Directed by:
Adam Muto and Nick Jennings
Written and Storyboarded by:
Graham Falk
Review by Josephus Brown
As this show goes on, it starts to become a lot quieter. There’s a lot more trusting the audience to keep up with things, and a lot less explanation. There’s a lot less frentic action for action’s sake and a lot more meditation. This one, in particular, is a rather offbeat meditation on art and performance, and the relationship between artist and audience.
The conflict between making commercially accessible art and making what a creator truly wants to create looms large here. What does a creator owe their audience? What is the nature of the relationship between artist and audience?
Despite this show being exactly the sort of show to indulge in it’s own weird obsessions (Like, for example, having a one-off episode where one of the characters’ body parts turns out to have a secret life as an Emmet Kelly-esque clown in a bug circus featuring characters we’ve never seen before and will never see again, that will never be brought up again) there doesn’t seem to be a lot of sympathy for Blue Nose’s desire to make avant-garde clown acts here. He gets booed and has (according to the storyboard) six waves of garbage thrown at him.
A little girl cries, but honestly it doesn’t feel like that’s meant to justify it. Sure, one kid did indeed get the performance, and she’s upset that people are angry about it (this is also specified in the storyboard), but that’s not enough. People often talk a big game about “as long as one person got it then it’s a success”, but let’s face it- that isn’t going to pay the bills.
As near as I can tell, the episodes sympathies lie somewhere in between. An artist needs to both be true to their values while also doing enough to make it so that they get the opportunity to make art at all. You can find a compromise between giving people what they want and not talking down to your audience.
There’s also a question of people knowing what they’re buying. If I get a ticket to Cirque du Soleil, it’s a known factor that I’m probably going to have to endure some self-important pompous French buffoonery along with the acrobatics. But odds are good if I took my kids to a little crappy circus where we expected to just laugh I’d be annoyed by this too.
Anyway, I don’t have much of an answer, either way. I’m not sure the creators of this show do, they’re clearly happy to meditate on it and be comfortable with the uncertainty.
But one thing is for sure- they’re definitely against wanton greed and exploitation. There’s a certain amount of sympathy for the idea that Blue Nose needs to bring in enough money to help support the circus, but the second the ringmaster goes back on his word the show clearly has no sympathy for him. The only unalloyed good that happens here is that Goralina gets freed. On that point, the show is unequivocal.
Random Thoughts:
- Everything about this episode feels like it’s ripped from another time. The storyline itself features a kind of circus that hasn’t existed for decades. The chapters all iris-in and iris-out in ways that invoke early period film and animation. There’s even a classic King Kong visual reference with the way Goralina smashes her chains. And Blue Nose is definitely supposed to be channeling Emmet Kelly, a classic Depression era clown who was best known for his spotlight routines.
- Even his act, with the victrola and the fruit cart feels like it’s from the 1930’s (Cause come on, when was the last time anybody had a fruit cart?) If there was a quality archive of clown acts I bet I could find something similar Kelly did, but lets face it, I’ve already done three hours of research for a writeup of a silly show about a dog’s tail performing as a clown at an insect circus, so as far as I’m concerned I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty already.
- I love the unrepentant sleaziness of the ringmaster. “She’s like a big sad dollar sign”, hilarious.
- BMO and NEPTR just hanging out together is one of my favorite developments, even if BMO is kind of a jerk to NEPTR sometimes. They’re so adorable together.
- The snail is in a rare active appearance in this one, as a high diving act!
Breezy
Written by: Jesse Moynihan and Derek Ballard
Directed by: Andres Salaff and Nick Jennings
Review by LibraryLass
Finn’s not doing great. The breakup with Flame Princess has been rough for him, and at a routine check-up Doctor Princess orders him to go out and have some fun. The hero boy awkwardly tries to get caught on the rebound, but Doctor Princess is too professional for that, so he heads off to mope in a song I straight-up forgot existed until this rewatch, while our title character, a lone bee played by the incomparably Ashly Burch, looks on, and finds herself intensely attracted to the flower sprouting from his arm.
That night at a beach party thrown by the little-used Crab Princess, Breezy shoots her shot with the flower but ends up getting to know Finn. The two get to know each other and Breezy offers to serve as a wingman for Finn to help build up his confidence, which works out as he manages to score a goodnight smooch from Crab Princess before she bails back to the ocean (“I’d invite you over, but you can’t breathe underwater, right?” Nice.) Finn enjoys the experience enough but declares that he doesn’t really feel anything, resolving to try making out with more princesses and seeing if that sparks anything in him.
And that’s why I wanted to do this episode, really. I have a history of post-breakup slut eras– and this year’s been one for me. A bad breakup can make you question your value, your basic emotional competency, whether you even *want* to be tied down or just want the convenience of having a makeout partner in easy access for the sake of the endorphins. (It shocked me little to learn that this is a semi-autobiographical episode for this week’s storyboarder, Jesse Moynihan.) Between the ages of 20, when I was abandoned by a partner, and 23, I slept with roughly one new person every three weeks, most of whom were not members of a gender I’m normally attracted to and who I got with purely to feel validated. Finn is going through the teenage version of that right now and the episode has always stuck with me because of that.
Sorry about that. Anyway, Breezy’s got it bad for the flower and down for more rizz-building exercises if it means also being down to clown with Finn’s arm. Soon enough Jake encounters his bro chilling on the couch with Frozen Yogurt Princess, a sweets-based Flame Princess doppelganger, and instantly clocks that Finn isn’t over either of his last two major romantic interests. Getting read for filth puts Finn in a pensive mood and he considers just letting the flower wilt. In response to this, Breezy drops her bomb: she’s no ordinary worker, but a virgin queen bee looking for one last fling before she drinks the royal jelly. Awkward friend-attraction ensues, but Finn doesn’t get the message until a male bee assumes they’re already knocking boots and berates Breezy for “hanging out with that bologna tube” and leads a swarm of his buddies to sting Finn. Yeah, this episode’s *very much* about teenage sexuality and the challenges of interracial or otherwise non-kyriarchically-normative dating, and in a more nuanced, serious way than some viewers were ready for at the time. In a way it presages the longer-form treatment of these topics present in Steven Universe Future. (And personally I like how it handles them a lot more.)
Breezy, desperate to save her crush object– and it’s quickly clear that that means both Finn and the flower– rushes into their hive and guzzles a bottle of Royal Jelly, saving Finn at the cost of her independence, complete with a badass Sailor Moon transformation sequence into a Combee-like form that enables her to force the swarm’s obedience and drag them into the hive. But Finn, still in his post-breakup depression, isn’t ready for the commitment of being drone to a queen and rejects her.
At his next, Breezy-less party, Finn is accosted by LSP, as characteristically sexually-aggressive as ever, who unsatisfied with the tiny pecks Finn has apparently considered to be “making out” this whole time, insists on “taking it to the deep end” as we fade to black. There’s no possible serious reading of this scene where Finn and LSP didn’t have sex, right?
Later that night Finn glumly reflects in his sleeping bag while LSP sleeps in a nearby log. As he puts the event in the vault and closes his eyes, Breezy arrives and sings a duet with a half-awake Finn, who imagines her as Bonnie, carrying a mysterious white sword, before suddenly he’s awoken by the flower on his arm growing out of control into a tree, which shatters, revealing a new arm, sodden with honey, with a thorn in the palm. The noise awakens LSP, who congratulates him, and it’s only then that Finn notices Breezy as Finn’s precious flower drifts down onto her. She kisses it and the episode ends as abruptly as Finn’s innocence.
This is a very strange, frank, emotionally-mature story about being horny and miserable and unrequited and desperately lonesome. It’s rare that we get a story like this in media in general, and especially in a cartoon like Adventure Time, and I admire the decision to explore this challenging situation that a lot of young people go through in their lives without being too coy or coded about it. Kudos, Adventure Time.
Stray observation: A great episode for character-watching. Keep your eyes out for such little-used favorites as Gridface Princess, Emerald Princess, Lizard Princess, Muscle Princess, the Notorious Pup Gang, and BMO’s bikini babes.