Broke His Crown | Written and storyboarded by: Hanna K. Nyström & Ako Castuera | First aired: March 26th 2016 | Reviewed by: Lyssie

Well, as Bonnie says in this episode, “this is not what I was expecting”. I always sign up for Ice King episodes cause I want to track the dementia parallels, but this episode didn’t give me much to work with. Not to say it was bad, it was great! Just more of a fun adventure than a character study.

Marcy convinces Bonnie to join her for a dinner party with IK – or rather, she always calls him Simon, and asks Bonnie to do the same. Personally I always talk about them separately, but I completely understand Marcy’s inclination. She knew Simon before he was like this and she’s glimpsed him breaking through, so it matters to her to hold on to that part of him, and to humanize him. Bonnie, who never knew him before, and who’s suffered a lot from his harassment, is less sympathetic. But Marcy encourages her to remember to have some fun, like the personal half of a pizza. (Which, for Marcy, presumably means the tomato sauce).

gay

At first we get some fun dinner party shenanigans. IK gives them a present as a bribe, then takes it back when Marcy tells him he doesn’t need to bribe them; he offers drinks that are just blobs of red, fun for Marcy, less so for Bonnie; there’s even a karaoke machine that actually works!

It’s interesting, looking at this hangout, to think about how the IK persona has changed in his own right. At the beginning of the show he never would have been so friendly or considerate. Even though he’s a corruption of someone’s personality that’s seemingly stuck in arrested development, he can still grow and change.

But the pleasantish evening starts to fall apart when IK begins spasming and talking like he’s possessed, while Bonnie’s at the karaoke and Marcy’s out of the room. We get a bit of a tiresome “this thing just happened, why won’t you believe me” dynamic, which thankfully doesn’t last long. IK says this is his best date since his last one, which Bonnie shuts down, again calling back to how he would constantly pressure and/or kidnap her and other princesses. IK says his last date wasn’t a date either, and he’s clearly talking about Betty stealing his crown.

And then the weird stuff happens to IK again, a lingering result of that “last date”. Bonnie inspects the crown suddenly calls him Simon; apparently getting invested in what’s wrong with him made her unconsciously be more empathetic to him. She knocks him out and they take him to her VR machine and hook the crown up to it. We get another little flirtatious moment between them, when Marcy asks Bonnie why she never showed it to her:

“I thought you didn’t liked science.”
“I like games.”
“We can play sometime”

gay

Going into the VRscape they discover an entire world, like some kind of palace maze with the walls made up of the crown’s circuitry. They also meet Gunther – that is, dinosaur!Gunther, as opposed to penguin!Gunther, and Marceline!Gunther (because he calls everyone Gunther). Gunther suggests they go see the professor, and on the way he introduces them to other people who’ve worn the crown who are also hanging around here, including Sveti and the first Santa. (Bonnie doesn’t recognize the name; apparently, even though Christmas survived, the figure of Santa didn’t).

Gunther, yes!

They meet the professor, who is, of course, Simon. He and Marcy get a bit more time to catch up, and he apologizes for not spending more time with her last time since he was so set on apologizing to Betty. He asks if she has a boyfriend, prompting a very noticeable glance on Bonnie’s part. Marcy bashfully mentions her jerk ex, and Simon wishes he could punch him, which is amusing since he already did.

I really like the design of the castle labyrinth

Their time together is once again cut short by Betty, or at least her head floating around messing with stuff. She’s hell-bent on making Simon better, and isn’t letting anyone or anything distract her from it, not even the possibility that she’s making things worse; Bonnie describes it as “her malware”. Simon gets through to her by reminding her of how they met and telling her he loves her, which causes her to snap out of it; which feels a bit similar to how people keep trying to break him free of the crown, come to think of it… Though in her case it’s not “the real Betty” exactly, just a magical AI drive from her memories; but as Simon says, “close enough”.

Magic Wo-man! Iconic tbh

Bonnie says the crown repairing itself will result in it deleting all “foreign elements”, which means the Betty program, but it’s unclear if Simon and the other crown-bearers will get deleted too? At any rate, after Bonnie and Marcy leave, program!Betty is still there, so it remains unclear if she got deleted, either!

Well, they got at least a little more time tog- wait, if she’s not Betty does this count as cheating?

If there’s one theme that I found in the episode, it’s different attitudes to someone with dementia (or the magical equivalent), and how they can lead people to have a limited view of that person. Marcy loves him and holds on to the true him, but can’t fully see how much he hurts others. Bonnie has been hurt by him a lot, and so loses sight of how, at his core, he’s someone who’s lost control of his actions; though she comes to care for him more when she sees in him a problem she can solve. Betty is committed to fixing him, but she’s so fixated on it that she loses sight of him, or of whether or not she’s actually helping. By the end of the episode Bonnie has widened her view a bit, and so has program!Betty; not sure about Marcy though, and we’ll have to wait and see regarding real Betty!

Anyway, that wasn’t really a date, but in another, more accurate way, it was a pretty great double date.

Stray Observations:

• Bonnie’s the MVP of the episode, for sure. Narrating IK’s episode on the karaoke mic, “you’re a rhomboid”, “I always know which button to press”, flipping out at being called an assistant. “I’ve been my own boss my entire life!”
• Also, seriously, all those little flirty moments between Marcy and Bonnie, just??? like???? the hand-holding and “it would mean a lot to me”, Marcy wiping the red off Bonnie’s face, “We can play sometime”, “Yeah, you always know which button to press”…

GAY

• Betty says she’s fixing the crown’s wish magic; there’s that wish magic again…
• “Goodbye, freaks!”
• I just realized I forgot to say something about this being the season opener. I guess, similarly to the end of the last season, this speaks to both how serialized and especially how character-centric the show has become. We’re picking up with these ongoing plotlines, including Bonnie’s work-life balance and Betty trying to save Simon, but the focus is mostly on relationships.

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Don’t Look

Storyboarded by: Somvilay Xayaphone and Seo Kim

Originally Aired: April 2, 2016

Review by: CedricTheOwl

Over the past seven seasons of Adventure Time, Finn and Jake have plumbed dungeons for a number of wondrous treasures: a two-headed rocket elephant that can grant wishes, a sword made of demon blood, a crystal eye that seals away a horde of flaming eyeball monsters.  Finding magical items is a staple of D&D-inspired fantasy, and making them both weird and funny is one of Adventure Time’s greatest strengths.  But as we start season 8, Finn stumbles upon a treasure both wonderful and terrible:  the ability to see one’s self.

The episode opens with our boys in the most unlikely of locations:  in the library, reading of their own volition.  Finn is reading up on a legendary treasure that can change someone into what they always wanted to be.  He wishes he could be a bit taller, at least as tall as Princess Bubblegum, while Jake rejects the very notion that he would ever need to change at all.  Jake’s self-confidence is nothing new, but I do want to bring special attention to one point in this exchange:  Finn doesn’t want to wish his cursed grass arm back to normal.  Finn in season 6 or earlier would have jumped at the chance to have his arm back, and by extension seal away the complex, conflicting emotions he had to navigate from its loss.  But Finn in season 8 has not only made peace with the loss of his arm, he recognizes how struggling to come to terms with it has changed him.  He may want to grow a bit taller, but that brief exchange has highlighted just how much he’s grown already.

With the promise of treasure to loot and a weird hermit to fight (for once not the Ice King), our heroes spring into action.  But Mama Margaret didn’t raise no fools; they make sure to stock up on reflective shields along the way, confident that they can easily counteract the hermit’s vision based abilities.  But upon bursting into the hermit’s yurt, all they find awaiting them is a swarm of rats and a bespectacled skeleton, sitting in a chair surrounded by discarded take-out food.  The only item of value in sight is an old snowglobe, and the boys confirm it is of the non-wondrous, non-wish granting variety.  Disappointed, Finn switches his attention to the skeleton and his cool shades.

Upon removing the sunglasses, Finn finds the real treasure.  A pair of gemstone eyes appear in his skull, and quickly transpose themselves into his eyes, rendering him unconscious.  Finn awakens back in the treehouse, Jake by his side ready with a recuperative bowl of soup.  Finn is touched by this display of fraternal affection… as are his new gemstone eyes, which force Jake to take the form of a sitcom stereotype jockish older brother.

Canned audience applause

Finn and Jake (and, I would argue, all of Ooo) have frequently shown they understand the world through pop culture allusions to the pre-Mushroom War world, ones they only vaguely understand, and this part of the episode reinforces that.  This could be my own limited knowledge of sitcom tropes betraying me, but Jake’s appearance as a curly-topped jock in a varsity jacket is just as likely to signal an antagonistic bully of an older brother figure as much as it would a cool, caring one.  Finn sees BMO as a literally cherubic little kid, an obvious allusion to Pinocchio.  But as BMO flies out the window, Finn realizes that the way he views others is overwriting reality.

The boys are only given breakfast to mull this new power over before Princess Bubblegum calls them into action, this time to wrangle the Ice King as he waits for her to make a speech.  She admits the Ice King has been better and she’s just being cautious, and she’s not the only one who sees the Ice King differently now.  When Finn’s protective shades are knocked off, his gemstone eyes transform the Ice King into Simon, albeit with the Ice King personality intact.  Again, Finn recognizing the human being within his old enemy is nothing new, but it’s nice to see how Finn views those around him so positively.

Unfortunately, without his glasses Finn is a reality warping disaster area waiting to happen.  Starchy refuses to return the glasses, and after a brief chase PB comes out to see what the commotion is all about…

“Can you explain this?”  “I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist!”

Here’s where the episode gets really interesting.  So far the eyes’ transformations have been fairly surface level, in some cases literalizations of what Finn has just said.  But turning Princess Bubblegum, his first crush and someone he still has a lot of complex feelings towards, into a much more masc-presenting look is new territory.  It could be an acknowledgement that he’s over his romantic feelings for her, seeing her as one of the guys instead of an object of desire.  It could be a recognition that, despite her bubbly feminine appearance, she’s both cool to hang out with and not afraid to throw down in a scrap.  It could represent some sublimated gender issue my cis brain is in no way equipped to comment on.

Or he could just be a fan of early 90s hip-hop girl groups.  The tomboy look used to be IN

Finn and Jake retreat back to the treehouse, but they’re no safer from uncomfortable introspection there.  NEPTR makes one of his rare appearances, and the sheer infrequency of his presence causes Finn to recall just how much he’s forgotten his presence, turning NEPTR into an inanimate microwave.  Finn is shaken by his own subconscious neglect of his surrogate son, and reflecting upon it (literally, in NEPTR’s microwave door) transforms Finn himself into a spiky red monster.  A monster that just so happens to resemble Finn’s father, Martin.

“And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me:  he’d grown up just like me”

I mentioned earlier that Finn had made peace with the loss of his arm, but he’s clearly still got a lot of anger towards his father.  Their parting in “The Comet” was just Finn acknowledging that Martin will never be the father he wants him to be.  No catharsis, no tender reunion, just the realization and acceptance of some cold, hard truths about life.  Those negative feelings no longer rule his life, but as we saw with Marceline in “Stakes”, emotions you’ve made peace with can still linger.  Finn, horrified at what he’s done to NEPTR and his subsequent transformation, flees the treehouse.

Thankfully, Finn has cultivated quite the support network of friends.  Jake corrals Princess Princess Bubblegum, Starchy, Shelby, and even Ice King to come cheer Finn up, to help him see himself in ways he can’t when he’s in his own head.  Finn is overcome with emotion enough to shed tears, pushing the gemstone eyes out of his head.  He uses Microwave!NEPTR to bake them into a pie, restoring everyone the eye has changed back to their normal forms.  That includes NEPTR, who’s restored to life and given a rousing celebration for saving the day.

This episode isn’t the official season opener, but it nonetheless serves as a good preview as to what the season will hold.  Finn’s perception of himself will once again be challenged in ways strange even by Adventure Time’s standards.  He’ll grapple with his past in ways I dare not say more about for fear of spoilers.  Season 7 gave a lot of narrative focus to the inner lives of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, but our boy is back in the spotlight, and if this episode is going to be any indication, it’s not going to go easy on him.

Notable Quotes –

• “We should have known better than to trust a book.”
• “I’ve been waiting with a bowl of soup.  It has hoops and loops and maybe some goop.”
• “What to wear for my speech?  Boss next door?  Hot president?”
• “Sigh.  Teen boy heartthrob it is.”