Apple Thief
Boarded by Tom Herpich and Ben Youn
By Cedric The Owl
We’ve had a lot of strong episodes in a row in season 3 as of late, so it’s easy to feel like this one is a bit of a letdown. Tree Trunks is a divisive character for some, so an episode with her is inevitably going to be more polarizing than one about Marceline or the entire cast genderbent. And while I do think it’s a lesser episode, upon rewatch there’s still some fun little tidbits to pick up on.
The episode opens with Jake making a sumptuous spread of Korean dishes. Seriously, I wonder if one of those YouTube cooking channels has ever covered this episode, because I would love to try making them myself. Alas, Jake enjoying this fine meal is not to be. Finn’s kiddishness rears its head as he enters the kitchen, determined to spoil his appetite with dessert. Jake relents and the boys head off to visit Ooo’s premier pie patissier: Tree Trunks.
In what should be a predictable outcome for them by now, the boys instead stumble upon the scene of a crime. Tree Trunks’ apples have all been stolen, and the culprit left no footprints or clues to go on.
Tree Trunks can’t even fathom the idea of having enemies, and Raggedy Princess saw nothing on account of being knocked into a pit. With the trail going cold, Jake suggests they revisit some of his old haunts from when he was a common purse snatcher, the details of which blow Finn’s little Lawful Good mind.
The show has made oblique references to Jake’s shady past before, but this is definitely the most we’ve ever seen of the Candy Kingdom’s criminal underbelly. Apparently all of Ooo’s petty crooks aren’t quarantined in Thief City after all. Finn, Jake, and Tree Trunks make their way to a sketchy candy bar, but their clean faces and low persuasion checks don’t get them any closer to the apples. Even schmutzing up their faces only lands them in hot water with a gang of candy ne’er-do-wells, who mistake them for members of Doctor J’s gang and threaten them to abandon their search. The trio are going to have to dig a lot deeper if they want to get to the core of this rotten apple business.
Bruised but undaunted, the group follows the trail to the hideout of Wormo, and they have a whole load of apples. Or should I say: lode? To this gang, “apples” are actually slang for diamonds. Our adventurers are no closer to their apple pie, but they are a lot closer to being devoured alive by a nonchalant pig. A timely intervention by the actual Doctor J Gang allows our heroes to escape, and they even bring the pig along.
Rescuing Mr. Pig from a life of crime soon pays off, as he quickly identifies the location of the missing apples: Tree Trunks’ own dresser! Dismayed at her own turn to larceny, the poor elephant lady surrenders herself to the custody of some befuddled Banana Guards, who clap our leading lady in irons while idly commenting on the number of birds in the area. Suddenly, the mystery comes together for Finn: a local flock of magpies had taken TT’s apples to feed their young, which then rolled into a hole in her roof and into their current hiding place. With the day saved at last, adventurers, reformed criminals, and law enforcement officers of dubious qualification all partake in apple pie together.
It’s a pretty simple mystery episode, but the show does play pretty fair with its clues. The outside shots around Tree Trunks’ house show the magpies gathering on her roof, and Raggedy Princess’ placement on the ground is clearly meant to suggest she was acting as a scarecrow before she fell. You don’t need a master sleuth to put this mystery together, which is good because Finn and Jake are hardly that.
But what interests me the most about this episode is an off-hand comment Finn makes upon entering the bar: “Does Princess Bubblegum know about this place?” We’ve seen in past episodes that PB is both highly protective and perhaps a bit controlling of her Candy citizens, which would suggest a place like this should have been shut down immediately if she did find out about it. Is she truly ignorant of the seedy underbelly of her own kingdom when her knowledge of the dangers outside her walls is so great? Or does she turn a blind eye to it, confident that her Candy citizens are ultimately too harmless to pose any real threat?
Spoiler Level: Season 3
Or does she allow a criminal underbelly because it makes the Candy Kingdom seem more like the half-remembered fantasy stories she models her realm after? The crimes being committed don’t make much sense beyond a pale pantomime of fantasy banditry. After all, diamonds and other treasure seem to have little in the way of practical value in the Candy Kingdom economy.
It’s a fun bit of worldbuilding, and yet another square in the quilt that makes up Ooo’s ever-expanding world, but I sympathize with people who don’t care for this episode just for some worldbuilding. Beyond the silliness of the candy gangsters (Wormo in particular has some memorably weird dialog) the mystery resolves on a joke and isn’t that hard to guess in the first place. Ah well, they can’t all be winners.
Notable Quotes –
- “I’m gonna sass those boys up nasty!”
- “All ne’er-do-wells call diamonds ‘apples’. Like calling money ‘bread’, or rockknockers ‘butterslaps'”
- “She slapped my butt.”
Dispatches from the Commentary –
- Ben Youn drew up all the Korean food in the opening scene. Great job making me hungry writing this review, Ben.
- Ben boarded this episode while serving in the South Korean army, as part of every citizen’s mandatory two-year service requirement. Collaborating from that distance with early 2010’s remote work technology was a challenge, but he and Tom Herpich worked together well enough by that time to compensate for it.
- When the backgrounds for the episode first came back to the boarders, Tree Trunks’ trees were covered in apples, defeating the entire purpose of the episode
- Wormo was an experiment by Tom Herpich in writing dialog that’s weirder and more surreal than usual. Perhaps it’s best to think of this episode as a stylistic experiment as well as a worldbuilder episode.
Spoiler Level: Season 4
One of the patrons in the candy bar bears a strong resemblance to future focus episode star Princess Cookie. Pen confirms in the commentary that it is in fact not them, just a cookie that looks similar.
The Creeps
Written and Boarded by Ako Castuera and Jesse Moynihan
By Josephus Brown
To start, it’s definitely Clue, at least at first.
I mean, look at this title card. I can see the revolver, the knife, the rope, the candlestick (maybe? BMO has some blunt object) and even Finn is hiding something behind his back.
Just like the movie Clue, we open on people navigating a storm, before arriving at a mysterious mansion responding to an anonymous invitation.
Spoiler Level: Fifth Season
This mansion (or an alternate version of it) shows up again as the hideout of the Destiny Gang in the alternate universe, except there it’s not seaside. Ooo’s sea level must be a lot higher. We see this one specifically in the past, where it’s the hideout of the Bath Boy Gang, who I mistakenly referred to as “the Bath House Boys” in my notes before realizing that’s something entirely different.
The episode synopsis on Hulu says it’s from “Count Creepystein”, but that’s never said in episode. They get masks and “mystery names”- a litany of fart and butt jokes, except Finn- and are informed that their host is a ghost who will murder them all.
So, at this point we all suspect this is Finn screwing around and trying to get back at Jake for the events of Mystery Train. If it wasn’t obvious enough by the fact that Finn clearly made up their anonymous mystery names, because everyone has puerile jokes while he gets to be “Prince Hotbod”, Jake directly calls it out when Cinnamon Bu… I’m sorry, Mr. Gree… I mean, “Guy Farting”- tries to leave and with a clap of lightning gets skeletonized, just like in Mystery Train.
Finn swears he’s not pranking anyone, but because he swears neither on justice nor on Jake’s cute face, I don’t believe him one bit. There follows a great sequence where Finn has BMO use his ghost detecting equipment on everyone, and we get a good fakeout of Jake being the only one to not blink at the flash, only to have BMO admit he doesn’t have any ghost detecting equipment and just wanted to take “pretty pictures”.
At this point it goes more House on Haunted Hill where we can’t be sure if we’re being put on or not. The group splits up to search the house for emergency lights in case the lights go out again. BMO and Jake search the basement, where we get Jake asking BMO what we’re all wondering about whether this is a prank or not. BMO gives a cute little speech about things being scary sometimes, which is why we have to look for the light, only to get pulled away in the dark downstairs.
Knowing what we know at the end of the episode, this bit seems weird, right? If Jake really is double-crossing Finn, then what happens here? Why do they have this conversation? A lot of people have pointed this out as the episode’s biggest plot hole, but personally I think the answer is just that Jake didn’t let BMO in on it, so BMO is genuinely trying to keep the charade up, and it’s Finn with a sheet over him pulling BMO into the darkness because this is still his plan, while the ghost we see fly by is Lady Rainicorn stalking Jake and BMO in her disguise.
I think it’s funny that a lot of people have brought this up as being the biggest plot hole in this episode when what I want to know is-
How the heck is this mansion so clean?!
Anyway, after the horror downstairs, the group gathers minus BMO, hears what sounds like LSP getting murdered but is just her using the bathroom, and we get what I feel like is peak LSP.
In my notes I basically wrote down everything she says here:
“My lumpin’ body’s all hollow now. I gotta put something in it. So here’s the food? What kind of castle is this? This is like a poor person’s castle! With no lumpin’ waffles for my dump truck!”
Me and my sister may have said, “This is like a poor person’s castle” many times when going through the pantry when we were low on groceries.
They try to quiz each other on things that “only the real you” would know, we get a bit about Finn’s recurring elevator dreams, Bubblegum just casually staking Finn’s heart, and LSP breaking down and admitting she broke up with her boyfriend because he was going too fast for her. I love that this is both a cute and vulnerable moment for her but also that as she keeps going on, everyone just sort of ignores her drama and waits for her to finish.
Suddenly a ghost comes through the ceiling and liquifies Princess Bubblegum. Aaaaaand here’s where the episode takes a turn.
Finn screams, “A REAL GHOST?!” and the jig is up. He confesses everything to Jake, who seems a bit too gleeful when Finn confesses to him, seeing as he ostensibly just saw Princess Bubblegum die horrifically in front of him, but honestly this isn’t that far out of character for Jake. Finn rushes over to the closet where BMO and Cinnamon Bun are supposed to be hiding and we get this horrifying shot.
Things escalate from here and LSP gets trapped in a painting, and the boys flee.
Knowing that Jake is putting one over on Finn makes this escape bit more sensical, as Jake literally pulls his punches against the door and stalls his escape before getting caught too.
Aaaaand here the episode veers again, as Finn all alone faces down a horrifying green ghost that materializes out of a bookshelf.
Finn uses an actual wall breaching technique to escape as the house comes alive around him, and eventually he’s cornered in the observatory by… Lady Rainicorn in a literal bedsheet. Jake gloats over his victory… Except he had nothing to do with the ghost and refuses to believe Finn when he tells him.
As they all fly away on Lady, we get this amazing closing moment:
This is a real great episode. It definitely plays looser with the mystery rules than Mystery Train did, though I think it’s not as loose as some folk on the internet would argue. Besides, it’s going for more of a supernatural vibe than an Agatha Christie one, and Clue the movie itself cheats quite a bit. It also gets away with some shocking horror, between Bubblegum melting and having two characters’ literal guts spattered all over a closet. Sure, it’s a pastry and a tiny computer, but I remember it being shocking as hell when I first saw it.
It also establishes that Finn isn’t as psychologically healthy as he lets on, because the ease with which he represses this memory is real unsettling. It makes sense that a boy like him would have a ton of traumatic memories, and this is one of our first real hints that there’s a lot going on under there.
Spoiler Level: Seasons Five and Ten
We revisit this specifically, when Finn starts having nightmares and sleepwalking episodes and he uncovers that the Ghost Lady is actually one of his past lives. Finn’s vault and his tendency to repress things also recurs in the finale. In literal form (assuming anything in a dream can be said to be in “literal form”), when he has to access his vault to save the alternate universe Finn who’s at the core of Fern’s being.
Mystery Names:
- Finn- Prince Hotbod
- Jake- Randy Butternubs
- BMO- Professor Pants
- Princess Bubblegum- Lady Quietbottom
- LSP- Duchess Gummybuns
- Cinnamon Bun- Guy Farting
Random Thoughts:
- This is supposed to be a Halloween episode along with the next one, though honestly this is a good little streak of horror episodes coming for the next few episodes.
- Jake tossing the invite with his name after unenthusiastically announcing that he’s “Randy Butternubs” slays me.
- There’s a ton of great little details in the paintings in the background, like how the one LSP is trapped in has a title placard that identifies it in Spanish as “The Fox Hunt”. Real thought went into this one.
- Finn’s recurring elevator dream has “a half orc shaman”, I love how specific that is, and another vaguely D&D flavored bit of the show’s genetics.
- I laugh every time at the whole “only the real you would know” exchange. Jake being gossipy and admitting it, LSP dramatically blabbing about her boyfriend and them all assuming that must be the real her, and Bubblegum just casually crushing Finn’s heart.
- Everything LSP says in this one is great. I mentioned her “poor people’s castle” rant above, but even little things like, “I blinked my balls. My eye balls.” is amazing.
- When Finn says, to Lady Rainicorn, “You can phase people into your body?”, apparently her response in Korean is something like, “Yes, me and Jake become one body all the time.” Filthy!
The snail!
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