Be Sweet

Air Date: June 2, 2015

Storyboarded by: Seo Kim and Somvilay Xayaphone

Reviewed by Prestidigititis

Today’s first Adventure Time episode is a calamity. A series of calamities, really, inspired by the actions and inactions of a couple of calamitous individuals. Forces of Nature who wreak havoc wherever they go. But they really can’t help it. They’re acting according to their natures, like the scorpion riding the back of the frog. Only a whole bunch sillier.

This episode’s gonna test the viewer’s tolerance for Lumpy Space Princess’ nonsense, no matter how indulgent you are inclined to be toward her in the name of laughs. Me, I enjoy a good heap of LSP idiocy, and it’s been shown that she can be a useful and poignant addition to a classic Adventure Time story, like she’s been in “Princess Day” and “Bad Timing.” Here, though, she’s hard to like even as she’s making you laugh. Still roughing it under self-imposed exile in the woods, she finds herself locked in muddy battle with a Fox, a denizen of the wild who is one of the Forces of Nature which pushes the action forward. In the middle of a wrestling match for a chicken leg, LSP gets a phone call from Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig asking if she’d be available to babysit Sweet P for the night, while they go out on a date.

Lumpy Space Princess is, of course, a Force of Nature all her own. An embodiment of sheer id and privilege, who of course grabs the opportunity to live a night back in relative modernity, complete with sink-cleanings, fridges, and bubble baths. As Tree Trunks imparts the duty of correctly laying her progeny down for the night, LSP spritzes the mud off her lumps and hustles the married pair out the door. As soon as they’re gone, she uses a pizza to lure Sweet P into his bedroom, and locks him in so she can have the run of the place. Like a bad teenager caricature, she tries on their clothes, bops to some music, and stokes their indoor, civilized fire. “I deserve this,” she reflects to herself–before the outside world impinges on her once more, in the form of the Fox invader from earlier.

Our third Force of Nature, Sweet P himself, then asserts himself when he’s ready for bed, and for LSP to be sweet to him. The adoration and sweetness that Tree Trunks uses to lull our large toddler to bed is a very important part of assuaging this Force of Nature, and without it…walls aren’t capable of holding him, and off Sweet P goes in search of his nighttime ritual.

There’s a lot to suggest here that LSP’s own mind is what’s tormenting her, as the voice of the Fox is not in time with the opening and closing of his mouth. He’s accusatory, revealing the truth that while LSP might claim to deserve her comforts–telling Marceline how she has a “new life…and a career”–the voice LSP hears insists that she belongs “in the woods with garbage animals.” It’s a horrifying accusation, especially if it comes from LSP’s own self. Whether it’s a voice of guilt or a voice of honesty, the episode leaves up to the viewer to decide.

Meanwhile the biggest, and most potentially dangerous Force of Nature is tromping through Ooo in search of sweetness. Sweet P isn’t a force of determination like LSP is, he’s closer to that of the Fox who’s just asserting his innate needs. He’s being raised by a loving mom and dad to understand that he deserves the sweetness that every baby needs to grow up with a sense of goodness, safety, and basic value. But we’re dealing with a very large child here, one that towers over cars and busts through walls, so even as he asks politely and innocently for every one of his bedtime-tuck-in needs to be met, he’s ignored, denigrated, and eventually captured by the police.

LSP continues to fight her Fox nemesis, wreaking havoc on Tree Trunk’s/Mr. Pig’s house, and hearing the Fox insist that everything she touches becomes gross, just like her. LSP eventually discovers that her charge has run off, and after very calmly and logically shrieking his name in a panic through the candy streets of Ooo, winds up in the same jail cell as Sweet P. It’s here where she redeems herself, going through the sweet tuck-in process. It’s genuinely touching to see this, even though the rest of the episode can veer wildly from funny to dumb to frustrating to waaaaay too much. Obviously this is where your mileage may vary when it comes to LSP’s whole…comedic deal. I like LSP, but there are a lot of parts in this episode where I wish she’d been reined in a bit. She’s ostensibly learning a lesson, and the revelation that there’s some part of her that recognizes she’s not the good, deserving Princess she thinks of herself as. That’s not something to be dismissed…but considering it was all happening when she was supposed to be taking care of a toddler, and was acting like the most Prima-est of Donnas throughout it all, it’s hard to feel like a lesson was imparted. Either to LSP, or to us, the audience. In the end, though, Sweet P gets his sweetness and is off to dreamland. LSP pitches her live-in nanny position for the lad to Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig, and is tossed back out into the wilderness once again, to struggle with the Fox over a chicken leg. The Forces of Nature once again return to where we found them.

Even Sweet P. Lest we forget, though, Sweet P is more than just a toddler, and has a Force of Nature inside him beyond the ones we attribute to a baby’s needs. This is the transformed Lich, after all, and we’re reminded of what it all could mean in a little epilogue where a sleep-muttering Sweet P tells us of his dreams. That he is a comet coming to Ooo again and again. That a beard-man in a space ship came as a fake comet. And the true Catalyst of Change is still hurtling toward Ooo, the Force of Nature whose effects have yet to be learned.

Stray Observations:

• I don’t even want to think about what Marceline is doing during that phone call.
• ”Butter cakes, cupcakes, and ice cream cakes/small baby bums and the friendship of puppies.” I can think of a lot worse lullabies. Also, the sweet words LSP thinks to Sweet P are genuinely touching (to me, at least): “You are more precious than anything in this world, and I will always, always love you.”
• I’m not going to defend the presentation of LSP here. Obviously she’s a horrible person in so many ways, and whether that works as humor is going to differ from person to person, from episode to episode…hell, even from joke to joke, like this episode did for me. But it’s pretty clear that the AT creatives love her, and so do the denizens of Ooo, it seems. Well, if not “love” then at least “understand and tolerate.”
• ”Mr. And Mrs. Pig-Trunks”

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Orgalorg

Boarded by: Graham Falk

Aired: June 3, 2015

Reviewed by: CedricTheOwl

“Of all of history’s greatest monsters, you are by far the most evil thing I have encountered.”  Such is the estimation of Gunter by one Hunson Abadeer, waaaay back in the season 2 opener “It Came From the Nightosphere”.  A silly one-off joke at the time, as many things in the early seasons were, and since then Gunter (for all that we can tell there being a singular Gunter among the many penguins in Ice King’s orbit) has had a few implications of being more than just a particularly mischievous flightless arctic bird.  He laid an egg from which a magic pink cat hatched, he used the Ice King’s Demonic Wishing Eye to conquer the Candy Kingdom, and worst of all, he displayed a particular hatred for glass containment vessels.  More recently, we saw a dark side emerge from Gunter’s unconscious mind in the episode “Hoots”.  And now, nearly six seasons after the joke was first laid, it finally becomes an actual plot point.  What I’m saying is that, despite this episode being boarded by Graham Falk, the Orgalorg plotline has Jesse Moynihan’s fingerprints all over it.

Moynihan has one of the most visible writing styles of any Adventure Time boarder:  repurposing old jokes from early seasons and giving them dramatic heft, as well as lots of very specific, often esoteric references to real-world occultism.  Season 6 in particular has been a playground for his style to really flourish, with episodes that would require college level knowledge of real world mysticism and philosophy to fully decode.  He’s had three solo boarding credits this season alone, more than any other boarder, which speaks to how much his style has synergized with and influenced the season’s themes.  This episode even makes reference to one of his earliest joke retcons, citing the King of Mars as the one responsible for first defeating Orgalorg and imprisoning him on Earth.

With all that said, it’s odd that Graham Falk would be given this episode to board, since he also has a unique writing style.  His episodes (two of which are solo boarding credits in season 6, second only to JMoyns himself) tend to have a stiffer, more antiquated animation style and make reference to classic cartoons.  There is some of that style on display, namely when the Gunters set up a fish casino in the Ice King’s pad, featuring the kind of nonsense glitz and glam from out of a classic Looney Tunes cartoon that would usually feature caricatures of Hollywood stars of the day.

This must be what Shakespeare’s pop culture references feel like to readers with no footnotes

However, I think giving this episode to Falk makes for an effective misdirect.  Viewers familiar with his previous episodes would expect something whimsical, which makes the turn towards horror all the more effective.  Once Gunter’s brain is exposed after a particularly nasty hit to the head, the episode’s tone pivots immediately to something more unnerving.  Gunter’s lidded, unblinking stare as he goes about his work..  Flashes of strange imagery.  The tension-filled musical score.  Even the change in lighting, as the Ice King’s home is bathed in a sickly yellow tinge.  It’s a radical departure from the relaxing, silly, blue-tinted atmosphere of the episode’s first half.  Adventure Time has made use of a silly first half of an episode to lower the audience’s guard for the more intense second half (“Holly Jolly Secrets” may be unmatchable in terms of the gulf between the content of its sillier side and its serious side), and here it makes for an effective introduction to the show’s new villain.

This particular shot makes Gunter look like he has a sweet, puffy mohawk

With the way the episode builds tension, it’s almost a relief when it’s revealed to just be the machinations of a cosmic horror.  In-universe, cosmic entities are a step above anything that our heroes have tangled with in the past.  Even the Lich isn’t quite on that level, even though he seeks to commune with them in the season-opening “Escape from the Citadel”.  From a viewer’s perspective though, Orgalorg is nothing new.  Cosmic horror monsters had become thoroughly mainstream by 2015; even the big C himself appearing in other Cartoon Network shows as a one-off joke.

In R’yleh dead Cthulu waits putting

Even Adventure Time doesn’t play the reveal of Orgalorg’s nature entirely straight.  The exposition dump about his true nature calls is littered with jokes, culminating in his return being blamed on makeouts just as he unleashes a wave of psychic terror on a hapless alien planet.  Orgalorg’s true form bears an uncanny resemblance to a banana peel, making him look like a more monstrous form of PB’s Banana Guards.  Instead of making this new villain a source of ultimate dread, the show is already taking steps to undercut him.  Whether this approach works is a matter left up to the viewer.  On the one hand, cosmic horror is a good capstone for a season rife with themes of existential dread and the insignificance of ones in actions in the face of an uncaring universe; on the other hand, immediately making light of what should be the thesis statement of the season’s themes could be seen as deflating the tension the episode’s unique presentation spent so much time building up.

As a final note, I wanted to briefly discuss a detail I noticed about this plot point only on the rewatch:  the split in identity between Orgalorg and Gunter.  From the way his origin is described, you could easily think that Orgalorg is simply laying low as Gunter, waiting for his moment to reveal himself.   However, at the episode’s end, faced with the primal terror of the planet Orgalorg is attacking, Gunter reasserts control and destroys the totems Orgalorg has built, severing the link between Orgalorg and his victims.  After prophesizing the destruction of the Candy Kingdom and Princess Bubblegum back in “Hoots”, the dream projection of Gunter seems to genuinely have no knowledge of what occurred, and even has some fondness for the Cosmic Owl.  There’s clearly a mental divide between the penguin we know and the monster we’re just introduced to, which isn’t much but it is an interesting wrinkle to the story.

Stray Observations –

• The common theme of these two episodes?  Adorable critters besieged by eldritch terrors in their sleep
• Orgalorg actually makes an early first appearance in the Lich’s speech in “Gold Stars”, among the writhing masses of monsters from before the universe existed.

“Here’s your gold star.”