Love Games

Boarded by: Cole Sanchez, Kent Osbourne, and Andy Ristaino
Originally Aired: September 23, 2013
Reviewed by: CedricTheOwl

After a brief foray into time manipulation and past life regression, we’re back to dealing with the fallout of Finn’s breakup with Flame Princess.  It’s understandable from a narrative perspective.  Breakups take time to process, especially one’s first breakup, and Adventure Time’s commitment to showing the breakup process in all of its messy detail is an ambitious swing for a show that was billed as a wacky high fantasy adventure series.  However, this episode also gives the impression that the creators themselves are nervous about losing their audience with this focus on relationships, which makes this episode seem less sure than Adventure Time’s usual standard.

Our episode opens with Jake interviewing Finn for his amateur radio show.  I was tempted to call this a “primitive podcast”, but the wording of Jake’s ad breaks implies a more traditional radio show.  Podcasts were rapidly growing in popularity by 2013, with nearly 7000 more new podcasts started that year as compared to 2012, so the decision to model the show after a terrestrial radio production seems like a deliberate decision.

On-air, Finn talks about taking himself off the dating market, though his proclamations (at Jake’s prompting) that there’s no ulterior motives to his decision aren’t the most convincing.  Off the air, Finn elaborates that he thinks romance was getting in the way of his adventuring lifestyle.  This specific line is where I extrapolate the notion that the show’s crew were getting cold feet about this storyline.  Adventure Time has the production pipeline of a traditionally animated show, meaning there’s approximately a nine month span between the conception of an episode and its airing.  If the show takes a big risk, or dwells too long on a plot line that the audience isn’t buying, the showrunners won’t know about it until long after it’s too late.  Adventure Time is doing both here:  this is the most in-depth the show has gone into its romance subplots and the most serialization in near-consecutive episodes the show has yet attempted.  Finn promising to get back to adventuring feels like a reassurance to the audience as much as it does an in-character statement.

As luck would have it, an adventure literally comes knocking at Finn’s door that very moment.  It’s Slime Princess, bringing news that her hotter, younger, evil sister is trying to usurp her throne and turn the Slime Kingdom into an expansionist military power.  Action and intrigue await!  As Monkey’s Paw luck would have it, the only way to resolve this crisis is with more romance.  Finn has to pretend to marry Slime Princess in order to secure her throne against her sister Blargatha’s claim.  Adventure Time is fond of trolling its audience, and this is a funny way of technically delivering on the promise of more adventure while keeping the narrative focus on Finn’s romantic growth.

Finn is understandably skeptical, both about diving into a new relationship and the notion of entering a political marriage at age 15.  The show even offers an amusing out:  Ice King, still Finn’s roommate at this point, is all for taking Finn’s place in this plot.  That would undoubtedly lead to a comedic train wreck that our boys would have to clean up, but it is not meant to be.  Finn reluctantly agrees upon reassurance from Slime Princess that, despite her crushing on Finn in the past, she isn’t looking to actually get married any more than Finn is.  Finn’s popularity with the princesses (at least the ones he’s not interested in) has been a consistent running gag in earlier seasons, but this is the first time the joke has been revisited now that Finn doesn’t have a dedicated love interest.

Slime Princess leads Finn to a Hidetaka Miyazaki-worthy fetid swamp, which hides a surprisingly expansive kingdom under its surface.  Monty Python has forever poisoned my brain about the notion of building something on a swamp, but the Slime Kingdom designs do a great job at looking sufficiently gooey without just looking like piles of muck.  Special shout-out to their “Triple-Cray Rated Disco”, the only one of its kind in Ooo.  Jake is along for the ride as well, but as in many episodes that focus on Finn, he relegates himself to popcorn munching while watching the action unfold, this time literally.

Finn debuts in front of the slime citizens (slimezens?) as SP’s husband, and the ruse seems off to a good start.  At least until Blargatha challenges the new couple to the ancient Trials of Glarb, a contest to see which pair makes the cutest couple:  Finn and Slime Princess, or Blargatha and Guillermo.  I haven’t mentioned Blargatha’s main squeeze Guillermo yet, whose hand in marriage gave her the claim to challenge Slime Princess’ throne, and with good reason.  From his brief in-person appearance it’s obvious that something’s up with him.  I’ll cut to the chase here:  he’s a literal puppet made by Blargatha to support her ambitions.  In a way, Finn is the same to Slime Princess in this scenario; he’s only there to support SP’s rule, even though he’s visibly uncomfortable with the proceedings.

The first of the trials is the Contest of Crooning, a challenge for one contestant to sing the most swoon-worthy ballad to their paramour.  Finn busts out a surprisingly soulful and melancholic song, pining for Flame Princess in every way but by name and mourning his inability to just let go of their relationship.  Blargatha by contrast can barely manage an innuendo towards Guillermo.  Advantage:  Finn and Slime Princess.  The second trial is the Contest of Spooning, and while Slime Princess is all for it, the requirement of physical affection is a bridge too far for Finn in this fake relationship.  It’s interesting to use this contest as a benchmark to measure Finn’s emotional growth from the early seasons.  In season 2 he was barely able to articulate the concept of liking a girl, whereas here he’s able to express his emotions openly and confidently, even if he doesn’t fully understand them.  By contrast, his ability to give and receive physical affection is even worse off than it was before.  Be it close proximity to his breakup with Flame Princess or just the requirement of his previous relationship to limit physical contact as much as possible, one aspect of his romantic development has blossomed while the other has atrophied.

Not what a roll in the hay typically means

The third contest is the Trial of Smooching, and given Finn’s reluctance to even cuddle, the odds of him being able to out-neck Blargatha aren’t great.  After some deliberation with Slime Princess, Finn decides to drop the facade and just go punch out Guillermo mano-a-slimo.  Upon entering Slime Princess’ quarters, he has to contend with the fruit of Blargatha’s labors:  an entire division of slime tanks.  Thankfully her ambitions seem to overextend her reach, as tanks that a human boy can chop in half with his bare hands don’t seem like a world conquering threat, and before long the Guillermo deception is laid out.

Her plans defeated, Blargatha opens up about her motivations:  she’s just too sexy for her slime.  Women want to be her, men want to be with her, and both are too intimidated by her devastating good looks to approach her to get to know the real her.  It’s a perfectly self-centered reason for taking over the world, reminiscent of the all-too-common motivation of evil queens in fantasy and fairy tales to be entirely motivated by vanity, rendered all the more ridiculous coming out of an amorphous pile of goo.  And since her actions are merely grossly unethical and immoral, not illegal, she receives no punishment beyond disqualification from the Trials of Glarb.  Good thing this kind of thing would only happen in a goofy fantasy pastiche and not real life. Screams into pillow.

Girl, same.

With the day saved and the slimezens cheering for a happy ending, Finn decides to give kissing Slime Princess one more shot.  Surprisingly, it’s Slime Princess that balks at it, throwing up before they can seal the deal and their lips.  This is where I feel like the episode trips over the finish line.  SP has been vocal about her attraction to Finn, both in this episode and in previous ones, so it wasn’t like she was just faking feelings for the sake of politics.  I could also see this as a joke about the differences in their character design.  Instead of Finn being grossed out at the prospect of kissing a sentient pile of swamp ooze, it’s the other way around.  But that still raises the question of SP’s behavior in previous episodes.  The most likely explanation I can think of is that the writers didn’t want to introduce yet another romance subplot to complicate what is already going on, so they shut down any potential interpretation of romantic interest in the most unequivocal manner they could think of.  It’s functional for that purpose, but doesn’t quite land as a solid joke for me.  It’s a halting end to a flawed but otherwise decent continuation of the ongoing Flame Princess arc.

Notable Quotes:

• “Oh, we always come here when we want to shake it, Finn.  It’s the only triple-cray rated disco in all of Ooo.”
• “Get your face pretty, Finn.  My people are already assembled in the courtyard.”
• “I dunno.  I’m still jacked up over my lady biz.”
• “Maybe later we can get Do Not Disturb.  I’m done!”
• “WRAP THOSE GORGEOUS PYTHONS AROUND ME!” – Don’t be fooled by this episode, folks. This line works 100% of the time, everytime.
• “You’re alone in the hottest, most sexiest prison.  So I stuck some olives in a glop of jelly and called him my lover.”

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Dungeon Train

Written and Storyboarded by Steve Wolfhard and Thomas Herpich | Aired: September 30th, 2013 | Reviewed by Prestidigititis

The moral of the story is: if you’re sad, play lots of video games.

My childhood fell in a weird time when it comes to games. For me, video games meant spending quarters at actual video arcades, and the advent of home computers. We had an Atari 2600, but consoles didn’t really become a Thing That Raised Kids until the advent of the NES. The NES wound up introducing a whole visual/storytelling language to a whole generation. Loot drops, dungeon crawls, boss fights…can you imagine that the term “boss fight” didn’t exist for the first 20 years or so of gaming?

The folks behind Adventure Time are obviously products of the generation for whom a lot of video games are woven so deeply into the tapestry of life that it’s impossible to really notice it until you step waaaaay back. Or get up reeeeeal close, depending on how you want to apply the metaphor. Finn and his world are so heavily embedded into that understanding of achievement and purpose that one can say the show is a gaming comedy, rather than an adventure comedy. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overblown, but it’s not that far from the truth.

Finn’s still hopelessly caught up in the sadness and uncertainty of his first real relationship ending, being forced to reckon with a whole batch of new feelings and confusion. His best bud Jake certainly sees it, and he’s doing his best for the boy: taking him off to investigate this “mystery cave” that Flambo’s brother mentioned. They run into the titular Dungeon Train in a wooded area: just an ouroboros of train cars on a circular track, being propelled by no visible engine. Seems simple enough to maneuver through, but in the midst of Jake’s blingle-blongle-bloongle explanation, a random beastie warrior races into the train car brandishing a sword. Finn acts on instinct and punch-shoves him off the train. Left behind? Some sweet loot! Helmets, jewelry, some odd coins or something…and a freakin’ dope sword that looks like a lightning bolt and shoots electricity. As Finn notes while he swooshes it in the air, it “feels kinda right.”

And so the lads are off to explore the train, Finn being super-invigorated by the battles with baddies each car offers. A blatant homage to games like the Zelda series, where groups of evils can be encountered in self-contained dungeon-rooms, and taken down in quick skirmishes with sweet rewards. This is just what Finn needs. By activating his heroic, quest-driven impulses, he finds a way to be back in sync with himself.

Jake starts to get wary—and weary—of the cycle when Finn shows no interest in stopping. Not to go check out that cave, nor to take a break and go home for some food. Even when a glimpse of Finn’s future is seen in a Boss-loot future crystal, where Finn is incredibly old and making just the worst ant puns, he’s not interested in a change. This is the most “himself” Finn has felt in a while: “Stuff makes sense here.” To Finn, having to worry about nothing but what enemies might be in the next train car is the perfect counterbalance to his real world problems and emotional pain.

Jake’s not into it at all. He has a reflective moment on the roof of the train with a Hair Ape enemy, wondering what his kids are up to. When Jake is the voice of realistic concern, you know things are at a dangerous point. It’s now been a day of nothing but battle and dungeoning for Finn. He’s become so powered-up by now that Jake mistakes him for a boss enemy. And…he kinda is. Like so much else in Ooo, there’s a potential for some nasty side-effects to seep into the simple serotonin cycle of action that helps Finn feel a bit of healing. In that sense…Ooo’s very much like real life, isn’t it?

When Jake tries to forcibly remove his bro from the train, Finn’s new weapons and abilities are just way too much for Jake. He’s way too far gone to want to leave now. He gazes back into the future crystal to see how awesome he’s meant to become on the train—and only then does he notice that, throughout it all, even though he’s not enjoying himself, Jake has been there. Devoted to his buddy, and not wanting to be without him, even if it means putting aside everything else he enjoys in the world. And that’s when reality hits Finn. The dungeon train rolls on forever, but you can’t stay there. Finn’s inside voice wants to keep going, at least for another week or so. But his assurances to Jake that he won’t stay forever are confirmed when the future crystal shows them together, simply washing dishes. 

So the moral of the story is: If you’re sad, there’s nothing wrong with finding a way to make yourself happy again…as long as it’s not the only thing you do.

RANDOMITRY:

• I’m nowhere near the kind of gamer (tabletop or video) for whom this episode is really made. I imagine someone who’s been into that scene for a long time spent much of this episode’s runtime looking like that pointing DiCaprio jpg from Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. But I was able to discern a few cute video game references, and I know if I’d played a bunch more Binding of Isaac, I’d feel totally seen by this one.
• I did like how the later enemies were just reskinned versions of earlier ones. And how Finn’s “battle moon” became an orbiting satellite of a bigger “battle planet” in one of the future glances.
• Those boss characters were flippin’ awesome.
• It’s hard not to think about Infinity Train while watching this episode. What a good show. If you’ve never watched it, go watch it.
• “What…is the meaning of ‘soup’?” Even when pondering the imponderables, Finn manages to be a bit of a dim bulb, Glob bless him.
• One thing I appreciate is that the show doesn’t try too hard to explain just what Finn’s “inside voice” is saying, or what it is about the Dungeon Train that allows it to tell him things are “right.” We trust that Finn hears that voice and gets it. We’ve got one of those voices too, and it’s singing its own jam.
• The voice of the first Boss is provided by Pen Ward himself.
• According to the AT Wiki, this episode is 140th aired overall, and is therefore the halfway point between the show’s premiere and its finale. We’re coasting from here, gang!