Adventure Time (spoilers)

The other two episodes this week were purely episodic bsns, but all the cameos in "Jake the Brick" were cool, and in "Dentist",

Finn used his last name. Or the Finnsword did? - couldn't quite tell if that was the reflection of him talking to himself or if it was an actual little Finn in the blue orb. But either way, it was an omg moment for me, since until now, iirc the "Mertens" surname was exclusive to the Farmworld Finn, with Martin not even using it. Hopefully it wasn't just sloppy writing, but rather, a deliberate Easter Egg, perhaps relating to the sword originating from an alternate Finn? Guess we'll have to wait and see if it happens again...
 
I actually saw evergreen early.

Apparently it was all Ice Kings Dream....

Which TRULY pissed me off.
 
No, it wasn't a dream, it was the actual backstory, and him hopping around at the end was showing how the effects continue to this very day.
 
Walkazo said:
No, it wasn't a dream, it was the actual backstory, and him hopping around at the end was showing how the effects continue to this very day.
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Wait so Ice King isn't even really human? How the hell did they survive that meteor?! WHAT HAPPENED!
 
No.

Let's try this again.

65 million years ago, a magic ice element dude named Evergreen made a magic crown to stop the Lich meteor from killing everything on Earth. The crown was designed to imprint upon the deepest desire (or wish) of is first wearer and make that wish come true. Evergreen planned to wear it and thus, manifest his deepest desire to stop the Lich Meteor.

But his little genetically modified dinosaur assistant, Gunther, ended up wearing the crown instead, and his deepest desire wasn't to stop the meteor, but to be like Evergreen. So instead of stopping the meteor, the crown gave him ice powers and a beard and a nose like Evergreen. Also, because Evergreen was always so horrible to Gunther, that manifested as well, and caused a mental breakdown and he just jumped around screaming "Gunther" like how Evergreen always screamed at him, the meteor hit the planet unimpeded and kill all the dinosaurs and whatnot.

Fast-forward to our present-day, where the human scientist Simon Petrikov finds the magic crown just in time for a nuclear war to destroy civilization, but thanks to the crown, he's able to survive. However, the crown still causes the same powers that Gunther originally imprinted it with: it grants ice magic and the immortality of an elemental wizard dude (or whatever Evergreen was), makes the user to grow the pointy nose and long white hair and beard of Evergreen as well, and also causes insanity and a fixation on the name Gunther. Hence Ice King's magic, hairy, immortal and crazy, and calls all his penguins Gunther (and also called little Marcy "Gunther").
 
Walkazo said:
No.

Let's try this again.

65 million years ago, a magic ice element dude named Evergreen made a magic crown to stop the Lich meteor from killing everything on Earth. The crown was designed to imprint upon the deepest desire (or wish) of is first wearer and make that wish come true. Evergreen planned to wear it and thus, manifest his deepest desire to stop the Lich Meteor.

But his little genetically modified dinosaur assistant, Gunther, ended up wearing the crown instead, and his deepest desire wasn't to stop the meteor, but to be like Evergreen. So instead of stopping the meteor, the crown gave him ice powers and a beard and a nose like Evergreen. Also, because Evergreen was always so horrible to Gunther, that manifested as well, and caused a mental breakdown and he just jumped around screaming "Gunther" like how Evergreen always screamed at him, the meteor hit the planet unimpeded and kill all the dinosaurs and whatnot.

Fast-forward to our present-day, where the human scientist Simon Petrikov finds the magic crown just in time for a nuclear war to destroy civilization, but thanks to the crown, he's able to survive. However, the crown still causes the same powers that Gunther originally imprinted it with: it grants ice magic and the immortality of an elemental wizard dude (or whatever Evergreen was), makes the user to grow the pointy nose and long white hair and beard of Evergreen as well, and also causes insanity and a fixation on the name Gunther. Hence Ice King's magic, hairy, immortal and crazy, and calls all his penguins Gunther (and also called little Marcy "Gunther").
Click to expand...
OH! Now I understand....damn the creators of this show thought out the plot real good.
 
Astral Plane

So many "oh shit!" moments. The magic blue Finn comet. GGGG dying (or so it seems). Martin flying the "comet" and headed straight for Earth. And then there was the entire sequence with Bounce House Princess: just when you think the very concept couldn't get any more unsettling, her house gets broken into by a porcupine who audibly pops her offscreen. Because the reincarnation-causing Catalyst Comet/sperm metaphor combined with the space birth wasn't enough. But I like it when Adventure Time gets mindscrewy and philosophical, so it's all good. I personally don't agree that birth is the best creation, because I adamantly don't want kids, but it's interesting that she show's going there, and I gather it's related to Nietzche, along with the whole "Glob is dead" angle... Gonna be interesting how Martin fits into it all: I wonder if the cosmic crime that got him locked up was messing with the Catalyst Comet in the first place - GGGG said it was off-schedule, so maybe it's 16 years late, because Finn's the reincarnation and Martoin intervened and ditched him on earth because he just wanted the comic/ship/power/non-baby stuff. But who knows.

Also, the fox part was random and funny, and Marcy's latest song was very nice as always: I wanted it to be longer. I kinda hoped Carroll would show at the party, but I guess it's not really her scene.
 
So, after the last episode I watched was "James", I have finished watching all the episodes that came out since then and finally caught up again. Of those new ones, some were great, some were ok, some were "ehhh... didn't really need that".

Starting with the negative: I didn't like "The Red Throne" at all. The writing, which is usually a strong point of the show, is so sloppy in that one. The characters don't feel like themselves at any point (especially CB!), the plot is just stupid, and the whole thing is neither funny nor interesting. I was honestly feeling like this mediocrity was deliberate and coursing towards some sort of twist or payoff that would have made it all make sense. But that twist never happened. It just felt bad and hollow, like they let the intern write the script or something.

I also rolled my eyes at the fact that there's another Fionna and Cake episode. The first time it happened was kind of funny and unexpected. The second time was ok I guess. But by the third time I felt like the novelty has worn off and it's just unnecessary. It doesn't really add anything worthwhile, and honestly, the execution itself felt really lackluster. Like, I get it, LSP, in her typical self-absorbedness, would totally write a fanfiction to ship herself with herself, and they wanted to parody that concept. But if you want to parody something, you can't just play it straight and point a sign at it saying "so wacky". Parody, in order to function, requires wit. Wit that the writers of this show have in abundance usually, and wit that is surprisingly lacking in this episode.

Unacceptable!

But where there's bad, there's also good. I really enjoyed "Nemesis". A delightful, exemplary display of black comedy, with a climax that is so wrong that it's hilarious. Really liked Peppermint Butler in this one. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it.

And then there's "Evergreen", which wasn't really funny, but it excelled at being interesting and engaging. And sad. Very, very sad. Many feels for Gunther and the whole situation in general. This might actually be my favorite episode out of the new bunch.

Oh yeah, also Martin is a dick and needs to be blown up.
 
Surprised there hasn't been more chatter here in the last week. We've been seeing a whole lot of plothole filling in the last few days.
 
Yeah, me too. hell, I'm surprised no one's been talking about any of the last few months' episodes - they've all been so interesting/weird/discussion-worthy.

I actually found the two-parter a bit underwhelming tbh, which is a shame because the buildup to the Catalyst Comet was great: a nice slow buildup pretty much all season, but then I felt like too much suddenly got thrown in right at the last second, with an unusually heavy-handed speech/discussion/choice about life the universe and everything, and when it was all said an done it was sorta like "oh. well that happened".

Namely, I feel like it could have been more effective to reveal that Gunter was an Eldrich abomination earlier in the season rather than at the 11th hour, with a little more foreshadowing before that. There's always been jokes about how Gunter's evil, and "Hoots" was a great reminder about how the penguin's got darkness beneath the blank, whenk-ing face, but it still felt a little ass-pull-y that he's "before there was time there were monsters"-tier horror, and then there wasn't really time for it to sink in: before we had time to worry what Orgalog was planning with PB and the pink comet and build anticipation and dread (i.e. how we feel every damn moment Sweet Pea is on screen, which is amazing), it was happening, and then it was over. That was admittedly partly the marathon's fault, but still, a few episodes as buffer would have helped - like, even if "Orgalorg" was the first episode of the marathon, that'd've been better (especially if "Hoots" aired even earlier in the season to keep the bombs spaced out).

As it was, we only got the Martin episode, which, taken by itself was an interesting lead-in to the finale, like how "Billy's Bucket List" lead to the last two-parter, but even that was sorta dampened by the fact that "Orgalorg" was also filled with random aliens, so it was like "oh, more non-standard stuff". Plus, it was the third episode in a row without Finn and Jake, preceded by one where they spent most of the episode as food products while we learned about Mars, and even that was preceded by a heinously ugly (imo) guest-artist episode, and before that, Finn & Jake-light "Hoots" and "Graybles 1000". I love episodes about the supporting cast and all, but interspersing regular episodes between them is what makes them fresh treats.

But anyway, ignoring the last-minutness of the Orgalorg stuff and less-than-ideal episode schedule, while it's been obvious for a while, it was nice to finally get solid confirmation that Finn was a comet (like the Lich - hope this comes back in future conflicts between them), and it was cool to see PB's Cosmic Owl dream come true - and also Jake's from way back when (not a croak dream, just a regular prophetic dream all along). I wonder how long she will not be the Princess of Ooo - it could be a long-ish term thing, especially in light of her earlier spy-network-shutdown character development, or it could be like when she was turned back into her regular old self the very next time she appeared in an episode after she became young. It was also nice to see the return of the grass sword, in full appendage form now, although I think the last shot had him waving to PB with a regular arm, so again, we'll have to see what happens there, and what'll become of the Finn Sword.

It was interesting to see Martin thinking about Finn off on his shenanigans, and it was nice that the offer to aimlessly roam the universe was still open. But him just disappearing with the talking comet wasn't satisfying, tho, even considering his earlier lack of fulfilment over all the stolen treasure. It fits Martin to just want to adventure around aimlessly and go beyond the mysterious beyond with the comet and all that jazz, but there's still questions to answer about Finn's mother and his cosmic crime (yes, there is a satisfying answer there: Finn accepts you're a deadbeat so no need to make excuses or whatever or that but at least tell him the full story, argh). Hopefully he'll be back again sooner or later - Finn's Cosmic owl-influenced dream about him and Sweet Pea sorta requires it to happen, right? Unless it was a reverse prophesy about the Citadel or something. On that note, I'm actually glad the Lich wasn't involved at all - there was enough going on here already. Plus, in both cases, and the earlier "what becomes of PM?" stuff, and the Betty (and Magic Man) stuff from "You Forgot Your Floaties", and the matter of what they do with Gunter/Orgalorg, gotta leave stuff for next season.

And that's what I have to say about that.

As for "Be Sweet", like I said earlier, anything with Sweet Pea is inherently amazing, and I also love LSP, so having both together was especially awesome.

"You Forgot Your Floaties" was interesting: definitely didn't see the ending twist coming. Other random thoughts: I love the Tiny Manticore, and all the flashbacks this season makes me even sadder that Grob Gob Glob Grod is dead. Maybe he'll come back like Prismo, idk...
 
Bumping because we finally got news about Season 7 and the Stakes miniseries, as well as the opening sequence for Stakes (link, but not great quality). S7 starts on Nov 2, and Stakes on Nov 14.

At the outset of S7 (and throughout Stakes, afaik) PB's still not in charge of Ooo for the time being. There will be a Fionna and Cake episode, a holiday episode featuring B-MO and Mo, a Lemongrab appearance, and overall, it's not gonna be as heavy as S6's parental abandonment / depression stuff. They're saving Finn's mom for S8 (maybe), and his arm is simply still "made of vegetable matter that thinks it's a human arm", like it has been ever since Breezy. Stakes is gonna be about Marcy getting PB to de-vampire her, and will have flashbacks into her past, as well as stuff set in the present. Sadly, while there's lots of PB/Marcy friendship stuff, it doesn't sound like they're gonna be touching on any past more-than-friends bsns (c'mon guys - be bold), but on the bright side, we do get to meet Marcy's mom - and she's voiced by Rebecca Sugar! The two even have a duet (heard previously at SDCC), which will apparently also factor into a non-Stakes episode later on in S7, which is pretty neat.

So yeah, I'm hyped.
 
So the first few episodes of Season 7 are out, yay. The spoilers are because of spoilers, not length: keepin' it short this time.

The stuff about PB's bro is pretty out-of-the-blue and felt really shoved in there, like Orgalorg, but worse. Her "accept and treat your mental family members kindly" PSA also felt really blunt and preachy, but I guess it's a bit more interesting when you consider that she's been burdened with caring for him forever, and the way she did that was locking him in the basement and not talking about him ever - still, it could have been done better (i.e. "You Made Me" was much a more interesting account of PB mishandling a 'special' case). Other than that, it was cool to finally see her origin story: I thought her coming from a hive mind of bubblegum blobs stuck to a ceiling was interesting, and will hopefully come back into play.
This episode was amazing. Marcy's shapeshifting powers seemed unusually refined all of a sudden (more like Jake-level skillz), but aside from that minor quibble, between King of Ooo wearing PB's nightgown, the ladies being badass, and all the interpersonal stuff between PB and Marcy (so many blushes, so much shiptease amongst the solid friendship beats), it was great. The feels were real when PB finally broke down, and the ending "I'm tired" scene was perfect.
I never really cared abut Root Beer Guy so wasn't really emotionally invested in this episode at all; it was entertaining enough, I guess, but mostly it just made me wanna watch clips of Suyin being way cooler in Korra.
It was nice to see Canyon again, King of Ooo continuing to dress like PB is amusing (also, he's totally not wearing underwear under his robes in the pizza-sitting scene - thank glob for his conveniently placed leg), and I like to think the Banana Guard's titular song at the end is indication that they're starting to regret booting PB, rather than a pointless way to round out the 11 minutes.
This episode is also amazing. Cute to terrifying to back to cute, and constantly entertaining. It's the acid trip episode to round out the earlier emotional, random adventuring and background-character-spotlight episodes to end the week on a high note: good stuff.

Now onto Stakes next week, w00t.
 
Walkazo said:
The stuff about PB's bro is pretty out-of-the-blue and felt really shoved in there, like Orgalorg, but worse. Her "accept and treat your mental family members kindly" PSA also felt really blunt and preachy, but I guess it's a bit more interesting when you consider that she's been burdened with caring for him forever, and the way she did that was locking him in the basement and not talking about him ever - still, it could have been done better (i.e. "You Made Me" was much a more interesting account of PB mishandling a 'special' case). Other than that, it was cool to finally see her origin story: I thought her coming from a hive mind of bubblegum blobs stuck to a ceiling was interesting, and will hopefully come back into play.
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Did you catch the rather clever joke they made about the ripe/spoiled Banana Guards?
They weren't dumb, just really sweet, which is what happens to a banana the riper it gets.
 
So Stakes was p-cool. Nice to see some more parts of Marceline's backstory (but not everything, so there's still room for future clips), plus some present-day developments and some genuinely interesting plot twists.

I hope we see more of Marcy's mom, and what happened to her - I read somewhere that "Everything Stars" will factor back into later events of the season, so ya never know. The clip of her caring for her adorable lil' demon baby was sweet, and makes you wonder what her life was like.

As always, love the Bubbline biz: it seems pretty clear they're getting as close to confirming that they dig each other as the censors will allow, like with Marcy's completely random "is it love?" pondering over her stomach pains, and just their interactions overall. In-show, I get the feeling that they've never really acted on those feelings, tho ("Varmints" also made me feel this was the case), rather than them being ex-lovers - which is actually more interesting imho. Either way, the solid friendship is awesome too: PB calling Marceline her best friend was a highlight of the miniseries for me, especially given the uber-sad context, and pretty much everything else involving them in "Take Her Back" was also amazing.

Marceline getting turned into a vampire (in the backstory) was brutal and unsettling, which was cool. Even after his reawakening, the Vampire King continued to be creepy, like with all the cow eye-painting stuff and whatnot, and then the fight was an interesting mix of worrying about how tough an opponent he is, but also feeling his frustration about not being given a chance to speak, since you wanna know what his deal is. So I was rather disappointed when he stripped to his undies and threw a tantrum in the cloud pool: all the imposing coolness, turned to juvenile humour, which was then continued with the fart language stuff, ugh - they should've just continued texting: THAT was actually entertaining.

The final battle being against a dark cloud of evil instead of the Vampire King, who it turns out just wanted to be a simple lion(?), was surprising. Not a bad sequence, tho: PB was pretty awesome with her axe and her rocket sofa, saving all the peeps who'd gotten sucked up, and it was cool how Flame Princess got a cameo (I also loved how LSP got a role earlier, and on the topic of supporting cast, PepBut was fun to have around on a regular basis too). I like how it was Ice King that got Marcy out of her funk; her using her demon powers to suck up the evil from the inside while glowing like a badass magical girl was cool (could've done without the talking mouth gag, but oh well); and her being re-vamped was a welcome return to status quo too: her keeping PB company forever is a much nicer thought than her becoming old wrinkly Marcy like in the Farmworld. The "thanks for letting me grow up" stuff was heavy-handed, but Finn not knowing what to say was nicely awkward and real.

And speaking of the status quo, I definitely didn't expect KOO to get overthrown as part of the miniseries, much less graphically melted in a fire and then replaced by Crunchy (temporarily), but I guess Bonnie had to become Princess again sooner or later, and overall, it was a much less rushed and more satisfying story arc than Finn's arm deal was (tho I still say "Breezy" was an amazing episode in itself). On that note, I liked the shoutout to his thorn-arm, even if it didn't activate: continuity, yeah. Plus, not one, but two showcases of Finn's hair, oh yes - and bonus backstory for the animal hood stuff in general: would not have guessed it was originally an anti-vampire thing, but that makes so much sense. Also, the humans left on a boat, and hundreds of years later, Finn was born on a boat: perhaps it's the same boat?? The Fionna-like bunny girl seemed like obvious ancestor material.

So yeah, overall, not perfect, but still well worth watching: an excellent mix of episodic vampire-slaying/problem-solving, backstory filling, and overarching plot and character arc stuff, with the usual Adventure Time mix of fun dialogue, feelz moments and action sequences. Watch it.
 
Bumping to say that of this week's Adventure Time bomb, "Bad Jubies" was the best: the ending was a bit meh, but the story along the way had tonnes of great character moments. It's definitely my fave of all the alternative styles / guest directors the show's featured too - and this one was stop motion, so how well it adapted the usual style was especially impressive.

Watch it.
 
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