Is That You?

Boarded by: Jesse Moynihan

Aired: November 25, 2014

Reviewed by: CedricTheOwl

The explosive two-parter that opened season 6 of Adventure Time had consequences that the season has spent a large portion of its runtime exploring.  The revelation of Martin’s true nature ended the thematic exploration of parenthood in season 5 on a resounding bitter note.  Finn losing his arm put him in the worst mental state he’s ever been in.  The Lich was “reborn” as a giant toddler under the care of a spacy elephant, and there’s no telling (for now) how that will pan out.  But amid all of that the death of Prismo, all-powerful Wishmaster and being of cosmic importance, seems like it should have been a bigger deal than it was, but was relegated to a minor detail.  Thankfully, Adventure Time has Jesse Moynihan on hand, the master of turning tiny details into big stories.

Our episode opens on Finn and Jake performing an elaborate remembrance ritual for Prismo, specifically in commemoration of Jake eating the last of the pickles Prismo gifted him.  Jake can be a flighty dude, one who’s a bit too comfortable with his own mortality for Finn’s taste, but he’s taking the loss of his friend hard.  And yet, in the end his belly will not be denied.  He sensibly reasons that Prismo made those pickles to be enjoyed; the best way to honor an artisan of the pickling arts is to enjoy the fruits (or vegetables) of his labor.  However, eating the last pickle unleashes a mysterious burst of light.  Jake, interpreting this as a sign, whisks them both off to bed, so it will be the last thing they think of.  And that’s when things get Moynihan-y.

Prismo, we love you!  Forever in our dreams!  Pickle-rama Pickle-rama!

Finn awakens screaming from a dream, one that apparently had Prismo on it.  Jake is no longer in bed, but is outside burying the remains of his Everything Burrito, a repeat of a scene from Season 3’s “Conquest of Cuteness”.  But upon Finn interrupting him, Jake phases out of sync with reality and explodes!  By the time Finn makes it outside, a new Jake is repeating a scene from another episode, this time the Dancing Bug joke from Season 2’s “Power Animal”.  Finn once again asks what he’s doing, only for Jake to phase out and explode.  The cycle repeats, leaving Finn and the audience equally baffled.

Meanwhile, Jake finds himself in a Escher-esque geometric world, only to catch sight of Prismo!  He follows him deeper into the labyrinth, only to come across another scene from a previous episode replaying:  Prismo’s death at the hands of the Lich.  Once the grisly deed is done, the Lich is taken to the Citadel, leaving Prismo’s Time Room empty… for a moment.  The scene ends with the Time Room breaking down to reveal an even larger geometric labyrinth.

Meanwhile, in Commissioner Gordon’s office!

Over in the treehouse, Finn is gradually piecing together the logic of why Jake is constantly repeating the past and then exploding.  Finn doesn’t often get to show off his smarts, so it’s gratifying to see him figuring things out on his own here.  He’s a dopey teen boy prone to dopey teen boy stuff, but he’s outsmarted his share of villains in the past as well.  Just as he concludes that he needs to wait for Jake to repeat the memory of Prismo’s pickle ritual, he does just that, and Finn joins in to recreate the moment.

Jake ventures into the labyrinth, passing by echoes of past conversations with Prismo.  Upon being reminded that Prismo the Wishmaster is but the dream of a sleeping old man, Jake briefly wonders if the same is true of all reality.  Several previous episodes have hinted at this kind of Lovecraftian solipsism, that all we know could be as transitory as a dream and just as quickly dispelled, but this episode is hitting that theme head-on.  Jake arrives in what appears to be a bedchamber, and upon closer examination the bed is fit for a king.  Or a Wishmaster.  Jake finds himself unable to resist the call of the bed’s unlawfully superior comfort, and upon crawling into bed and falling asleep, Prismo reappears!

Look, this episode jumps around a lot and it’s hard to find actual gifs from it.  The title is very search-unfriendly

Finn successfully completes the pickle ritual memory, but instead of falling asleep, he watches what happens to Jake afterwards.  Sure enough, Jake disappears in a flash of light emanating from Prismo’s pickle jar, and Finn pursues.  He finds himself in the same geometric labyrinth Jake was in, and follows the sound of Jake’s lines from earlier in the episode.  After a solid eight and half minutes of confusion, this episode finally tips its hand as to what’s going on.  These scenes aren’t taking place simultaneously, but slightly out of sync with one another.  Finn’s pursuit is interrupted by Prismo, or rather a recording of himself explaining the haps: this temporal loop is a failsafe he designed to bring himself back to life should he ever die, using his bond of friendship with Jake as a catalyst.  Prismo opens the wall for Finn to follow an alternate route, just as another copy of Jake passes through the hall.

Prismo leads Finn to the bedchamber, where he instructs Finn to wake up the sleeping Jake.  Jake resists being torn from his paradise of thread count comfort, but gets over it just as soon as he’s left it.  They escape back into the wall just in time for Jake’s other temporal copy to take his place in bed.  Finn then prevents his own temporal copy from waking the other Jake, when something unexpected happens:  he explodes just as Jake’s memory copies did, but leaves a new sword as his only remains.  Finn and Jake welcome back Prismo as the sleeping Jake takes on the form of Prismo’s sleeping old man body.

Finn Sword, dude.

Did everybody get all that?  Because it was a lot.  I’ll be honest, I actually had a hard time connecting with this episode on first watch.  I have a specific aversion to stories that heavily involve time travel, alternate timelines, or multiversal shenanigans.  They have a tendency to try to tell stories of cosmic importance, while simultaneously ensuring there are no stakes.  Any consequence in a narrative can be undone with time travel; pivotal characters can die by the truckload because there’s infinite completely identical copies of them throughout infinite alternate realities.  I enjoyed the spectacle of Infinity War, but as soon as the plot introduced the possibility of time travel, I knew that anything that happened in it would be completely inconsequential.

But upon the rewatch, something occurred to me:  this episode is purposefully playing with the fact that we think of these alternate Finns and Jakes as disposable temporal copies.  I’ve mentioned in past comments that one of the big themes of this season is whether tiny, insignificant individuals matter in a vast and indifferent universe.  What could be more insignificant than just one of theoretically infinite copies of a single human boy and his brother-dog?  And yet their existence brings about a lot of change.  That dog-copy has resurrected one of the most powerful beings in the universe.

This whole episode is a head-crushing exercise in metaphysics and the philosophical ramifications thereof, which is exactly what I would expect from a Jesse Moynihan solo joint.  This is actually the second time Moynihan has gotten a solo storyboard credit, the first being “Something Big” earlier this season.  Jesse Moynihan has a love of picking up on tiny jokes or story threads from past episodes and using them to dramatically expand the Adventure Time universe, and he does that here even moreso than in his previous solo credit.  A complex causal loop used to resurrect a cosmic being, all told through callbacks to jokes from previous episodes, all the while bringing up questions about the nature of time and reality?  Pure Moynihan, and I love the ambition of it, even if it’s a kind of story that doesn’t always resonate with me.

Stray Observations –

• In discussion of this episode I’ve seen it theorized that the Finn who becomes the Finn Sword was in fact the “original Finn”, ie. the one we’ve followed all the way from season 1.  Even after rewatching this episode multiple times I can’t follow that specific train of logic.   Moreover, I can’t bring myself to care if he’s replaced by a Finn who’s exactly like him in every way.
• In a stunning coincidence, I watched the Mystery Science Theater episode “Prince of Space” for the first time this week, and one of the sketches from that episode is very on topic for “Is That You?”:

Notable Quotes –

• “These picks were made by our friend to be mouth-loved!”
• “I remember feeling like someone had peeled away a layer from my brain, and my reality was no longer anchored to any point of reference.  And I had to fight to keep from being crushed under the weight of an unforgiving new paradigm of ultimate reality.  So cool, man.”
• “Heh.  All these dudes and their lady problems.”
• “What if the whole world was just some goof’s dream?  Nah, that’d be stupid.”
• “This feels like a trap set by a sick genius.  Welp, hats off to you, sir or madam!  Your trap was a success.”
• “I gotta say, this whole thing seems rickety as yoga balls.”

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Jake the Brick

Original airdate: November 26, 2014
Director, writer, and storyboarder: Kent Osborne
Reviewed by: Cordyceps

I cannot believe how invested I became in a silent cartoon bunny.

“Jake fulfills his lifelong dream of being a brick” feels like the type of summary that’s indicative of a forgettable episode of Adventure Time. The type that mostly just fills an episode count. But instead it’s one of the best episodes of the show.

While the episode is, indeed, about Jake being a brick, it’s ultimately a bit of Planet Earth or some similar nature documentary with Jake taking on the role of David Attenborough. And what could be a silly episode about Jake ends up being a lovely, meditative piece that gives time to showcase a less exciting and less wacky part of Ooo. But in doing so, it gives us a genuine episode.

Using his shapeshifting powers, Jake is trying to fill his lifelong dream of being a brick in a shack as it crumbles. And he’s finally found the perfect shack, one that should collapse any time now. Finn leaves a walkie-talkie for the two to communicate with, which Jake initially rebuffs, but it turns out that being a brick is actually pretty boring.

What Jake discovers as a way to pass the time is the trials and tribulations of a lone bunny. Jake begins narrating everything happening to this rabbit. On the receiving end of the walkie talkie, Finn connects with Starchie to broadcast Jake’s narration all across Ooo, and we get a glimpse of all sorts of characters from throughout the series as they listen in and become invested in the saga. Even Princess Bubblegum gets into it!

And in classic Planet Earth fashion, the little bunny goes through a lot. Its attempt to forage for food is stifled by the emergence of a deer who steals the carrot the bunny was trying to dig up. The bunny retreats to a hiding spot, but then oh no! There’s a rain storm! The bunny is going to be flooded out! Will it be okay?? Thanks to some kind beavers and a sea lard, the answer is yes – they build up a dam to protect the bunny’s home. The rain lets up, and everything seems to be okay.

But oh no! The deer is back! And it proceeds to destroy the poor bunny’s home, knocking over a tree in the process. All seems hopeless… but a hole in the tree provides a perfectly comfortable new home for the bunny. Did my heart leap for joy along with everyone in Ooo? Reader, you best believe it. The bunny can rest easy and so can we.

It’s hard to explain why this episode works. Part of it how perfectly it captures the vibe of a nature documentary. Anyone who has seen one can probably remember a specific moment in which they became completely, thoroughly invested in the triumph of an animal against the larger forces of nature. Part of the hook of such documentaries is building a narrative and anthropomorphizing the animals to some extent in a way that builds empathy. Even better if the animal in question is adorable, and a bit of an underdog. Jake’s narration adds to this, speaking with enough panache to strike the right balance between ridiculous and compelling – classic Adventure Time. 

“Here’s an unusual sight. It’s a Sea Lard! You’d expect to see a few mudscamps out in weather like this, but here we have a rare treat indeed. This little beauty is pretty far outside of her natural habitat, but I’ve heard it said by wise old salts schooled in ancient maritime lore that storms will sometimes blow them off course to a remarkable degree. Looks like we’ve got some pretty good evidence tonight. Yes, sir, sometimes those old sailors know what they’re talking about. It’s a triumph of experience versus the secondhand verities of musty academic tomes. This feisty Sea Lard is pitchin’ right in to save the rabbit hole, belying its slothful reputation. She uses her prodigious swiveling behind to increase the size of the hole, while the beavers continue to reinforce the sides with straw and stick. Times like these, supposed cruelty and indifference of the natural world, all too often its most salient feature, pale before the nobler instincts of even our most humble kin.”

A secret MVP of the episode is the soundtrack, which bounces between mellow and tense as the bunny’s situation unfolds. Some lovely tunes that add to the atmosphere, and I think may be unique to the episode? 

Supplementing the episode is some gorgeous art design. The episode opens with a lingering scene of Finn wandering through nature and then enjoying the scenery with an apple as he goes out to meet Jake. No dialogue, just a bit of calm. The episode continues on to have further gorgeous shots, emphasizing the scenery and nature.

And, the episode also gives us a tiny tease of what’s to come! Click for spoilers!

A note Betty is working with says M+M+S, which just a few episodes down the line we’ll come to learn is the traits of a wizard: Magic, madness, and sadness.

It’s a remarkable 11 minutes of television. Adventure Time was undergoing changes at this time. Episodes like Breezy challenged what the show could be and what the show was trying to say. The world was evolving. And for me at least, some of the humor was starting to get a little tired. This episode is largely standalone, unconnected to wider plot arcs, but does provide updates for many characters we’ve seen throughout the show. It builds effortlessly on what came before, while not making it a “lore” episode. This episode captures what Adventure Time does at its best – something that was recognized by the Emmys, giving it its first win for Outstanding Short-Form Animation Program.