Princess Monster Wife
Boarded by Somvilay Xayaphone and Bert Youn
Originally Aired: May 28, 2012
Review by: CedricTheOwl
Starting with season 3, Adventure Time has revisited a lot of the concepts and plots of its first two seasons with a much more critical eye. Finn’s crush on Princess Bubblegum, the Ice King’s status as resident crazy wizard, and Marceline’s relationship with her father are all concepts the show has returned to with greater nuance. “The Creeps” and “From Bad to Worse” are practically sequels to early season episodes in all but name, with the creators using the repeated premise to amp up the horror elements. I hesitate to call any of them “more serious” treatments, as all of these episodes still contain plenty of great jokes, but there’s certainly a greater tension between the cartoony art style and jokes and the thematic elements the show is attempting to explore.
That tension is at the heart of “Princess Monster Wife” as the writers turn their gaze towards the Ice King’s obsession with capturing princesses. The episode immediately opens with the princesses of Ooo quite literally in shambles. Some are missing arms and legs, some half their heads, others have entire cross sections carved out of them. Poor Hot Dog Princess is half the woman she used to be. Finn and Jake are rightly disgusted by the perpetrator’s crimes, and there’s really only one suspect here: the Ice King.
As Finn and Jake confront him in his castle, the Ice King plays innocent. To the boys’ surprise, IK has a new wife, and is just as concerned as they are about her being the next victim. He introduces them to the eponymous princess: a grotesque amalgamation of all the parts taken from the princesses, inexpertly stitched together into a humanoid form. Understandably, F and J are so shocked they immediately pass out.
Here’s where the tension of the episode’s concept really comes into play. This is easily the most horrible thing the Ice King has done to the princesses of Ooo. Kidnapping and imprisoning them is obviously not great, but carving them up to create a homunculus of, as he describes, “all his favorite parts of his favorite princesses” is a huge escalation. On the other hand, this hasn’t caused any of the princesses any debilitating harm. Some are more put out than others – PB’s speech impediment from having a quarter of her head missing is quite a setback – but others seem merely annoyed at the inconvenience. Skeleton Princess even says that losing a leg is a semi-regular occurrence for her. Even the more humanoid characters like Doctor Princess seem annoyed yet unfazed, despite having several major organs carved out of her. Compare this to how seriously Princess Bubblegum’s injuries were treated in “Mortal Folly” and “Mortal Recoil” when she received broadly comparable levels of dismemberment. Ice King’s actions are indefensibly awful, but the understated reaction of the princesses still allows us to process the scenario as a joke.
Contrary to previous claims, the perp could indeed handle LSP’s lumps
That tension escalates even further as we’re pulled along with Finn and Jake into the domestic life of Princess Monster Wife and Ice King. Shockingly, especially considering the circumstances of PMW’s creation, they seem to enjoy a cozy life together. PMW’s form doesn’t allow her to chew food well, so the Ice King makes a game out of spreading his food around to make her feel less self-conscious. They split the dish-washing duties fairly, and IK is quick to resolve to letting the dishes soak when PMW shows difficulty with drying them. He even treats her to a flight through his kingdom, showing off its crystalline beauty (if you can ignore the visible guts of the ice buffalo) while serenading her with a recording of himself singing a romantic song, with another recording of himself singing backup vocals. He ends the tour by presenting PMW with a pair of ice sculptures of the two of them, forever in domestic bliss.
“A whole ice world!” “Don’t you dare get frostbite.”
And yet, Princess Monster Wife can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong with her. She’s clearly upset by Finn and Jake’s reaction to her, and the sight of her own visage for the first time only reinforces that discomfort. Once again, Ice King is quick to reassure her that she’s beautiful and that he loves her. Through his monologue and the following scene of them watching television together, Ice King is trying to reinforce one singular point: he and PMW are normal, just like everyone else. It’s a considerate thing to do, but his insistent repetition of the word “normal” strikes me as subconsciously trying to convince himself that he’s alright, as much as he is trying to convince her.
But the doubts in PMW’s mind persist. Despite the outward resemblance her life bears to the family scene on television, she can’t help but perceive the way others react to her. Gunter hisses at her and runs off. Finn and Jake awaken just long enough to call her a monster, then pass out once again. Another look at her reflection drives her to tears, and a disastrous attempt by the Ice King to bolster her confidence with a fashion show only pushes her further towards despair.
There’s definitely an undercurrent to this episode about societal norms having an adverse effect on one’s self-image. Princess Monster Wife can’t help but compare the sitcom family to her own proxy family on TV. In contrast to the basic, homogenized family in the show, She and the Ice King could not look more different. Their “children” are two passed out strangers to her, dragged into this facsimile of a domestic life like a more kid-friendly riff on the ending of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even the Ice King’s encouragement to flaunt her beauty through fashion only ends with her being exposed to more scorn from the assembled Gunters. I can see a lot of self-conscious teens identifying with PMW crying in her room after her latest tacit rejection by society.
In an extraordinarily ill-advised final gambit, Ice King reveals the secret of Princess Monster Wife’s creation to her: she’s an assemblage of body parts stolen from other princesses. PMW understandably doesn’t take this well, driving her into a full-on identity crisis. Ice King assures her that she is a person beyond just her body, and assures her he would love her even without the other princess’ parts.
Spoiler Level – Season 10 and Beyond
As with most of the Ice King’s infatuation with princesses, this part heavily foreshadows Simon’s love for his lost wife, Betty. She’s been dead for a thousand years, and even when she’s brought to Ooo through time travel, her true self becomes just as lost to Simon when she takes on Magic Man’s madness. And as revealed in the Fionna and Cake miniseries, their seemingly idyllic love had a lot more complications to it than at first glance.
Finn and Jake take this opportunity to mount a counterattack against the Ice King, blindfolding themselves so that Princess Monster Wife can’t cause them to faint from terror. The Ice King distracts them while yelling for PMW to escape, but even while blindfolded the boys easily overpower him with stretchy arms and Three Stooges style slapstick violence. But upon subduing the Ice King, the boys find that PMW has indeed escaped. And it seems she’s decided to take the Ice King proclamation of love on its face.
We’re then treated to a montage of Princess Monster Wife returning the errant body parts to their correct princesses. She doesn’t quite get things right with Lumpy Space Princess, but her heart is in the right place (that place being, presumably, in LSP’s chest). This continues until there’s nothing left of her but the cloak she used for clothing. Princess Monster Wife’s body is gone, and tragically the Ice King’s mind can’t remember his words to her, ending the episode on a joke about her “giving away all his stuff”.
There’s a lot to say about this ending and how it relates to the circumstances of one’s birth vs how they’re nurtured and raised. Princess Monster Wife received plenty of gentle, genuine support from the Ice King, but she couldn’t overcome her own doubts about the way society viewed her. She was born of a horrific crime against other people (even if they’re taking it relatively well), but she develops the morality to recognize how wrong it is, even when Ice King says otherwise. Hers is a complex tragedy that has a lot of interesting layers to pick apart. We’ll also see a lot of these themes reflected in our next episode.
Spoiler Level – Snail
Among the assembled princesses. Blink and you’ll miss it, because similar shots of them don’t have the snail included
Stray Observations –
- Finn and Jake’s reactions to Princess Monster Wife can be pretty harsh, but I do get a laugh out of them casually passing out after seeing her during the fashion runway scene.
- Ice King singing along with a recording of himself, then bringing out another recording of himself singing falsetto, is my favorite joke of the episode. Great mix of sweetness and silliness.
- Princess Monster Wife is voiced by Hynden Walch (Princess Bubblegum), Pen Ward (Lumpy Space Princess), and Steve Little (Turtle Princess) speaking in unison.
Dispatches from the Commentary –
- Bert Youn likes to draw Finn with visible gums when he screams. I always like it when the boarders point out each other’s signature artistic flourishes.
- Pen Ward talks a bit about the difficulty of matching his voice to Hynden Walch’s performance while still maintaining LSP’s cadence when creating PMW’s voice.
- Pat McHale wrote “Something Special”, the Ice King’s love ballad.
Goliad
Boarded by Tom Herpich and Skylar Page
Aired June 4, 2012
Reviewed by Prestidigititis
It’s rare enough for a show to “hit its stride” during its lifetime. A show that lasted as long as Adventure Time did still doesn’t have a guarantee that it’ll hit its stride, and find a consistent creative voice and rhythm to carry it through a period of genuinely great episodes and story arcs. It’s to Adventure Time’s credit that it not only hit its stride, but it in fact hit more than one stride throughout its seasons.
Season four hits one of those strides, and it’s maybe the strongest the show ever had. Finn’s romantic awakening is heating up. Ice King’s weirdness and sadness has its established history, and will be getting a lot of attention. There’s Ooo lore coming soon which is unashamedly crazy and wild. And the biggest left-turn in the series so far will hit at the end of the season, causing a collective jaw-drop in the fandom that will carry it through the season break. When season four was airing, it was a good time to be an Adventure Time fan.
When a show hits its stride, even the “side episodes” are brilliant. “Goliad” doesn’t have a lot to do with filling in the lore blanks, but it benefits from the stride the show is hitting: it makes big assumptions, introduces big personalities, takes huge swings, and connects almost all the time.
Princess Bubblegum has responded to the recent threats to her life with a single minded focus on creating her “successor,” should science never quite get to the point where PB can cheat death entirely. Combining candy soup, algebra, and a little regal DNA courtesy of one of PB’s baby teeth, her successor is born: a beautiful, catlike sphinx creature with the voice and understanding of a child. Goliad.
(Let’s get this out of the way real quick: Goliad, and her brother Stormo seen later, are voiced by Wendy and Henry Linehan. They are the children of Graham Linehan, a British television writer, who is most well known for taking a sharp right turn in recent years into virulent TERFdom. When AT was in production, this part of his personality was either unknown or nonexistent, It ended up estranging him from his family, including his children. Just something to note and pass over.)
PB is in desperate need of some sleep, having worked on Goliad for several days straight, so Finn and Jake volunteer to take Goliad out and help fill her “mondo-mama brains” with lessons about how to be a good leader. Maybe candy preschool isn’t the best place to go, but it makes some sense…it’s where kids are taught how to follow instructions and feel safe. Unfortunately, candy kids are rowdy and hard to control. When they decide to try to get up in Jake’s face to infest his brain, Jake explodes in a fit of barking and screaming, making sure the little whelps know for sure who’s Don Juan Cherry Tempo around there. It works, but it also shows Goliad that leadership means yelling, threats, and using your size and volume to scare folks into doing what you want them to.
When Goliad pulls these tactics with the kiddies on Finn’s makeshift obstacle course, Finn intervenes. Leadership isn’t about fear and loudness. It’s about being smart, being persuasive. Control through Encouragement. “Use those beautiful brains, girlfriend,” he imparts to her, which gives Goliad an even worse wrong idea: using her until-then latent psychic powers to move Finn through the obstacle course telekinetically, leaving him gasping for air. When Goliad’s explanation as to why this new way is the best way to lead, even Finn has his doubts about just why she may be wrong. At which point the team has no choice but to bring Goliad back to the Princess for some damage control.
But things are too far out of hand by now. PB’s attempted bee/flower metaphor doesn’t sway Goliad, who is now certain that strength is all that matters if it means you attain your goal. “Bee is stronger than flower. Goliad is stronger than bee. Goliad is stronger than all.” When Princess decides things are too far gone, and Goliad must be disassembled, her thoughts are being listened to by Goliad who is indeed too far gone in her powers. She has decided that PB’s castle belongs to her now (and by extension, one assumes, all of PB’s kingdom).
While Princess Bubblegum rushes off to solve the crisis, Goliad starts to reign terror over the poor candy citizens, plumbing Finn and Jake’s mind to find out just what PB plans to do. The internal mental struggles between Finn and Goliad make for some great bits of comedy while keeping the peril ratcheted way up high. Poor Jake once again gets his skin stuffed full of candy citizens, deforming him in ways equal parts gross and hilarious.
Just when it seems like our hero might lose, PB appears with the newly-minted Stormo, another sphinx that can match Goliad in strength and tenacity. Created this time with the DNA from a strand of Finn’s hair, Stormo and Goliad engage in an eternal Psychic Showdown, where neither will be outmatched by the others’ power, thus neutralizing them both. These two are shown in the background of a few future episodes, still locked in their stalemate, sparing the Candy Kingdom from the unchecked power Goliad discovered in herself. The day is saved, thanks to PB, and sort of thanks to Finn…who wishes his new avatar (and in a sense his new son) a happy birthday.
Notes:
- The hyperactive candy kids are genuinely scary in the preschool scene. I guess that’s to be expected when your kids are not just on a candy rush, but actually made of candy.
- Stormo’s self-sacrificing instinct comes from Finn’s heroic nature imprinted deep into the DNA included in Stormo’s makeup. That doesn’t say much for Princess Bubblegum’s DNA, slipped into Goliad’s makeup via her baby tooth. I guess it’s no surprise by now that PB isn’t a saint, but the creators are definitely making a choice here to show just how deeply Bubblegum’s personal flaws run.
- I love how Jake explains that “kids croove doozyploon” rather than “crave discipline.” Not sure how or why that line read came about, but it’s goddamn perfect, and something I find myself repeating from time to time.
- Likewise, I’m glad that they left in Wendy Linehan’s initial verbal stumble when drill-sergeanting the candy kids. “I’m Don John Terry Chem—Cherry Tempo” indeed.
- “Goliad” is the name of a town in Texas that Tom Herpich thought was cool-sounding.
- These dudes really like their obstacle courses.
Snail?
Why, it was sitting atop a cubby-hole at the preschool:
