BMO Noire | Aired: August 6, 2012 | Reviewed by Stars (they come & go)
“Oh No! Stars’ review is missing! BMO is on the case!“
Good morning, good afternoon or good evening to wherever you may be reader. Stars here. My deepest apologies for this late review, but we’re finally here!
BMO noire detective extradordinare!
The episode begins with BMO happily playing with himself, before an argument arises between Finn & Jake about a missing sock. This sets the sweet, kind hearted & wholesome BMO on a traditional black & white ‘whodunnit’ investigation into the missing review sock.
I’m not actually a heavy noir fiction fan. I liked the fun of ‘Knives Out’ & it’s sequel enough. Mostly as very fun escapades, but murder mysteries (whilst an interesting dovetail from the usual cop dramas) become a little too repetitive to me, the more you watch. It’s always someone introduced within the episode & there’s only ever a few characters of note introduced within the short time. Though interestingly here, all the background characters are written in such an almost dreamlike way (😉) that they could all be considered suspects (including the titular character)!
Here however, much like with the Knives Out pastiche, I had a lot of fun following along (one of my all time favourite characters) BMO.
I loved this episode! Yeah sure I love BMO, but it’s the considered, comedic contrast of someone as ridiculously cute & thoughtful as BMO, gloriously falling down the path of hardboiled detective!
The episode even comes with the implied violence & sex that is associated with murder mysteries:
“I don’t really get it.”
Yes Indeed BMO… I don’t really get any of it either 😅. But goddamn, do I love BMO’s creative inner voice!
Turns out it wasn’t Ronnie (the guilty mouse) or poor Bebe! It was Lorraine the whole time!1
Oof. Careful BMO, the bad girls are always the most dangerous: as I recently found having played a decades old game called Mass Effect 2 & finding Morinth incredibly attractive 😏… but NO! She’s evil & apparently mating with her doesn’t end well. Though I actually haven’t finished the game series myself. 😅🥲
Additional notes:
- Bebe yells at ladies?!
- Neptr!
- BMO & Lorraine have a secret kissing spot 🤭.
- “Red hot like Pizza summer!” Huh 😏. Oh BMO.
Loved that Niki Yang got to headline this episode! I could definitely stand to hear her more often.
King Worm | Aired: August 13, 2012 | Reviewed by Grumproro
Oops, wrong show!
Or…same show?
Okay, obviously Adventure Time is not Twin Peaks. But if you’re like me, and you tend to see Twin Peaks in all TV (because it is TV) then you might have felt some Lynchian moments in Adventure Time. I’ve felt it a few times before this, as recently as the previous episode, and this episode might not be the most Lynchian one in the series (I can think of at least one more in this season). But this is what I’m thinking about as I write this, so I wanted to start with it. After all, this episode is all about dreams! And fear. What’s more Twin Peaks than that? A lot of things, of course, but I like to exaggerate. But enough about that…
We start with Finn on the throne of the Candy Kingdom. Married to Princess Bubblegum. But it’s immediately clear something is off. Finn recognizes this too.
Ah, the worm with the crown. We saw a worm like this back in season 1. Remember? The weird ending of “Evicted!” Weird. Finn kind of recognizes it, and this distraction leads to what feels like the most unsettling thing in the whole episode.
I find what PB says there very scary. Finn doesn’t know he’s dreaming. Is he being watched? Is he captive? Does he completely misunderstand his entire concept of reality? There isn’t a lot of time to consider this because dream logic takes over. Finn is dragged from one setting to another, floating through his unconscious mind, perhaps. He finds himself on a “dream date” with Flame Princess. But it’s interrupted by another disturbing moment.
Yikes. Okay, so we know he’s trapped in a dream and needs to get out. Find the worm. Got it. But…have you ever noticed how it’s freaking impossible to do anything you really want to do in a dream? I constantly dream about trying to do something simple and mundane, like dial a phone number, and just being totally incapable of doing it. It’s so frustrating! Maybe this is just me. I have very boring, very literal dreams that don’t require analysis to understand. My brain always knows exactly what’s bothering me. And a lot of what we see in the dream in this episode feels like that too. Jake failing miserably at wrapping the present is a good example. Finn trying to reach the worm. Or talk to his dad. It’s a very relatable dream world with dream logic that is so familiar. Uncanny, really.
But at least Finn has a clear task to focus on now. Find the worm! We have a bit of a callback to “Rainy Day Daydream” with Finn’s imagination getting a little out of hand with the shark sword, so he pulls back and reigns in his thoughts to avoid grunking up the dreamscape with his unconscious fears. We then get Ice King calling them Fionna and Cake, and then we get another fun and not at all upsetting image of their dad ignoring them and then “knittnotizing” them. Cool cool cool cool. Anyway, they eventually break the King Worm and wake up!
Wait, that’s not…huh.
So Finn is stuck in the dream more than he knew, and he quickly realizes that the best way out is to grunk up the dreamscape with his unconscious fears. But to do that, he’ll have to face his fears and open…the vault!
Ocean. Lich. PB & the Lich having a very serious grown up conversation without him (no kids allowed! too young!!!). Mysterious glowing green ghost thing. Fears of abandonment and isolation and immaturity. They’re all here. Poor Finn. So alone with all these fears. It’s easy to forget that he’s up against a lot of scary stuff (not to mention all of the non-magical things he has to struggle with just by being a kid trying to raise himself and navigate the messy reality of growing up), so I really appreciate this episode for forcing us to consider that. Even more than all the stuff that makes me think of Twin Peaks, that’s what makes this episode stand out to me. I’m also just delighted to see the writers having fun with dreams in this way. And for balancing just on the edge of terror. And digging, just a little, into what lies just beneath the surface. You know, being TV.
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