We Fixed A Truck
Directed by
Elizabeth Ito & Nick Jennings
Written and Storyboarded by
Cole Sanchez & Andy Ristaino
Sometimes we have to forgive the ones we love for transgressions.
But sometimes something is utterly unforgivable. Someone has crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.
And that time is now.
Because Banana Man describes an internal combustion engine that uses spark plugs, but they make biodiesel! And diesel engines combust the fuel…
Yes, thank you BMO. Have a gold star, dear.
… Combust the air-fuel mixture by compressing the cylinder chamber until by the ideal gas law the reduced volume and increased pressure brings the temperature of the air-fuel mixture to a level above the ignition temperature!1 This is an outrage!
*authorities burst in*
NO! I WILL NOT BE SILENCED! WE HAVE LOWERED OUR STANDARDS FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR TOO LONG!
*I am dragged kicking and screaming from the room as a medic prepares a tranquilizer shot*
HOURS LATER
Ahem. As I was saying, this minor discrepancy is a small price to pay for the extremely lucid and accessible explanation of how the most common engines that the audience might encounter works.
*whispering*
“What is he pointing at?”
Though it’s worth pointing out that in the post-post-apocalyptic world of Ooo, a diesel engine would be much easier to actually run and fix, since you wouldn’t have to track down spark plugs 2 and you can make biodiesel by robbing any convenient Hash Brown Princess’s spa.
Anyway, this is generally just a really charming outing. They bring back Banana Man and fix the cosmic-scale injustice of having Weird Al as a guest star while giving him like exactly three lines and not having him sing a song. He brings such a perfect dorky and sincere and awkward energy to Banana Man, it’s a perfect match for the character. I don’t know why but him repeatedly clearing his throat as he explains how an engine works is such an odd yet perfect character beat.
And even as just a little goofy one-off, this episode introduces something important: Starchy’s conspiracy radio show, which is clearly based on the old Coast to Coast radio shows (even down to it being a 5 hour show in the middle of the night!) The touch of the Banana Guard calling in with “My friend is a highly-placed official…” definitely shows that someone has listened to that show before.
SPOILER LEVEL: The entire rest of the series and beyond
We come back to Starchy’s bonkers little resistance multiple times later in the series. There’s the Peacemaster episode, where a vigilante wages war against Peppermint Butler’s dark ways, where he intersects with Starchy’s underground group.
Then Tree Trunks has her run in with them when she campaigns against Princess Bubblegum’s colonization of space when it threatens her extraterrestrial lover and their mixed-species star children (Holy shit this show is crazy, lmao).
And then again, when Finn and Jake encounter the Blank Eyed Girls after hearing about them on Starchy’s show and calling him for help in dealing with them.
That Starchy’s conspiracies are actually onto something is a funny touch, a bit less so when you remember that the actual show they’re making fun of seems like charmingly bullshit nonsense about vibrations and multiple dimensional reality until you get to the parts about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust denial and Jewish banking families being reptilian aliens. But the show mostly side-steps it by not really making any direct references to David Icke and instead mostly just aping the weirdo late night AM radio nonsense you hear.
In the end, the boys save the day with Hot Daniel dying a noble warrior’s death of fire and explosions in a giant reptile monster’s face, but not before a gleeful joyride through the grasslands to the Candy Kingdom where they fulfill Finn’s prophecy of doing some sick jumps, getting it up to 35 miles an hour, and cranking the wheel and making a big hurkin’ dirt wave.
Goodnight, Hot Daniel.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
- BMO is an all star here, everything out of his mouth is solid gold.
- I like that Ice King is still living with them.
- “BMO is so pretty and smart!” I might say that about myself a lot, lol.
- We get some great Jake shapeshifting in this one, from him inflating the tire to him jacking up the car to his giant hands pushing through the crowd to his awesome fractal thumbs up.
- “This grease monkey is torqued up on automotive science!”
- I mentioned it above but Weird Al really brings it as Banana Man. “I don’t want to be alone… But I’ve gotten pretty good at it.” Ouch, man.
- The Mario Kart style spinout when they hit the banana peel is great animation.
- I dunno if any of y’all have worked on a project like this, but that nervous breath right before the moment of truth where you fire it up the first time is captured so perfectly here.
- “EAT THIS BUG.”
- Jake getting legitimately mad at Banana Man’s “love would just use up time” line is so in character.
- Finally, this episode brings back one of my favorite pieces of Adventure Time incidental music, from way way WAAAAAY back in When Wedding Bells Thaw!
SPOILER LEVEL: Snail
It took me so long to find, but it’s in the scene where they approach the Hash Brown Spa way off on the right. I can’t even get a legible screenshot of it because Hulu won’t let me screenshot it, this is the best I could manage.
Play Date
Boarded by: Somvilay Xayaphone, Seo Kim, and Kent Osbourne
Originally Aired: November 4, 2013
Reviewed by: CedricTheOwl
“Frost and Fire” was a truly momentous episode for the show, to the point where a solid majority of episodes since it aired have been directly dealing with its fallout. Of all the subplots stemming from that episode, the Ice King taking up residence with Finn and Jake while the Ice Kingdom is rebuilt has so far been the least examined. He’s shown up in cameos in several episodes, but as Jake points out it’s easy to forget he’s there for how little he affects the plot. How will an episode that actually puts their tenuous cohabitation into focus play out?
At the start, pretty much how anyone would expect it to. Even when he’s being friendly, the Ice King is still pestering Finn and Jake, getting up in their personal space while also hassling them for favors. The boys as well as the audience know that IK’s behavior stems from a deep-seated loneliness, but that doesn’t make it any easier to tolerate. The difference between empathizing with someone and being able to get along with them is a familiar theme to the show, dating back to at least “Donny” and that episode’s eponymous grass ogre. Ice King rejects their offer to put him up in a hotel, Finn is still too guilty over his role in rendering the Ice King homeless to just kick him out, and Jake’s suggestion of cold-blooded murder would cause too many alignment penalties for our heroes to be ultimately worth the trouble. Our heroes then hit upon a solution: when the Ice King is being a dick, it’s time to call in an even bigger dick.
No clue why this gif automatically triggers Google’s explicit content filter. None
The idea is sound in theory. If the boys can expand the Ice King’s social circle, he won’t feel the need to spend all his time pestering them. It worked in “The Party’s Over, Isla de Senorita” to get the Ice King off PB’s case, and just in general giving the Ice King more friends is a positive way to handle the situation. But Ice King will sense a trap if they just introduce Abracadaniel. Abrads did defeat him in Wizard Battle, after all. Fortunately, Ice King is easy to bait into engaging in conversation. All they have to do is give him an opening to showboat. Even more fortunately for F&J, Abracadaniel is a total sucker for shows of magical prowess.
Once Abracadaniel and Ice King start to interact, they actually hit it off quite well. They’re a bit rambunctious, but they’re ultimately leaving Finn and Jake alone, which is what they wanted to begin with. It’s at this point the dynamics of the episode abruptly shift. Ice King becomes less of an obnoxious houseguest and more like a kid trying to impress a friend during a sleepover. I have never had an annoying roommate – I both value my privacy and have consistently had the means to provide for myself – but I do distinctly remember what it’s like to interact with kids who are trying to show off to their friends. I’ve probably even been that kid at some point. He shows off the cool things in the treehouse, tries to play up his familiarity with Finn and Jake (and by inference his status over Abracadaniel while under their roof), all things to make himself seem superior to his new friend. It’s certainly not the most healthy relationship dynamic, but they get along well enough besides that. Well enough to improvise their own three act interpretive dance routine.
Abracadaniel isn’t bad, but he would definitely get upstaged by BMO’s moves
The boys’ plan seems to be going well, right up until the episode takes another swerve. While exploring the treehouse looking for more mischief, Ice King and Abracadaniel find the Demon Blood Sword, the sword he retrieved from “Dad’s Dungeon”, both a memento of Joshua for Finn and Jake as well as Finn’s primary weapon. The scene is much more tense than previous ones of the wizards bros horsing around. It has the feel of two kids stumbling across Dad’s unsecured gun, with all the potential for tragedy that entails. Fortunately, instead of something that grim they only succeed in summoning the sword’s demon blood donor, who still holds a massive grudge against Joshua.
Even with his powers lessened by having his blood drained, the demon Kee-oth is too much for the Ice King and Abracadaniel to best. When Finn and Jake arrive to investigate the commotion, Kee-oth takes IK and ABD hostage and demands the return of his blood for their safety. After some initial reluctance, Finn shatters his father’s sword, returning the encased blood to the demon. Kee-oth is as good as his word, releasing his hostages… but taking Jake along with him as he teleports away, still under the impression he’s Joshua. Abracadaniel takes the opportunity to skip out, while Ice King casually reveals that the Ice Kingdom has been restored for weeks and he just wanted to use the excuse to hang out with Finn and Jake. He heads for home, leaving Finn clutching the broken sword and Jake’s fate unknown.
Near the beginning of the season, I brought up that a major theme of season 5 was the challenges of parenthood. It’s taken a bit of a backseat to Finn’s romantic woes in the last few episodes, but “Play Date” actually manages to connect the two. Finn’s breakup with Flame Princess has left him rudderless, in need of guidance from a parent or an older brother figure. Instead, much like “Little Dude”, this episode finds him unexpectedly thrust into a parental role, resulting in the loss of a personal item. However, the Demon Blood Sword isn’t as easily replaced as Finn’s hat. In breaking the sword, Finn has lost a connection with Joshua’s legacy as well as his protection, and with Jake’s fate left up in the air he’s more alone than he’s ever been at the end of an episode.
For an episode with such a light premise as “Ice King and Abracadaniel act like mischievous kids”, this episode certainly takes a dark turn towards the end. That one-two punch of tonal shifts has shown up periodically in Adventure Time episodes, most notably “Holly Jolly Secrets”, and would later go on to be Rebecca Sugar’s signature move over in Steven Universe. At the time this episode aired, Rebecca Sugar had departed the crew to create SU, but her creative voice still echoes in this script. If I had any major criticism, it’s that the climax feels a little abrupt. Finn and Jake’s exchange over whether to break the sword (“I can’t bring myself to break it!” “Yes you can!” “Ok, here goes!”) could have used some more time to breathe, perhaps by trimming off some of Ice King and Abracadaniel’s shenanigans. Still, the surprise cliffhanger ending is strong enough to anchor this episode as good but not great, with a surprising jolt of plot progression at the end.
Spoiler Alert: Snail
Riding the skins during the interpretive dance sequence. Abracadaniel really wasn’t that bad, if a bit of a prima donna.
Stray Observations –
- The bit about the Demon Blood Sword representing the protection of Finn’s father is directly taken from a similar plot point in Inuyasha. Rebecca Sugar’s presence is felt in this show even through indirect anime references.
- Speaking of Rebecca Sugar, this episode just happened to air on the same day as Steven Universe’s two-part premiere.
- In retrospect it should have been obvious that the Ice King was lying about the Ice Kingdom still being under construction. How could Gunter still be building the Ice Kingdom if IK has his crown?
- The connecting theme of these two episodes? Characters who are desperate to make friends but are generally poor at socializing.
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