This episode is weird for several reasons. First, it’s the first live action episode, which is a little jarring even for a fairly unconventional show like Adventure Time. Second, we’re introduced to a whole lot of new characters played by big stars like Kirstie Alley and Kathy Najimy. It’s also interesting that the writers decided to go with a full half-hour sitcom format as opposed to the usual 12-minute cartoon romp. This is frankly just a completely different kind of episode of Adventure Time than I think we’re used to. Indeed, our first indication that this is a departure from the typical episode is that they replaced the established intro/theme song with something a little different:

Oh. Oops. Watching that clip again, I see what I did there. My bad. My bad. Let me start over.

“Marceline’s Closet” is a fun episode of Adventure Time. Amid a game of hide and seek, Finn and Jake wind up in Marceline’s closet, even though she left a note on her door telling them to stay out of her house (among some other things):

Marceline comes home, and them Adventure Time boys are in a real pickle this time!

Is there a scarier place to have to hide than in a closet? It always produces such intense anxiety in me when a character has to hide in a closet. Here are a few scary moments in cinematic closet-hiding history:

And now we have this:

Finn and Jake are worried about Marceline exacting some kind of cruel revenge on them if they’re found out, but the real danger in “Marceline’s Closet,” is, I think, more wrapped up in the intimate nature of the space. It is such a private area. It smells like Marceline. It is full of Marceline’s things that—even though they’re mundane objects—she ordinarily keeps hidden from view. Finn and Jake are also transgressing into a girl’s space, which would be pretty unknowable to them–especially Finn. And what does a girl like Marceline do in her private, unknowable, girl space? She talks to herself. She picks her nose. She records a kind of overwrought, extremely vulnerable journal-song. She neatens up when a real asshole of a spider breaks her lamp. You know: girl stuff.

Finn concocts a genius plan to lure Marceline away by writing a note telling her to meet them at the treehouse. “How’s it gonna woik?” Jake wonders, in a stooge-like dialect. Finn explains:

I’ll fly the paper, as an airplane, down the bedroom ladder. It’ll triple barrel-roll past the kitchen, open the fridge, and cook some eggs; then, eat the eggs and unfold itself as it lays on the carpet in front of Marceline’s door.

–Finn the Human, explaining his paper airplane plan

Let’s see how that goes:

Finn transgresses a lot further a little later when he catches sight of Marceline undressed in the bathroom. He slinks back to the closet and tells Jake, “I’m not going back out there.” The world cannot be the same to him anymore. He can no longer face it. He has crossed the Rubicon. 1 Nude-i-con? Boob-i-con. No. No. Rubicon. As he later admits to Marceline, once he and Jake are busted, “We saw . . . everything.” That must’ve been a big moment for Finn.

But it’s great how quickly Marceline declares it to be all good because, as she informs them, she hides in their house all the time. This means that Finn is not as private in his private boy space as he once thought. And what does a boy like Finn do in his private boy space?

You know: boy stuff.

One of the cool, and kinda different, things about this episode is how tightly structured it is. Things are introduced earlier that pay off later in a way that I feel is a little atypical for Adventure Time. For example, we see Jake shape-shift into Finn early in the episode, and then again a little later. Jake mentions his fear of Marceline turning into a spider, and then a spider shows up and torments them a little later. Even in the scene with the paper plane, we catch it narrowly avoiding the trashcan before it loops back up and around and crumples up in the trash can. I feel like the show is so free-wheeling that we haven’t seen those kinds of call-backs all that often.

I’ve always identified strongly with Finn, but I’m identifying with him a lot this time around. Particularly in this episode. There’s something to be said here, I think, about a young boy being in a girl’s space for the first time that takes me back to those young boy feelings. Maybe some of y’all know what I’m talking about. In any case, this is one of those episodes (of many throughout all of Adventure Time) that get at a very specific, kinda shitty, kinda cool, totally wondrous part of what it’s like to be a boy.

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Written and Storyboarded By: Kent Osborne & Somvilay Xayaphone | Aired: January 16, 2012 | Reviewed by: Josephus

This is a really light episode, and you know what? That’s fine. Not every adventure has to be world-shaking, and what’s great about this one is that even Finn clearly isn’t taking it seriously.

It definitely helps that the jokes in this one are some of the funniest the show has had in awhile.

It’s also fun to explore these guys’ weird yet mundane ass lives. And we get some nice low-key world development in the background.

Now, this is an episode largely propelled by the boys kind of being jerks to each other. Usually I hate that trope, but it comes off pretty naturally here. Jake is clearly struggling to pay attention to an incredibly dull book.

Poster boy for executive dysfunction that he is, this is taking everything he has. Finn, meanwhile, is about as 13 as he ever gets in any episode, and takes all of five seconds to start distracting Jake, who snaps back more than is warranted and tells Finn, “I’m not going on some made up adventure with you.”

And Finn, paladin that he is, immediately gets offended by this slight on his honor that he’d ever make up an adventure. He storms off and wanders past a series of books that ends before he can get to T and the censors got involved, then quickly gets embroiled in an incredibly minor conflict between Pagelings, those blank pages at the front of old books, and Moldos, weird little squishy mold monsters or something.

Mostly, though, Finn just wants Jake to believe him. So when he finds out the Moldos’ bites sting he takes the Pagelings’ leader to track down their lair (which takes all of five seconds) and in the guise of an elaborate triple-cross he just snatches up their elected offical and a bunch of other Moldos and throws them at Jake.

After some panicked flailing, Finn discovers that his disgusting sweaty t-shirt is a perfect offering to the Moldos and he brokers peace between ancient enemies for generations to come.

Which Jake doesn’t give the tiniest crap about, and he storms off.

So, like I said above, this episode mostly manages to make a trope work that I personally find kind of annoying and lazy, and I think it pulls it off by mostly being in-character for the guys to get kind of abrasive to each other when one of them is trying to focus on something they think is important. This isn’t even the last time they’ll get angry at each other when one of them is taking something seriously but the other isn’t.

And, like I said above, this might be one of the funnier episodes to me. Not only is the writing great, the art is definitely right there with it. A lot of the facial expressions and little details are really perfect, and there’s some really awesome little bits of animation.

I don’t usually use a lot of gifs in these reviews, but I had to use at least a couple for this one. That bit where Finn comes sliding out from behind the bookcase before he starts pummeling Jake, or the awesome little arm-shoulder wave thing where he smoothly tosses his backpack off. Just really amazing work on the motion there in tiny moments where it wasn’t necessary at all. That kind of craft is a lot of what I love about this show.

Random Thoughts:

• Again, this episode is one of my favorites just for comedy so I have to resist the urge to put like half the episode’s dialogue in quotes here.
• But honestly, the, “I’m not a king, I was democratically elected”, Finn’s genuine “That’s adorable”, before snatching him, then someone in the crowd crying, “Our elected official!” is a sequence that just lives in my brain all the time.
• Also-
  Finn: “Why didn’t you reveal yourselves to him?”
  Pete: “Because we are secret guardians. Secret.“
• They do the “11 minutes” joke a lot, and it never fails to tickle me. I also love that this implies the whole episode happened in real time.
• I didn’t bring this up before, but it shows up in this episode too, so I might as well. In The Creeps, another episode I reviewed, there’s a painting dated “8/18/2012”, and the same dates recur twice in this one, once in a slip of paper inside a book, and once in the books on the shelf in the background. It’s the wedding date of one of the background painters, Santino Lascano, and because this aired before that, I like to imagine a bunch of nerds obsessing over it then it turns out it’s just some dude’s anniversary.
• I think I’m going to start adding “… forever, in a pit!” to the end of my curses.
• Not that we needed more confirmation at this point, but the fact that Pete references Odysseus and Tartarus reinforces that this is definitely supposed to be our Earth.
• Mixed into the library patrons are some of the backrub people from the tarts episode, and the ghost guy Finn and Jake saved from his crippling Drop Ball addiction.