In which the dragon drags on.

Synopsis: Finn is a popular guy. I mean why wouldn’t he be? He’s a big hero and just saved a bunch of Candy People from a Butt Dragon! Unfortunately popularity comes at a price, and that price is Fandom! Finn just can’t get rid of these hangers on and it’s starting to bother him! He can’t even leave his house, that’s why to get away from it all he creates an Alter Ego named Davey Johnson. (Voiced by Davey Johnson.) The next day Davey falls out of his house and walks into town where he sits in a park, steals coins from a fountain (he gives them back) and sweeps up small brooms with a big broom for a broom salesman all the glorious recognition of nobody! Success! Except now Finn is seemingly gone and is now Davey having had too nice of a time is on full time! Davey even moves out of the tree house and builds a log cabin with a guy named Randy! Jake and BMO understandably can’t let their buddy lose his teacups like that so they stage a robbery and hostage crisis to try to get Finn back. Unfortunately Davey does the sensible and unheroic thing and calls the Banana Guards who promptly arrest Jake for his crimes. Luckily though as Jake is being dragged off he reminds Davey to not let the “Dragon Drag On Man!” and this reminds Finn that he can’t avoid doing Finn stuff and being himself forever so he breaks Jake out of Pris -on and bids Davey (now a Sentient Mustache) farewell.

Review: This is a great little character piece for Finn handily establishing his mental state at the show’s halfway point. He’s struggling with burnout and the pressures of being a public figure and is trying to figure out what direction he wants his Adult Life to go in. Continue to be the Hero he was as a kid and Teen or settle down somewhere and lead a normal life? Whereas celebrities normally put on a hat and baggy sweater and sneak out the back doors to avoid accosting fans. It is revealing that Davey Johnson being an entirely different person from Finn shows that  Finn doesn’t think he can leave the Hero life and still be himself, that on a deep foundational level Finn The Human and Hero Of Ooo are one and the same.

Humor wise this episode is really funny from one Ice Cream man constantly shouting “HAVE DINNER WITH ME” to BMO nicely reassuring Finn that they’re not a real robber, she’s just dressed as one and the always welcome presence of the Banana Guards. “We feed our prisoners in Candy Jail” 

Stray Observations

• Shouty Ice Cream Guy was inspired by a real life fan that kept harassing Pen Ward at a Convention as explained here: Adventure Time: Go Behind The Episode 
• The Dragon’s sad expression at being bisected is funny. Poor guy
• The Broom Store is just a delightful set and one of my favorite gags in the show. Also Davey just kinda went AWOL from the job

Banana Guards mean well but if they don’t know the difference between Jake and Horse it’s doubtful how much peace they can keep

At last, the Dream Team takes the field!

Shelby awakens from a gentle snooze upon Tree Trunks’s emerald dome, and TT catches him up on the situation.  Roll call!

And look, before we get going, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this episode just a complete rip off of the 1997 Canadian horror movie Cube? Or, perhaps, the 2002 Canadian horror sequel Cube 2: Hypercube? Yeah, ok. It is. So what? We all know and love the Cube franchise. This is obviously an homage. Let’s just move on. Jeez.

Just like in the Canadian horror movie Cube and the sequel Cube 2: Hypercube (probably—I haven’t actually seen that one), this motley crew is assembled for reasons beyond their understanding in a sort of a treacherous maze they must navigate, lest they be irrevocably cubed!

Which, of course, makes “Mystery Dungeon” a story about work.

Specifically, just like Cube and Cube 2: Hypercube (probably—again, haven’t seen it), this episode is a commentary on how contemporary knowledge workers now must coordinate and collaborate in response to the ever-shifting contingencies of late capitalist organizational structures. Once upon a time, under hierarchical bureaucratic organizational configurations, our work lives (which for many of us make up the majority of our waking lives) seemed relatively stable and predictable. We worked on, more or less, the same sorts of tasks with, more or less, the same groups of people. Now diverse assemblages of people often are thrown together into sometimes perplexing configurations in order to solve problems and work through complex projects. Who assembled them? Some invisible hand. Why? To ask why is to waste time. The answer is too complex, and anyway it is inevitable. That’s all you need to know. The walls are closing in around you. Your job now is to come up with a response, and you’d better hurry.

The long-term established goals of a given organization used to guide day-to-day decision-making. Workers shared common long-term goals and agreed on what a constituted a positive outcome. Now, the short-term project, whatever it might be, is the guiding principle. Sometimes multiple projects, outcomes, and goals overlap. But this is rare. Under a bureaucratic organizational structure, your collective motivation was a wind at your back, moving everyone along in the same direction. Now, you are expected to draw from some entirely internal reserve of motivation. Grab those bootstraps! Show some grit! Rise and grind!

And if your part of the project is not up to par? If your work should suffer, even for a short while? If you should need a break? If you feel burned out? Don’t be ridiculous. Whereas once the floor seemed solid beneath your feet, it still seemed to have a little give to it. It was stable, yet cushioned. Workers now risk having the ground drop out from underneath them at any moment with no safety net below. Any slight slippage may give way to plummeting.

In other words, we used to show up for work and know what we were doing. Now, we are done knowing what we’re doing and we must just do. As Lemongrab instructs us at the outset of this Cube-like nightmare, “Awake, avast, hold tight your buns, if buns you do hold dear. For time has come to wake and run and not give way to fear.” Hold tight your buns, indeed, Lemongrab.

We must hold tight all our buns.

In these unstable configurations, we must re-invent the wheel constantly. We lack the collegial stability we once enjoyed. We must learn and relearn new clients and colleagues. Who are these people? How can we even begin to understand them?

Leadership was once a matter of status, achieved over time. In the golden Dilbert-ian days of yore, a person with a modicum of expertise would rise through the ranks of an organization and assume command and control by virtue of their position in the hierarchy and their accumulated experience with the long-term workings of the organization. Now, leadership shifts with whatever the project of the moment demands. Some of us bring, say, our baking skills to the project (which, if we’re lucky, calls for baking in the moment) and so we become the de facto leader.

Some colleagues in your networks may thrive off the residual benefits of your expertise.

Sometimes, it is some essential part of ourselves that we bring with us to the project. We are fortunate if a core part of ourself aligns with our work, even if, sometimes, mixing your essential identity with your work identity can leave you feeling drained.

Other times, however, you feel like you were uniquely built for the task that’s required of you.

And still other times, the project-oriented network you find yourself in finds no value in your contributions.

Older bureaucratic organizations have a reputation for being impersonal and alienating. And sometimes they are. But the newer networked realities of our work-lives can also be cold and cruel.

Here’s the thing, though: people like to work. We like to commit ourselves to work that means something. We like to develop our craft and create something–especially if we can collaborate with others in that creative process. We want to feel connected to that work. We breathe life into it, and we hope that it breathes some life back into us. Perhaps these new configurations aren’t ideal for that kind of meaningful work. Maybe we risk perverting the craft we committed ourselves to.

It’s hard to really perceive the effects of this kind of work when we’re mixed up in it. We’re too busy treading water. We awake, avast, and hold tight our buns as we take on another exhausting, chaotic day of re-learning, re-inventing, and reacting. If we can pause for a moment and stand back, outside of the project, look back in on it, and see it for what it is, we might get some perspective: