselves.

Fig 2: The indolent masses

Is this episode really a criticism of the complacency fostered by party culture in the early years of the Obama administration? Or is this the deranged overthinking of someone whose spent way too much time and brain bandwidth on a wacky cartoon for children. Almost certainly the latter. For one, if this was indeed the intended interpretation, the resolution to party a little more responsibly is insultingly shallow. For another, though I’m of the opinion that Adventure Time’s crew are all intelligent and creative people, none of them are fortune tellers. The production time for traditional animation is notoriously long, so there’s no way they would be able to predict the exact state of popular culture upon the episode’s release, much less the state of the world 13 years later. Still, it adds a lot of subtext to a retrospective viewing of this episode, which made this rewatch surprisingly memorable.

Notable Quotes:

• “He sleeps on the monster’s heart. It’s like a blood water bed”
• “Before you talk to the chief, you must party with the chief. It is the only way.”
• “You move to music, but that’s not dancing. You chew pancakes, but you’re not tasting.”
• “All our favorite foods are dead. They cannot procreate in little food beds.” Finn’s maudlin country karaoke song is hilarious

Dispatches from the Commentary:

• Party Pat’s clothing and hair are based on AT’s then-creative director Pat McHale, even though he’s not a party guy
• Pen Ward tells a story about attending a desert rave in the 90s. He apparently had to call a preset answering machine in order to receive directions to the site
• Jesse Moynihan mentions that his favorite karaoke standards are smooth 80s songs. Pen Ward says his go-tos are sad country songs, which almost certainly inspired Finn and Jake’s karaoke joke
• Rebecca Sugar mentions how she completely misinterpreted someone asking her to dance at a party, entirely because she’d never been asked before.
• Pen Ward interprets this episode as about the fear that something is wrong with your internal health, which in retrospect is a much more sensible interpretation than mine. I could have passed this insight off as my own, but where else would I get to share my unfiltered, demented over-analysis?

The Limit

Air Date: April 11, 2011

Storyboards: Cole Sanchez & Jesse Moynihan

Coverage: CedricTheOwl

While hanging out with Hot Dog Princess and her royal guard (seen playing in the mud), Finn and Jake discover they have a common wish: to ride the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant! With shotguns for tusks and rocket boosters for feet, it’s the dream mount of any serious adventurer. The boys excitedly wish for it upon a shooting star, only for the Notorious HDP to inform them that’s actually a distress flare from the rest of her Hot Dog Knights. They’re not the sharpest bratwursts at the barbeque, and as we’ll soon learn the labyrinth they’re trying to conquer is far beyond their abilities. Finn and Jake to the rescue!

The call to adventure

“The Limit” is this season’s dungeon episode, and they’re a perennial favorite of mine. In addition to getting an excuse to indulge in some classic D&D-inspired dungeoneering, these episodes are almost always a fun showcase of monster and location designs. After a sweeping shot of the labyrinth, the boys receive a handy reminder to not try to cheat their way past the challenge by just stretching Jake over the walls. They instead opt to have Jake anchor his body to the entrance and stretch through the maze, leaving a trail they can use to find their way back. With a solid plan in place, they enter the dungeon rescue the wayward Hot Dog Knights.

And almost immediately find them. The overwhelmed party barely made it through the first straightaway before getting hopelessly lost, and the mere sight of Finn and Jake are enough to send them fleeing in terror. However, an easy quest gets waylaid when one of the knights informs the boys that the maze contains a wish-granting creature that’s their one-way ticket to the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant of their dreams. Like in “Dungeon”, all F&J need is the promise of the silliest of rewards, and they’ll drop everything to tackle any challenge.

Just remember to follow the rules

Much like Finn was outmatched by the monsters in the Dungeon of the Crystal Eye, Jake soon finds himself in over his head as the labyrinth forces him to overexert his stretching powers. Be it a rampaging mud golem, a nest of giant venomous scorpions, or the dreaded slider puzzle, Jake stretches himself thinner and thinner to overcome each obstacle while the Hot Dog Knights cheer him on. By the time they reach the center of the maze, Jake is stretched so far that his internal organs are paper thin and his eyelids are so stretched out he can’t blink.

Disaster strikes when one of the Hot Dog Knights triggers a trap, slamming a stone door on Jake’s stretched out body and vulnerable organs. The wish-granting creature reveals itself as a sinister mud snake, and in the rush to receive their wishes the remaining knights either fall into lethal traps or completely squander them. Finn is then forced to make a choice: abandon his quest for the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant and use his wish to save Jake, or wish for the elephant and leave his best friend to die.

However, Finn suddenly comes up with a plan. He wishes for the elephant, then proves his worth to command the mighty beast. Having manifested in the presence of the wish-granter, the elephant now also gets a wish, which Finn uses to heal Jake and the slain Hot Dog Knights. The party rockets off into the night on their new elephant friend, leaving the mud snake yelling in frustration over his lethal genie act failing to slay the adventurers.

“The Limit” does tread some familiar Adventure Time territory by now: hilariously incompetent side characters, Jake being irresponsible, Finn turning a hopeless situation around at the last moment by an unorthodox plan. However, the imagination the creators bring to the dungeon episodes do a lot to help ease the repetition. The Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant is a great bit of creature design, and while none of the monsters in the labyrinth reach the rarefied heights of the Demon Cat or the Bucket Knight, the painful-looking effects of Jake’s stretching adds a lot of comedy as well as some tension to the story. Most of all, I like how this episode zeroes in on Jake’s weakness to peer pressure. He wants to be liked and he wants his friends to be happy, even if what they want isn’t in their best interests, or even his own. He’s even willing to forego his own life just so his best bro can get his wish. It’s a character flaw that informs everything from the ease at which he’s distracted by chasing accolades at a party to how he encourages Finn’s precocious crush on the older Princess Bubblegum. A fun dungeon crawl episode is more than enough to please me, but it’s these deft character beats that put Adventure Time’s dungeon episodes in above average company.

Jake may have his flaws, but body image issues aren’t among them. Respect.

Notable Quotes:

• “Man, I can’t analyze everything that comes out of my mouth”
• Finn: “Jake, stay with me, man!” Jake: “Nah…”
• “I wish to blow up! I mean, get bi-” *explodes*
• “You weren’t supposed to have your wishes come true! You were supposed to die!” The Mud Snake is channeling Hank Scorpio with this line

Dispatches from the Commentary:

• Cole Sanchez and Jesse Moynihan both cite this episode as one of their favorite episodes they worked on together
• Pen Ward gives an aside to not look to these commentaries for a lot of in-depth analysis of the show. I for one will not be heeding these words
• Pen Ward mentions toning down some of the body horror effects of Jake’s overused stretching, since he’s not a big fan of gross-out shots in cartoons
• Pen claims he designed the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant in the hopes that people would get tattoos of it
• The Mud Snake was originally a snake made of water in the first draft, but in a nod to D&D dungeon design was changed to match the elemental properties of the mud golem featured earlier in the maze.