Come Along With Me: Adventure Time – “Wheels” and “High Strangeness”

Wheels

Storyboarded by: Graham Falk and Charmaine Verhagen

Originally Aired: January 24, 2017

Review by: CedricTheOwl

What a streak of Finn-focused episodes we’ve had lately, huh?  Status quo changes, heavy introspection, character development like woah, a new potential ally (or potential foe) loose in Ooo, and just in general demonstrating how much has changed for our hero since those early seasons, and how he’s changed in response to them.  Seems like as good a time as any to see how Jake has changed alongside him.  Or rather, hasn’t changed.

Our episode finds Jake participating in a three-legged race with his son, Kim Kil Whan, at some kind of company picnic for forest animals.  They come in last place, but both of them seem remarkably chill about it for two characters known to be aggressively competitive.  Jake even acknowledges that he could have annihilated the other employees with his stretchy powers; Kim agrees, and thanks Jake for going easy on the competition.  They’re both restraining their competitive urges for the sake of making the picnic fun for everyone, which is a nice acknowledgement of the understanding they came to in their last episode.

As they’re heading to Kim Kil Whan’s house, Kim confides in Jake that his daughter (and Jake’s granddaughter) Bronwyn is struggling in school, sleeping through classes even though she seems to be keeping up with her homework.  Kim figures he needs a more teenage (read: less responsible) mindset to understand the problem, and Jake quickly proves he’s the dog for the job by suggesting surreptitiously searching her stuff.

Surprisingly, Kim Kil Whan doesn’t approve of invading Bronwyn’s privacy… at least not directly.  He did obtain some of her drawings from their home recycling, drawings that clearly appear to be of skateboard designs.  Jake feigns ignorance and tells Kim he’ll think about it as he departs.  Later that night, Bronwyn sneaks out of her house to head into the forest, and Jake is on hand to follow her.  He soon discovers her destination:  a meetup with her forest critter friends at a hidden skate park.

I can’t help but wonder if Kid Fox is as hung up on Boobafina II as his older counterpart was

Jake introduces himself to the kids and, after impressing them with some skate tricks, tries to share his son’s worries about Bronwyn’s future with her.  This predictably gets him mocked by the irreverent youths, and just as predictably Jake immediately caves to peer pressure.  This is a flaw of his that episodes have been built around since at least “The Limit”.  Jake thrives on being the center of attention, and while he was able to hold that aspect of him back at Kim Kil Whan’s party, he’s utterly helpless before people whose respect he desperately wants to win.

What’s new with this dynamic is how it affects those around him.  Finn is usually more than happy to cede attention to Jake when he starts showboating.  With the exception of when he’s trying to impress a girl during his more awkward younger years, Finn is pretty generous with the spotlight.  Bronwyn exists in what feels like a more layered teenage friend group.  From our introduction to her friends it’s clear that she enjoys a lot of popularity, but as soon as Jake starts showing off they seem quick to amplify her failures and attempts to assert her place in the popularity hierarchy.  It’s a messy, almost uncomfortably realistic depiction of teenage social structures, especially with her being what appears to be the only girl in the group.

Fig 2: Losing social capital to your gwampaw

What follows is a cycle of ritual humiliation for poor Bronwyn:  Jake impresses her friends with his showboating, she tries to reassert her place in her friend group, only to deepen her embarrassment when it backfires.  Even a barely conscious Finn has more street cred than her after a short time.  In fairness, Jake does try to support her, but in the Machiavellian snake pit of teen social circles, the only thing worse than claiming that your parents think you’re cool is if they show up to confirm it.  Finally Bronwyn snaps, challenging Jake to a high stakes (by teenage hangout standards) skateboard race.

Of course, an actual competition is the worst possible thing for Jake’s competitive streak, so he’s all in with trying to out-thrash his granddaughter, regardless of the damage to her social life.  Finn, by contrast, fully recognizes how much the situation has spiraled out of control.  He’s still willing to drop the flag to start the race, but not before saying his piece.  Much like in “The Limit”, Jake is quick to lose focus and commit to any foolhardy quest so long as someone is cheering him on, and this time all of Bronwyn’s friends are fully on his side.   And like in that episode, he ends up going too far and getting himself hurt, much to Bronwyn’s shock.

Even after eating dirt and attaining total fartdom, Jake is still celebrating that Bronwyn called him cool in her moment of panic.  Fortunately, Kim Kil Whan arrives to take over the responsibility of being an adult and has a long overdue conversation with his daughter.  For all that Kim could be a tool in his focus episode, he shows a remarkable amount of understanding when coming to terms with Bronwyn.  Bron is equally reasonable in agreeing to balance her skating with her schoolwork.

The understanding they come to is much more productive and less bittersweet than the conclusion of “Ocarina”.  There, Kim just had to accept that Jake wouldn’t magically change to become the responsible father he wanted him to be, and that he tries his best in his own way.  He tried here too, but similarly fell short of what both Kim Kil Whan and Bronwyn needed him to be.  If there’s anything productive Kim learned from “Ocarina”, it was to not repeat Jake’s parenting mistakes with his own children.  It’s a good parenting message in general:  break those cycles of mistakes by recognizing how your own parents fell short, even if they tried their best, and not passing down those mistakes to the next generation.

But do pass down any sick teleportation powers you might have.

Notable Quotes –

• “Uh oh, kids hate flute.  But they love mashups!”
• “Dude, you’re really going to ban your own granddaughter from her own skate park?”  “Man, I hope so!”
• “Not the swan.  That’s where the pups came from!”

Stray Observations –

• This is Charmaine Verhagen’s only Adventure Time boarding credit, but she had previously worked on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and would later go on to work on Craig of the Creek through most of its run.
  • For Craig of the Creek enjoyers, she’s responsible for the designs of both the Horse Girls and the goth witches, among other things.

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High Strangeness

Air date: 
January 25, 2017

Director: 
Elizabeth Ito

Storyboard: 
Pendleton Ward
Sam Alden

There’s a ratings scale for alien encounter stories, made up by the same guy who came up with the “first/second/third kind” that most people are familiar with from the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.

This is anywhere from the 4th to the 69th kind

Here, a story is rated for its “strangeness”, with simple sightings of lights in the sky having “low strangeness”, while instances where people have missing periods of time, gaps in their memories, clocks are stopped, and physical objects are moved or broken are described as having “high strangeness”.

And this episode is definitely that.

It’s got so much going on.

We have Tree Trunks revealing her alien consorts and half-breed star children, getting freaky with Mr. Pig, Bubblegum’s space program, TT stirring up violent anti-fascist direct action,

a bunch of references to the painter dude who claimed he lost his virginity to an alien woman at 17 (more on this one later), Booshi, anti-colonialism, and then what’s almost certainly a three-species two-planet threeway to wrap things up.

It’s glorious.

There’s some fun implications, too. Princess Bubblegum has a graph of the population of the world, showing a huge crash around the 21st-22nd century, while the equations to the upper left of her board look like they’re from carrying capacity and growth rate calculations from ecology. The rest look like Bayesian statistical analysis, or so the internet tells me, because I don’t know anything about Bayesian statistical analysis.

But I do know this guy.

Would you believe this is the best picture I could find?

So, there’s this painter I mentioned above, the guy who claims he lost his virginity to an alien at 17 who I’m pretty sure is the inspiration for a lot of this episode, and this weird Zorak-lookin motherfucker is part of my argument, because he’s got paintings of a giant mantis friend who comes and visits him along with the aliens.

I think that’s supposed to be a halo but I like to imagine he’s wearing a straw hat.

Because one thing I’ve learned about this show is that there’s a lot more behind the lolrandomness of it than it seems at first glance, and because there’s no reason for this to be here otherwise.

Though the vest absolutely feels like an intentional Space Ghost reference.

Stray Observations:

• Lot of good moments in this one that defy easy quoting, from TT slapping Mr. Pig’s butt to this amazing moment I’ve gotten a ton of use out of as a gif:

• “Booshi’s only prison is this wicked planet.”
  “Yeah, join the club.”
• The internet claims Booshi is a specific reference but honestly the whole “channeling an alien entity/ghost/whatever” schtick is like 150 years old at this point and the evidence they point to are all things everyone does when they do this, so unless, say, the weird hand gesture he makes is a specific reference, I’m not willing to put weight behind that.
• My guess was that the remote looking like Texas was a reference to NASA Space Command being in Houston and the internet consensus agrees with me. Short of a word of god statement from the writers I’ll take that as confirmation.
• A bunch of PB’s rockets have her in different outfits from different episodes and different facial expressions.
• Also, man, her outfits in this one are fuckin’ great. I love how her and Marceline both have lots of different looks.
• Tree Trunks gets some incredible off the wall country insults in at PB in this one.
• And I know not everyone likes her but my god this episode cements Tree Trunks as one of my favorite characters in the show. It’s hard for me not to root for a sassy freak of a little old lady who goes on an anti-colonialist crusade.