Hey, everyjames! Remember when the original James got all goopy in the desert? And then he got cloned? And his clone (aka James II) got a medal of valor for saving Princess Bubblegum and Finn and Jake? It’s okay if you don’t because (I think) for the first time, Adventure Time gives us a kinda lengthy flashback to refresh our memories.

Well, in the meantime James II came up with a brilliant idea. He decided to keep faking his death by fake-sacrificing himself for PB so she’d clone up another James and give the clone a medal for saving her. Now there is a vigintaquintuplet league of James clones, and PB is none too pleased. And hoo-boy, them Jameses are as goofy as ever.

Last time we hung out with OG James, we had to deal with complex questions of souls and identity and stuff like that. Now it’s all about the goofs.

Which doesn’t mean there aren’t some heavy moments. A banana guard has a kind of weird existential moment when he considers what it might be like if he and his banana brethren shared a name:

It seems like there’s something heavy going on underneath the peel—like this banana guard is on the verge of some kind of big epiphany. But it’s left up to us to try to figure out what that epiphany might be.

But the moment passes, and we’re back to goof-em-ups.

Our heroes are happy to sit back and laugh at this tomfoolery. Which makes sense. Finn could use a break. We could maybe all use a break! Shit got real back there at Prismo’s place and the Citadel. So, it’s nice to just chill and enjoy a battle of wits between banana guards and 25 Jameses.

There’s even a happy ending for the goopy (original) James. When he comes back to the Candy Kingdom with his new goopy crew, the Jameses leap into action and throw themselves on this goopy grenade before it can harm their Princess. Original James gets absorbed into his clones, and they mutate into . . . uh . . . this:

And PB just agrees to send this new vigintaquintupled amalgam of James a medal every day if he leaves and never comes back. James couldn’t be happier about this. And, as mega-James departs for his new life, PB seems pleased with the new arrangement as well:

Go with Glob, James. We hardly knew ye.

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Let me get this out of the way up-front: Princess Bubblegum did wrong by Finn. Just last season (and like a bazillion years ago), Bubblegum made Shoko a great mechanical claw-arm that was “plug ’n’ play.” But Shoko got snuffed, and stuffed into the vault, and when Bubblegum’s attention turned to autocratic overlording, her capacity for artificial arm building capabilities fell off. A hero-teen can’t even make a simple pot of pasta with that candy arm without messing up the noodles, the pot, the sauce…everything. Disappointing.

Okay, thanks for letting me get that out. Speaking of getting things out; speaking of vaults; guess who’s having a hard time dealing with that super traumatic time in the citadel? Finn’s showing signs of being the kind of kid who had a keen sense of who he was and where his place was in the world…right up until age fifteen or so. Finn used to understand how a hero handles things that come his way. A good moral compass served him very well. And if something was a bit much for him…he had that vault. 

He has shown a willingness to face his fears. He conquered his biggest fear—the ocean—in honor of his personal hero Billy. But that fear was rooted deep in his past, in his pre-young-adulthood, and facing that down isn’t the same as facing down the pain and uncertainty that comes with adolescence. Fucking up your first romantic relationship. Discovering the father you didn’t think was still around is a selfish and duplicitous bastard. Those aren’t early fears to overcome through typical maturation. Those are thorny, dangerous events that inspire feelings Finn hadn’t reckoned with before: Doubts about worth, shame in his actions, loneliness, abandonment, and most of all, pain. The kind of pain you can’t resolve through fists and swords. The kind of pain that won’t fit into The Vault no matter how hard you try to shove it in there.

So Finn tries to wear a brave face (or at least an expressionless one), assuming things will get back on track. He figured things would be okay when Flame Princess said they could hang out again…until she made sure to emphasize it would be “as friends.” He thought he could slide right back in with PB as her champion, and regain her favor. That wasn’t how things played out. Now he’s just trying to get along with a replacement arm, with his brother/friend. Jake tells him, “you can’t expect to just bounce right back to normal,”  which seems Finn hasn’t even stopped to consider.

Jake’s advice isn’t necessarily good. He tells Finn to let things go at their own pace, and by listening “deep in his melon-heart,” he’ll find the way to handle it all. Jake’s advocating for some real emotional intelligence from Finn, which might work for someone who knows this practice. But Finn’s a teen! He needs role models who can guide him through the process. He should turn to his father for—no, wait, he should look to his heroes, like Billy—wait, sorry, his trusted and respected elders, like Princess Bubblegu—huh—hm.

Speaking of Princess Bubblegu—huh—hm, her duties to the Candy Kingdom (and Grass Kingdom too, I guess…busybody…) has her all flipped out when she learns that Finn’s struggling. She’s concerned for his well-being and decides that the best way to prevent any major damage is to directly intervene. Now, that’s all well and good, but Princess Bubblegum has never been one for half-measures or caution. And when she decides on a course of action, it threatens to be just as poor a choice as whatever damage Finn is likely to do with his own response to his trauma. Which is very serious and dangerous! You could wind up instilling further distrust in a fragile individual who’s just trying to work their way through pain and into good coping practices! There’s no way Finn’s response could be so bad that she has to go off full-bore, is there?

Yeah, about that. Finn’s missing arm has manifested a kind of psychic representation of his emotional pain and anger. While our lad kept a calm face, his fury became an actual phantom limb. One with powers that extended into the telekinetic. While Finn tried to focus on that melon-heart of his, this limb was moving the very earth around him. Organizing things into blocks and bricks that float through the air, so Finn can build a literal tower to his pain, betrayal, and desire for revenge. Stone, ice, penguins, even a gentle fawn getting caught up in his drive for remittance. He sings one of the most disturbing songs this show’s ever produced:

Baby’s building a tower into space / space is where he’s gonna find his dad / Daddy’s got an arm / and Baby’s gonna harm / his arm by / tearing it off his dad.

It sounds like a little working tune, or a nursery rhyme. It’s one hell of an earworm. But every word is completely unlike what we expect from Finn. He’s talked about the positivity in punching evil and forcing back Ice King, but that was always in service of a grander morality. This is just…bland viciousness.

High above the ground, Finn runs into a cloud lady named Carroll, who confronts him like any other human she’d meet: with anger and distrust. She harbors this read on people from her pre-evaporation time, when she was just water, and people swam through her with no concern for what their presence did to her comfort or life. She offers her own advice about Finn’s revenge plan: do what she did. Leave. Run away and never reconcile your anger. Let it inform who you are and your views of who hurt you in the past, forever. I will say it’s nice that Finn seems to not take to this advice at all. Maybe it’s just his singlemindedness that makes it roll off his back. Or maybe it’s the thinning air. Whatever the reason, like a cloud Carroll drifts, and her input goes with her.

All the while, Finn gets higher. Jake insists that Finn should be trusted to work things out on his own. PB toils away in a tent beside the tower. Chipper old BMO gets an ice-brick to the head. The three wave their hands at each other dismissively. And Finn labors for air at the edge of outer space, his tower dwindled to a single brick’s-width. Lack of oxygen twists his vision. He sees a purplish portal, and a bright white brilliance approaching him….

He awakens in a sick bay. In the next room on a folding lawn chair is…Martin. Snickering, Finn approaches with a big grin, and delivers an almighty WALLOP from his phantom arm. Revenge is at hand! (At arm?) But just as he’s trying to yank the meaty limb from his half-gazonked father, he…loses the desire. He turns sad. He realizes this isn’t…right, somehow. We don’t get to hear the internal workings of Finn’s mind here, but if I were to guess, I’d say there’s still a piece of Finn whose need to be a hero, to be righteous, is stronger than his pain and thirst for revenge. There’s a lot of sorrow in there too. Abandonment. Whatever it is turning those gears in there, it makes Finn just…sit down. Head in hands. Defeated. “Butt.”

The soft voice of Princess Bubblegum reveals her presence. Turns out Martin Mertens was PB in disguise just now. She’d arranged to rescue Finn with her improvised flying ship, taking them both to the Candy Kingdom fallout shelter to play out a little pantomime so he could get out some of his fury, and hopefully learn a lesson at the same time.

Princess reveals her scheme, and the great big shiner she took, to help Finn “learn his lesson,” after which he’d thank her. In the moment, after some brief reflection, Finn says, “yeah, okay. Thanks, Princess.” Finn goes home to the treehouse and tells Jake he feels “neutral,” but that he doesn’t want to punch his Dad anymore. I’ll be honest, I don’t know that anything was truly learned here. Or if it was, that any of it was very healthy. However, I don’t think the show is trying to present any of this as healthy. What we had, essentially, were three incomplete views about how to handle deep adversity: work things out in your own time unguided, be exposed unknowingly to a release-valve for vengeance, or turn your back on everything that hurt you and live off of the rage. Jake, PB, and Carroll. None of these three people have the best answer. In Adventure Time, not even the adults know what’s correct. And maybe that’s the biggest lesson Finn needs to learn. None of us know the way. None of us can avoid the hurt. It’s all just going to have to come to us through patience, practice, and help.

Finn’s got a way to go before he recognizes this. Let’s face it: we all do.

Thoughts:

• The tower as a symbol of trauma is a really potent one. It stands up to much deeper scrutiny and study than I gave it in this review, but I wanted to make specific note of the fact that there’s that fawn—innocence, youth, and instinct personified—that gets caught up in its construction and has to bravely make its way down from it.
• The big punchline at the end is a great touch. I was going to make more of it in the body of the review, but it didn’t seem to fit.
• When did Finn tell PB what his dad was like? Or sounded like?