Bad Timing | Boarded by: Kent Osborne and Pendleton Ward | Aired: March 3, 2014 | Reviewed by Prestidigititis

It’s October, 2014. Adventure Time is well into its sixth season on the air at Cartoon Network, and for the last year or so, Pendleton Ward has been keeping a secret: during the production of season five, he stepped down as showrunner.

“I quit because it was driving me nuts,” he says in an article in that month’s Rolling Stone magazine. Pen is a very private guy, as it turns out; introverted to the point of antisocial. Still, he’s devoted to his creative work, since that’s what functions as a big part of his comfort zone. But a position of prominence at a busy cartoon studio isn’t where he feels most at ease, socially or creatively. “I go to comic shops because I like to just listen to nerds arguing about nerd stuff to relax.” As to the creative drive inside him, he offers this: “It’s nice to just be sleepy and make stuff….That’s the root of what I like doing. Make stuff on my own and fall asleep.”

Not exactly the kind of fellow you’d expect to be a showrunner. Energized and excited creatively? Absolutely. But was he happy? Yeah…I’d guess ‘no.’

During the fifth season, he handed the duties of showrunner over to his long-time partner in art, Adam Muto. Under his guidance, Adventure Time expanded, and explored places that I couldn’t have seen them exploring under Ward. In-show miniseries, spin-offs, repositioning of beloved characters in whole new universes. A part of me could’ve found this cynical and diminishing of Ward’s original vision for Adventure Time. But I’ve generally loved everything that AT has become after Pen stepped down. (And he never fully left the show’s original run—he stayed on as an executive producer, story writer, and occasional storyboarder.) From the beginning I’d say that Muto and Ward have had a sense for animation that’s been extremely complimentary:

It’s tempting to see this late season five episode, as a personal statement from Pen, given how he probably was feeling at the time. Co-written and co-storyboarded by him, it fronts Lumpy Space Princess, the character he voices. It  features a lots of little squiggly animated guys around the margins, moving and doing stuff, and being energetic toons as the episode goes by. Like the musicians in that little short he and Adam Muto—his longtime collaborator and old CalArts cohort—put together in their student years. That kind of doodly style is very much in Pen’s wheelhouse; as a kid he made flip-book animations constantly, and he brings a sketch-pad along with him to restaurants and gatherings. And in “Bad Timing,” these doodles bend the conventions of how an Adventure Time episode presents itself, like Adventure Time bent the conventions of kids’ animation when it first appeared as a short on the internet many years ago.

“Bad Timing” presents a funny, deep story, relegated to a circle in the middle of the screen, without feeling crowded or cramped, even though it’s maybe 2/3rds the size of what we usually get to see. The impossible-to-ignore outer edge of the screen is taken up by an abstract space of drifting color, where tiny animated critters–similar to the musicians in that Ward/Muto piece posted above–do roly-poly cartoon stuff. Meanwhile, the main action from our Ooo regulars carries on in the center’s mandala. A porthole of separation, neither space acknowledging the presence of the other.

Princess Bubblegum has invited a few dignitaries over for the unveiling of her newest device, which she deems a kind of time machine: A permeable bubble that “logs time” technologically, as long as you’re wearing special gloves to activate it. At some point in the future, that past time can be re-activated, transporting whoever was recorded back to when it was first activated. It’s similar to the rules of time travel from the movie Primer. Have you seen Primer? You should watch Primer. It’s good. Anyway.

Lumpy Space Princess is nearby in a languor of lovesickness, half aware of what’s going on at PB’s presentation. She hears that backwards time-travel is involved, and decides it’s what she needs to go back to when her ex Brad still loved her. Drama queen that she is, she dives into PB’s device, and demands to be returned to happier times. Bubs tries to explain that that’s not how it works, and their face-off threatens to upend diplomatic stability between the kingdoms. The standoff ends with a rejoinder from LSP worthy of Oscar Wilde himself: “I’m sorryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy… I’m sorry you’re so _stupid”

Later, LSP is drinking her woes away at the bar. By chance an old schoolmate of hers appears, one she knew as Ugly Johnny. But oh, he’s not ugly anymore. He’s a real go-getter,, and has a scheduled audience with Princess Bubblegum to discuss potential trade opportunities between Lumpy Space and the Candy Kingdom. This could be a real boon to Johnny’s business. LSP finds herself drawn to her old…acquaintance, and soon things turn to the romantic.

LSP has Johnny take her home to his temporary lodgings. They chat and flirt and use a Frank Zappa album to play a silly game. There’s a real vibe between them, and LSP makes sure Johnny knows she believes in him, and he’ll do great at the meeting. With all the building-up of things, Johnny feels a sense of purpose, and actually slays it at his meeting with PB (while LSP sat at his house, watching old movies).

Johnny’s been invited back to the Candy Castle for dinner that night, to finalize the contracts. At first LSP is excited to be having a meal among royalty, but Johnny tells her it’s a business meeting, and she’s not invited. Of course, LSP takes this news rationally and calmly, concluding that Princess Bubblegum is a spiteful wench who wants to steal Johnny from her. She flees to plan her counterattack.

That night, the business dinner appears to be going well from the window LSP is peeking through to monitor them. It’s going so well that her assumption of PB’s nefarious love scheme is verified in LSP’s mind. She soliloquizes about how it takes a big person to let the one you love go into the arms of another—and she cannot be that big. By which point she has acquired a Molotov cocktail, which she hurls at the Candy castle, following it up with a gasoline truck through the front gates. PB thinks her castle is under attack, and in the chaos that ensues, LSP finds Johnny under a table, time-travel device in her gloved-hands. She reasons that if they could just go back to their time together at the tavern, Johnny would forget about PB and the two of them would have a chance. Shoving first his head and then his body into the orb, he disappears, and LSP is alone.

Bubblegum finds LSP searching for Johnny at the bar. As she explains to LSP why her scheme didn’t work, we suddenly see Johnny—first his head, then his torso—appear in the marginal world that’s been surrounding the action of the episode all along. His body and head pursue one another. They find each other. They rejoin. Finally the reasons behind that alternate-spacial border become…well, not clear, but less murky. It’s an in-between zone. An extra-temporal dimension. A place where the rules of biology and physics are just as mutable and uncanny as in a cartoon. A world outside of time, where PB’s test subjects would have waited to be returned to the temporal realm. A world of doodles.

Because of her earlier intrusion on the presentation, Princess Bubblegum grants LSP the grace of having her own molecules recombined in the past before she knew of her love for Johnny. Outside the mandala, Johnny can see this all occur. And as his head bows in loss and sadness, his outer area dims and fades to black. Bubblegum, left with just her science and her mercy, sighs. She takes a drink from behind the bar. The episode ends.

It’s one of the more subtly affecting moments in the show, and there’s no real denouement. Yes, Johnny is despondent. But he’s also beyond the realm of the world he knew. Obviously this is not a happy ending. But it’s hard to call it an ending in the traditional storytelling sense. We see his awareness. But then we lose our awareness of him. He fades because his universe fades away from our perception.

Rebecca Sugar once said this about Adventure Time being pigeonholed as a show that appealed to druggies: “People working on the show are poets. Pen lets them express themselves with super-interesting results. I think he’s really a poet, also. That’s what people mistake for trippiness. He’s expressing thoughts about very modern feelings that people have. These feelings are frivolous, and that’s confusing. Good poetry is like that. Pen is letting that happen. That’s why he’s such an enigma.”

That’s a quote I think about a lot when I watch Adventure Time, especially after an episode like this where the resolution isn’t clear or full, but the feelings still hit hard. In an episode whose cute visuals, conceits, and strange silliness could very easily be mistaken for (or even brushed aside) as trippiness, it’s in the service of an artistry that I’d consider to be poetry.

Random Doodles:

• I understand why people don’t like LSP as a character, and as a simple cartoony presence in an episode. Even when she’s just there for a comedic line or two, her ‘tude and her voice can be grating. But I love the gal. I love how she’s built to be all id and certainty. It manages to take the edge off for me, and bring her around to being sweetly sympathetic again. Her own privilege is delusional and tragic. Humanizing, instead of caricatured.
• Frank Zappa once did a guest-voice appearance as The Pope on Ren & Stimpy. He was a fan of the show. I have a feeling he’d’ve been glad to see his own face in an episode of Adventure Time.
• Some great dialogue in this ep. “I got the sale!” “Johnny, that’s wonderful!” “And I couldn’t’ve done it without you.” “I know!”

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Billy’s Bucket List | Written & storyboarded by: Jesse Moynihan and Ako Castuera | Aired: March 17th 2014 | Reviewed by Lyssie

“I did not at all catch that Billy was dead” – is what I wrote in the comments thread for The Lich. And it feels intentional that the crew waited the entire season before confirming one way or the other. That Finn apparently forgot about Billy until Party Pat randomly reminded him (thank you, Pat!) feels like a cheeky explanation for why we just haven’t dealt with that yet. And certainly, when Finn says that Jake’s in denial about Billy’s death, I couldn’t help but think – “is he? Or did he just come to a different conclusion about what happened, like me and probably a lot of viewers?”

But yeah, Billy really is dead, and it’s time for Finn to finally deal with it, after an entire season that has challenged him in various ways (and sometimes found him wanting). This is pretty mature stuff, and really the entire episode is marked by the challenges of maturity and adulthood. This starts small, with so many dirty jokes (“Billy’s crack” etc) and with a giant woman showing up to hang out with Finn, but it quickly becomes deeper than that.

All I wanna do, is see me turn into…

Finn always looked up to Billy, as a hero and as a person, but in coping with his death Finn gets to see a more vulnerable, human side to him. Even in His Hero, though Billy had suddenly abandoned his old heroics it was due to an ideological decision that he made. But when Canyon says that he stopped believing in himself and just hung out at home, all of a sudden it’s framed as a character flaw – maybe he simply wasn’t always so noble, and spent the last few years of his life just being “pretty lame”? [Or maybe it’s okay for people to retire, or not want to keep fighting all their lives; but I don’t think Finn’s ready for that just yet]

Now, Finn hasn’t just idolized Billy, he’s also identified with him, and a lot of this episode is about how his understanding of Billy affects his understanding of himself, and vice versa. When Canyon talks about Billy’s last years, Finn gets this really guilty look on his face like it’s made him think of his own failings, and, well… Look, at no point does the episode directly address Flame Princess breaking up with Finn, and only here and at one moment near the end does it even, maybe, allude to it; but it seems pretty clear to me what this is about. Obviously the circumstances there were very different – Finn’s actions were unequivocally horrible, and the sole reason for the relationship ending, whereas the worst Billy did was not living up to an ideal anymore and it just didn’t work out between them. But it really feels like Finn is seeing himself in Billy’s less heroic self, which didn’t live up to the heroic image. It helps, of course, that this is being said by an ex.

The face of someone who knows he messed up

When they discover Billy’s unfinished bucket list it adds to the less-than-perfect image – even the great Billy had some things that he really wanted to do before he died and just… didn’t, for some reason. And one of them is telling Finn something which he never did, so now Billy has let him down personally as well. But this also gives Finn the opportunity to take the identification one step further and actually inhabit Billy’s identity, if only a little and for one day. In going on Billy’s one last ride with Canyon (complete with defeating a ridiculous snake monster and driving the motorcycle off a cliff), Finn kind of helps bring their relationship back to life for a moment, with him as Billy (Canyon even thought back to a bike adventure when talking about their relationship). To drive (heh) the point home, even Canyon says that he reminds her of a young Billy. And Billy’s motorcycle getting destroyed is strongly symbolic of his death and their grief and acceptance – they can let him go now that they’ve helped complete his last wishes.

Finn seems to be taking all this more literally than I am when he actually tries to hit on Canyon before she leaves. Thankfully she’s oblivious, or just lets him down gently, but it feels like Finn’s still relying on having a girlfriend (or at least wanting one) for his perception of himself, or to not feel alone. But he is alone, and even Jake’s not here (parallel with Finn the Human?). He’s on his own in completing the last item on Billy’s list – the ocean.

At this point the episode becomes not just about maturity, but about heroism. Namely – what is heroism? Cause we get to see different ideas of it here. Finn can risk his life without a second thought, but it’s harder for him to face things that terrify him, the emotional rather than physical hardship. Maybe Billy was the same? His unfinished bucket list might suggest so, as might him receding from the world and letting his relationship fade away. Even Rap Bear, Finn’s current ‘you’re my hero’, breaks down at the thought of not being the best, and then gets cheered up by someone looking up to him. Sometimes what’s heroic is a matter of what requires the most bravery, what you do even when it’s hard or scary. It may also simply mean that you’re inspiring; that’s how Finn uses it towards Rap Bear, and it’s part of how he uses it when talking about Billy. And heroism is also in the nobility of doing something for someone else – for as terrified as he is, Finn’s going to do this for Billy’s memory. And perhaps he was more inclined to face his fears after Billy’s failings and vulnerability gave him some perspective (and also that inhabiting Billy’s life gave him some inspiration).

 “Don’t think about your fear” easier said than done, unfortunately…

Well, he tries, he gives it a genuine go, before being chased off by a comically small wave that seems to have formed entirely to fuck with him, personally. The Fear Feaster shows up again, for the first time since Finn last tried to face the ocean, eager to mock the boy for his weakness, and to explicitly say that being scared means he’s no hero. But this is for Billy, and Finn is going to face his fear – even if he has to work around it so he doesn’t actually have to, you know, face his fear. Knocking himself out feels like a compromise between the blunt way he always acts and between confronting something that’s actually hard for him. After all, if he can risk his life in a really hasty way to deal with something that doesn’t scare him, why not with something that does?

What happens in the spirit dream feels symbolic, besides just being cool trippy imagery. The ocean snatches away his hat which symbolizes his role as a hero, this iconic thing that makes him stand out, look a little less normal, and also perhaps a little less human. Being without it mirrors his vulnerability, and he probably also just feels vulnerable without it. And it attacks him because his own fear is what’s attacking him; but maybe also because he’s lashing out at himself, the ‘hero side’ of him berating him for being afraid, or for being too weak to face his fear, or both. But he faces not just the ocean but his own fear, and his own self-doubt – and he comes out the other side stronger and wiser. He strikes down the Fear Feaster, metaphorically (literally?) defeating his fear, after literally (metaphorically?) defeating his fear. And he does this with the grass blade, which was all about accepting things, because he’s accepted his fear and faced it. And for his courage and resolve he’s rewarded with one last talk with Billy, delightfully drawn in a constellation. He and Finn commiserate about “love is weird”, confirming in my eyes that this episode was really about the breakup as much as it was about anything. And then, at Finn’s insistence that Billy tell him that thing, Billy drops the bombshell about Finn needing to find his dad – not Joshua, as Finn asks, but his human dad.

The themes of the episode are brought into stark relief through this contrast of three different father figures. It’s no coincidence that, when referring to Joshua, the father that raised him, the first thing Finn says is that he and Jake buried him – this, right after spiritually laying to rest his father figure, and right before discovering that his biological father is alive. And it’s also no coincidence that Finn comes to terms with his father figure’s death and legacy, and also faces his own fears, before getting to meet his biological dad and cope with that legacy.

So we’ve got Billy, the role model, the ideal of a hero with the noble heart of a peacemaker, but sharing some of Finn’s hesitation and stagnation. On that note – how and why did Billy know about Finn’s dad, (what’s the connection between father and father figure)? And why did Billy not tell Finn, even though he wanted to? Is this another case of the role model showing his weakness in facing something difficult?

Then there’s Joshua, the adoptive father, lovingly raising Finn like his own flesh and blood, but instilling a harsh vision of masculinity and heroics, and a rejection of emotion and weakness. No doubt this contributed to Finn’s fixation on being a hero, his rashness and lack of consideration for others, as well as his own self-doubt about his weaknesses.

And finally there’s his birth father, who is… just a cipher at the moment. Except for the fact that he gives Finn a chance, for the first time in his life, to meet his original family and know where he comes from; and actual confirmation that he’s not the only human in the world. (At the beginning of the season Finn needed no less than to turn into an parallel universe version of himself who becomes the ice king to get all that; hopefully this time it won’t demand as much).

So as the episode and season ends Finn is left floating in the ocean that he overcame, untethered and hovering in the space between present and future. He’s learned and grown, gotten better at dealing with his fears, developed a stronger sense of self, figured out how to be on his own, learned how to accept the unwanted and his own weaknesses, expanded his identity as a hero and as a person beyond a narrow conception of strength. Let’s hope all that helps him deal with what’s to come.

Stray Observations:

• It feels fitting that Jordan tries to take over Billy’s home; another larger-than-life person (or at least he’s trying to be) with just a normal real-world name. (It’s the same with the name Finn, really…)
• Finn defeating Jordan – the holy shit of cutting off Jordan’s head, followed by the hilarity of Jordan’s actually fine
• Also hilarious – during the motorcycle ride, the snake monster chasing them on its little legs with its little swords
• Weirdly enjoyable visual touch – star!Billy’s tongue is still tongue-colored
• One of the crossed-out items on “Defeat the Lich”