Son of Rap Bear

Directed by Diana Lafyatis | Written and Storyboarded by Seo Kim and Somvilay Xayaphone, from a story by Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvise, Julia Pott, and Adam Muto

Original Airdate: September 17, 2017

I wasn’t supposed to take this week. I wasn’t supposed to take next week either. Those were both gonna be Prestidigititis’s reviews, but sadly he won’t be able to join us as we finish out the series. As many of you are no doubt aware by now, he passed away last Thursday. So I volunteered. I was already in reserve for Seventeen next week, so I’ll be taking that one too. I wasn’t sure I’d have much to say this time, but especially this close to the finish line, the show must go on. Thank you for all your contributions to these recaps, Presti.

NEPTR drops the hottest verses at a beach bonfire. It’s nice to see Finn and Flame King hanging out as friends, isn’t it? Glad they worked through it. Phoebe explains that this is her first time at the Clam Rap, so Finn busts out some sick rhymes of his own to hype up the crowd and invites her to take the next one, and as we all know by now she’s got a knack for it, leaving Finn on the back foot as his response fails to keep the crowd’s attention. Enter the King of Ooo’s former toady Toronto, sporting a jacket, bow tie, and mustache, and eager to add Phoebe to his table in his new identity as a talent scout. He offers her the chance to battle at an upcoming benefit concert, and she naively signs before Finn clocks him. The dishonest Shiba reveals that her contract specifies that if she loses her rap battle she forfeits the Fire Kingdom to him, and her opponent is the similarly gifted son of Rap Bear, Son Of Rap Bear.

Soon the duo head to visit Dad of Son of Rap Bear at his home inside of that weird gross monster. They find the former Emcee disheveled and face down in a plate of leftovers. Rap Bear explains that during a friendly rap battle over Sunday dinner, things suddenly escalated until he found himself thoroughly dunked on, so much so that he is now a legless double amputee. Finn and Phoebe head to the Candy Kingdom next to scope this puffed-up young turk out at an open mic, SORB drops some Eminem-style shit on the gingerbread man he’s up against. His rhymes are so fresh that they decapitate the hapless candy person… and then he spots Phoebe. Our heroes flee as his devastating improvs crumble large portions of the bar.

Later, Phoebe reflects on his underlying point: She lacks the worldly experience to deliver. Admitting that it’s true, she invites Finn to take her adventuring so she can shore up her life experience before the big show. She gets a job at Pizza Castle, goes rock climbing, flees the Blank-Eyed Girl with Starchy, jams with Marceline, explores deep ocean with Bananaman, gives the loathsome Wyatt a back massage, takes a bath with Finn, and studies with PB, Turtle Princess, and Kim Kil Whan, but her new material still leaves something to be desired. It doesn’t feel authentic to her. By way of feedback, BMO, as is their wont, dunks on NEPTR, who has come to believe the face on his can is a conjoined twin. The subject of family inspires Phoebe to consult with her father, who has taken up painting stick figures of animals and is still unwilling to admit fault for the way she was raised. No help there.

How cute is this dress, by the way? Phoebe always has great fashion sense when she isn’t just wearing a baggy t-shirt or whatever.

But there’s no more time, showtime is here. SORB is up first and he gets real personal with it right away, attacking her temper and her romantic disappointments right out of the gate. Phoebe chokes until she spots Flame King in the audience. He is his characteristic insensitive wad of a self, and that’s enough. Because Rap Bear is right about one thing: Phoebe’s temper is extremely dangerous, and now that she’s backed into a corner, it’s time for her to go down fighting. She scathingly rebukes the former Flame King’s competence, then turns on SORB’s lack of originality and Toronto’s absurd claim to take from her that which neither of them can truly own. Toronto rushes to declare SORB the winner, but Flame King’s subjects won’t have it and carry her off on her shoulders. As SORB’s legs pop clean off, the deposed king tries to get his daughter’s attention, but is met only with a cold raspberry.

She is the king.

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Bonnibel Bubblegum

Storyboarded by: Aleks Sennwald and Hanna K. Nystrom

Originally Aired: September 17, 2017

Review by: CedricTheOwl

After a brief detour for a Flame Princess episode, season 10 returns to its primary story arc revolving around new villain Uncle Gumbald.  This highly serialized approach to storytelling is evidence of the growing anime influence on Adventure Time.  And where there’s anime influence, there is one inevitability:  beach episode!

Chew on this, 2017 Tumblr.

That’s really only set dressing though, as the episode is truly about the eponymous gum lady, Princess Bubblegum.  An idle thought about a piece of Finn’s new loot prompts a flashback to PB’s time in the post-Mushroom War wasteland, and subsequently a chance to answer many of the lingering questions about her past.  For a character who’s been with the show from the pilot, most of what we know about her past is from allusion and inference.  We didn’t even know her true age until season 5.  We’ve seen her creation back in “Bonnie and Neddy”, but there’s so much space between that flashback and the complex character we know now that’s just begging to be explored.

The flashback opens on a young Princess Bubblegum astride a yak-like creature, heading to scavenge an old gas station for supplies.  She takes a passing interest in a teen mag, a still working piece of technology, and a World’s Greatest Uncle mug.  As she leaves, she also finds a picture from before the war, presumably the owner or an employee of the gas station.  It’s a stark, silent scene, very much like Marceline’s flashback scenes from “Simon and Marcy”, and the contrast between how she acts here and how she was when de-aged makes her behavior in that brief period seem even more like a deliberate act.

Love the environmental storytelling at play in this scene.  It looks like she’s passing the wreckage of a stealth bomber here, the kind that would be launching warheads during a nuclear war

As PB continues her wandering, she stumbles upon a goblin tied to a tree, helpless and surrounded by lootable supplies.  Unfortunately, no one is there to show her that bait.Bubblegum returns to her home, built around the tree that became her brother Neddy’s only source of comfort, unharmed but clearly deep in thought.  Betrayal is just another part of the post-apocalypse life, but if just one of those encounters goes wrong, Neddy would be left alone and defenseless.  Inspired by the mug she picked up, she decides to make more Candy People like her, ones that will help and support her like she remembers when she was a part of the Mother Gum.  After a brief timeskip, she is able to successfully create three relatives:  Aunt Molly, Cousin Chicle, and Uncle Gumbald.gif from Mad Max Fury Road, so she moves in to lend aid to the stricken soul.  Said soul soon switches to a more sinister stance, freeing himself from his bonds and trying to rob PB in turn.  She stakes that in stride as well, using her newly looted piece of tech as a taser to incapacitate her attacker.  Just another day in the wasteland, but one that gives us so much insight into Bonnie’s tendency towards paranoia and aggression towards anyone who threatens her and her kingdom.

Bubblegum returns to her home, built around the tree that became her brother Neddy’s only source of comfort, unharmed but clearly deep in thought.  Betrayal is just another part of the post-apocalypse life, but if just one of those encounters goes wrong, Neddy would be left alone and defenseless.  Inspired by the mug she picked up, she decides to make more Candy People like her, ones that will help and support her like she remembers when she was a part of the Mother Gum.  After a brief timeskip, she is able to successfully create three relatives:  Aunt Molly, Cousin Chicle, and Uncle Gumbald.

It’s always fascinated me to consider just what inspired Princess Bubblegum to create a family like this.  She deliberately created all of them to be older than her, and yet she clearly defines their roles for them upon creation.  It’s very similar to the scene in “Dirt Beer Guy” where she creates Root Beer Guy and Cherry Cream Soda, creating them as adults and immediately marrying them to one another.  In that scene it’s business as usual for her kingdom, but here it feels more like fulfilling a psychological need.  She wants the comfort of having someone older to look up to and protect her, of not having to be in charge and on guard all the time, and is seemingly modeling her idea of family off of old sitcoms.  Cousin Chicle even gets a laugh track worthy catchphrase associated with him seconds after being born.

At first the arrangement goes exactly as PB planned.  With her new family’s help, her solitary house grows into a small hamlet, and they gradually cultivate the surrounding area into an orchard.  But as with the Rattleballs, Bonnie’s experiment falls apart once her creations start to exhibit free will.  Uncle Gumbald takes the initiative to clear cut the newly planted taffy tree grove, shows his plans for an entire new Candy city under his control, and makes clear overtures towards taking over as head of the Bubblegum family.  In an effort to placate him (that admittedly comes across like deliberate sabotage), PB creates a lake of butterscotch where Gumbald’s city would have gone, cutting off his plans for expansion under the guise of giving him a source of entertainment.  PB is clearly trying to assert control over her creations, but she’s still young and inexperienced enough for these actions to come across as well-meaning strong-arming, instead of deliberately malicious.

“Now it’s just going to be volleyball, water skis, and shrimp cocktails”
“Hey man, reliable public areas can really raise the property values of a residential area”

During his argument with PB, Gumbald lets slip an interesting detail:  he seems surprised to learn that his niece is capable of creating candy life.  All of PB’s modern day creations know she is their creator, and walk the line between regarding her as a mother and outright worshiping her as a creator (or in Lemongrab’s case, raging against her).  Gumbald seems to put the pieces together quickly:  if she can create life, then she probably created him as well, and that changes his relationship to her on the spot.  Princess Bubblegum allowing her subjects to treat her as their all-powerful creator can come across as a narcissistic ego trip, but here we see keeping that knowledge from them had much more dire consequences.

Seeing the magazine PB looted back in the flashback’s opening (currently serving as cage lining for Science the rat), Gumbald hatches a plan:  distract the impressionable tweenage girl with a heartthrob boyfriend.  This callback goes all the way back to “Slumber Party Panic”, when PB claims to have previously dated Old Mr. Creampuff as her reason for wanting to bring him back from the dead.  With the increasingly direct hinting at a romantic relationship with Marceline over the seasons, that line has only raised more questions about PB’s sexual orientation.  Here we get a definitive answer:  it was an enforced heteronormativitiy ploy on Uncle Gumbald’s part, a condescending attempt to marginalize her out of a leadership role in her own burgeoning kingdom.  It’s a slap in the face of her own independence and resourcefulness, even without bringing her preference for gal pals into it… and yet it’s also what PB does to her own citizens, if “Dirt Beer Guy” is anything to go by.  That’s not to excuse Gumbald’s actions here, merely to underline how he’s trying to subvert her through the same control tactics she uses on her creations.

Even if PB is into dudes, I think the plan would have worked better if Mr. Creampuff wasn’t clearly based on Jughead.

Returning to the cottage that night, Bonnibel finds her created family conspiring against her.  Not only do they plan to overthrow her, they want to do so by attacking her most prized possession: her intelligence.  The conspirators helpfully exposit upon their plan, then celebrate with cupcakes… cupcakes Gumbald has laced with the same formula that would render PB a pliable simpleton.  With Cousin Chicle and Aunt Molly transformed into familiar faces (Crunchy and Manfried, respectively), Uncle Gumbald is poised to take over as the future of the Candy Kingdom.  All that remains in his path is Bonnie… and Neddy.  The threat to her brother spurs PB into action, using the taser from earlier to shatter the beaker of formula Gumbald is brandishing, turning him into the goofy dancing punch bowl occasionally seen in crowd scenes.  With their petards thoroughly hoisted, the former rebels mindlessly dance for PB as she talks herself into thinking it might be for the best.

These kinds of flashback episodes can have a tendency to over-explain a character’s backstory, filling it with callbacks that explain every little bit about them.  “Bonnibel Bubblegum” definitely calls back to a number of offhand statements PB has made in early seasons, an overt attempt to reconcile what could easily be written off as jokey dialog with her deeper later-season characterization.  However, rewatching this episode has given me an appreciation for how efficiently it paints a complete picture of her character.  Her background as a survivor of the harsh post-apocalyptic wilderness, her willingness to offer aid, her ruthlessness when dealing with threats to herself and her family, the push and pull of her desire for companionship and her need to exert unquestioned control.  There are so many facets to her personality on display here, the most overt picture of how she became who she is we’ve seen to date, and that complexity is why I love her as a character.

In addition to the Uncle Gumbald storyline, “Bonnibel Bubblegum” also delineates the season’s overarching theme:  dealing with strained family relations.  “Son of Rap Bear” already visited that theme, with Flame Princess trying to reconcile with Flame King to disappointing results, but this episode turns a data point into a trend.  With her suspicions about the origin of Finn’s goblet confirmed, PB is set for a conflict with her estranged family member.  But she’s not the only one… no points for guessing what “Marcy & Hunson” is about.

Notable Quotes –

• “You brought a pea shooter to a techno-harpoon fight?”
• “Let us celebrate with coup d’etat cupcakes”
• “D’oh right, the poison.”

Stray Observations –

• I liked the gag of Jake shaking his head at the mention of difficult family members in contrast to Finn and Marcie.  He’s the most likely one for his kids to have issues with, yet is completely oblivious (or in denial)
• The writing on the wall of the gas station: “Back soon xoxo.”  “Please come back”.  The writing on the bomber wreckage:  “Now what?”  and “Complicit”
• The sign outside PB’s home changes from “Vorsicht” (Beware) to “Willkommen” (Welcome) over the brief timeskip between PB deciding to create relatives and actually creating Gumbald and co.
• Young PB is voiced by Livvy Stubenrauch, the voice of young Anna in Frozen (also young Susan Strong)