Astral Plane

Boarded by: Jesse Moynihan and Jillian Tamaki

Aired: January 22, 2015

Reviewed by: CedricTheOwl

We’re fully in the age of serialized Adventure Time with this episode, as the approaching comet we saw at the end of “Evergreen” figures heavily into the plot of this episode.  As Finn and Jake spend a night out camping, Finn indulges in one of the time-honored pastimes of the campfire: letting your mind wander.  After considering the implications of pet ownership, his eye is drawn by the comet from the previous episode.  Even after he falls asleep, the comet reacts with our boy and causes him to astral project in his sleep.

No sooner has Finn adjusted to this new state of being than he finds himself drawn away from the camp and into a nearby radio station.  It’s the home of Mr. Fox, whom Finn finds mumbling in his sleep about Boobafina, the goose from “Storytelling” that he was hung up on.  Finn also finds that Mr. Fox is astral projecting in his sleep.  However, he only makes use of this heightened sense of state to work on Sudoku puzzles.  Before they can converse too long, Finn finds himself once again being drawn away.  On his way to his new destination, Finn thinks that Mr. Fox looked lonely.

Soon, Finn encounters Bounce House Princess, finishing up her job of amusing children by… being a bounce house.  When not on the clock, BHP lives in a cave, enjoying a solitary yet self-sufficient existence.  That is, until a stranger calls.  A porcupine enters her home, in search of food and clearly unperturbed by Bounce House Princess’ understandable terror.  She makes for her panic room and tries to calm down with some stress eating, but even her extensive preparations do little to slow the hungry invader’s advance.  As Finn drifts off, BHP is left despondent, trapped by the fear of interacting with a stranger that she can’t help but feel will hurt her.

The next stop on Finn’s odyssey is a kickin’ dance party in Cloud Kingdom.  Ice King is using his magic to keep the drinks chilled, making him surprisingly popular.  Alas, he’s having no more luck than usual with a comely cloud lady named Lauren, especially once he name-drops Finn and diverts her focus to him.  Frustrated at losing her attention as well as the realization that the cloud people only like him for his ice powers, he freezes the entire party solid, dropping the partygoers through the floor and thoroughly killing the vibe.  As Finn begins to ascend into the sky,  he can’t help but pity Simon (notably Simon, not Ice King), wondering if there’s a part of him that wants to be sad and lonely, and if there’s something he gets out of it.

Finn’s musing is almost immediately answered by his next encounter.  Marceline is floating above the clouds, composing a characteristically melancholy song about the bonds of memory and relationship becoming unwound by the relentless march of time.  As he continues to ascend, Finn suspects that Marceline transmutes her sadness into the creative arts, and wonders if all creation is inherently a product of sadness.

Finn’s astral body finally breaches Earth’s atmosphere, landing him in the middle of a circle of Space Lards.  Aside from Mr. Fox’s astral projection, they’re the first creatures on his journey that seem to react to his astral presence, summoning a Mother Lard in the center of their formation.  From the Mother Lard is birthed a brand new Lard, an act of creation that is neither necessarily sad nor solitary.  As he contemplates birth as an act of creation, the comet calls his astral form higher still, and the Space Lards give him a boost on his way.

Look at those Space Lards go. It’s the freakiest show.

Finn’s astral journey has brought him to Mars, where a fleet of ships are fleeing the planet’s surface.  The Martians are firing on the comet (or Catalyst Comet, as they name it) in a futile attempt to divert its path.  We also learn the true nature of the comet:  every 1000 years, it reforms itself and strikes Earth anew, bringing about a change on the planet.  The new Catalyst Comet has broken that cycle, both by appearing too early and by heading for Mars instead of Earth.  

When Grob Gob Glob Grod asks for his opinion on the situation, Finn sums up the night’s journey with a pertinent question:  if being born is the purest, most transcendent act of creation in the universe… what next?  Is all of life just a gradual descent into loneliness and isolation as friends and family members depart, until at long last our health and our memories abandon us too?  Gob counters with a different viewpoint:  is creating something in and of itself enough?  Is there any value to creating something singular if you consider it ruined the moment it gains even a single flaw?  The conversation is doomed to go uncompleted though, as at that moment GGGG takes it upon themselves to fly into the comet, sacrificing themselves to divert its path and save the Martian society they helped create.

Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know, he’s in the bestselling show.

Finn is propelled back into his body, and when Jake asks what happened, he has but three words:  “Glob is dead.”  Back on Mars, the Martians confirm Finn’s fears.  There is no sign of their ruler and protector, but the Catalyst Comet is back on course towards Earth.  Only it’s not a comet.  What appeared to be a comet was in fact a spaceship piloted by Martin, Finn’s deadbeat dad.  The episode closes ominously, with Finn’s father returning to Ooo and the death of the being from which Ooo derives its name for a deity.  And yet, Finn and Jake follow his example one last time by helping whoever they can.  In this case, a deflated Bounce House Princess.

That was a lot, even for a Jesse Moynihan episode.  His episodes draw a lot of inspiration from real world philosophy and mysticism, and “Astral Plane” is easily the most in-depth episode yet.  In particular, Finn’s astral projection journey mirrors the journey of the soul in Gnostic and Hermetic tradition.  The two traditions are quite different, but they both broadly involve the journey of the human soul to rejoin the divine source through the attainment of knowledge.  By the end of Finn’s journey, he believes that the creation of new life, the act of being born itself, is the closest any mortal can come to divinity, and everything else after that is a gradual but inexorable decay.  He encounters mythical creatures that can peer beyond the material plane, an ageless being whose eroding grasp on their own morality is at the root of their problems, a man desperately lonely but whose every attempt to ingratiate himself to others only drives them away, all the way down to two humble beings hiding from a world that hurt them.  At the end of his journey, he does indeed attain divine knowledge:  namely, that the divine is absent, undone by an act of sacrifice that at best seems to have delayed a problem, rather than solving it.  Looked at in reverse, Finn’s journey is one of a descent from a place of divine wisdom and togetherness, a person who is four at once, to complete self-imposed physical and emotional isolation.

I’m not going to pretend this is any more than surface level understanding of Gnostic or Hermetic philosophy.  I had to do a lot of background research to learn even this much and how it related to the episode.  I even ended up venturing back to the old AV Club write-up of this very episode, digital ruins I had a small hand in building.  It’d probably take a college-level understanding of these specific philosophies to tease out all the nuances, and I think it’s fair to ask:  is that too much?  Is this episode too deep in the weeds of its own influences to be comprehensible, let alone enjoyable by its target audience?

It’s a valid question, and yet I think this episode is perfectly digestible even with that in mind.  It’s not the funniest episode, and the exposition from the G-Man and the Martians can be prosaic, but it’s also well in line with the themes Season 6 has explored.  Finn sees a universe growing ever more separate and lonely, and wonders if there’s anything that’s worth doing in the face of a seemingly pointless existence.  “Sad Face”, “Little Brother”, “Everything’s Jake”, and “Jake the Brick” have all asked this question, but I would argue “Astral Plane” is the first one to give an answer.  When Finn asks 4G about the conclusions he drew from his experiences, instead of answering him they reframe his question:  is creation truly the only worthwhile and noble pursuit?  Is something inherently worthless because it is cosmically insignificant or because it will not last?  Grob Gob Glob Grod argues that even these things, these struggles have value, and they back up their argument with action.  It’s a thought provoking episode, arguably the fulcrum upon which Season 6’s themes turn, and it requires no real understanding of the philosophical underpinnings that Jesse Moynihan brings to the table.

Stray Observations –

• “Astral Plane” is the first credit for guest storyboarder Jillian Tamaki, a Canadian comics artist that the AT crew invited to work on the show.  She will also work on the Season 6 episode “The Diary”.
• Among the many, many callbacks of this episode are the reveal that one of Finn’s previous lives was that of a comet, back in the season 5 episode “The Vault”.  Unsurprisingly, the episode about past life regression is a Jesse Moynihan joint.

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So you all remember, Sweet Pig-Trunks, right? At the beginning of the season we had Finn and Jake escaping the citadel but with a freshly reincarnated Lich in the form of a large humanoid baby. This time he is soft and seemingly without memory of his time as The Lich save for spooky cryptic nightmares.

This abomination was dropped of at Tree Trunks place right as she was getting ready to divorce Mr. Pig. The baby I guess saved their marriage and we don’t see him again until this episode where he is now larger and more clothed. What follows is a World of Ooo stylez Pinocchio adventure featuring King of Ooo (KOO) and Toronto conning Sweet P out of his education with the promise of advanced dance moves and gold stars.

Finn and Jake are given security detail and escort Sweet P to his first day of school. It’s officially time for his integration into candy society. It goes well at first as he successfully passes the “fat squirrel in trub” test. Finn, Jake, and all the banana guards hilariously just peace out as soon as Sweet P arrives at school.

Sweet P’s first interaction is a hard one for him as he’s teased by some candy kids because he’s “not even a real kid.” Pinocchio wanted to grow up– but here Sweet P is mocked as a “baby man”, he’s just too adult-looking for these kids.

Sweet P does not handle the bullying well and some really slimy characters in KOO and Toronto use it as an opportunity to enlist him in their schemes. KOO (voiced by Andy Daly) previously appeared in “Apple Wedding” where he was asked to officiate Tree Trunks’ wedding. If it wasn’t clear this guy sux then it’s definitely obvious now. KOO convinces Sweet P to drop out of school to dance while keeping it a secret from his parents. Okay I just realized how super gross that sounded, yikes. SP doesn’t know how to survive these hard candy streets tho and just takes KOO’s word that this really is a form of education. There’s also the promise of “coming back and showing it to those mean kids”, which might be more important to him to feel accepted as a real kid.

Sweet P, KOO and Toronto spend prolly several weeks (good job Finn and Jake) performing their dancing act and in the progress make a lot of dosh. TT and MP see the gold stars SP brings home as proof of his education. Eventually SP realizes the truth of the situation: the gold stars are actually garbage stars! Even a baby understands garbage stars are worthless. KOO and Toronto won’t have their star baby quit on them so they make threats which lead to this:

I got to be honest– on revisiting this episode I didn’t recall anything particularly memorable other than Ron Perlman’s monologue here as the Lich. The tone of the episode quickly changes to remind the viewer this sweet kid has a really old cosmic entity inside him. Its a short and simple speech that also expanded on the lore of the world. It was enough to terrify KOO and Toronto into gibbering messes (the imagery prolly helped too).

But what did the Lich learn from his teachers exactly? That they sux? That he can shuffle truffle as a means to ingratiate himself to others? It is unclear. I guess you could say that the dance education paid off and actually did work as promised since SP was able to confidently get past those bullies with his hypnotic belly flopping.

In trying to find more things to talk about with this episode I went over the original storyboard. It had surprisingly very few differences compared to the final product. I only found two differences in the entire thing. The first were some missing rancid banana peels which make up one of three ingredients for a proper garbage star (the others being old newspapers and rags). The second difference occurs in the final scene when SP makes his bullies laugh:

In this original scene the bullies would have more labored breathing as they laugh until they eventually stopped moving which prompts SP to smile. Maybe this was just supposed to be funny and not as dark as it looks. I could totally see this as your typical AT humour. I’m guessing they wanted to present SP by the episode end as a sweet kid and not leave it ambiguous whether he took some dark lesson to heart.

Stray Images: