What I’m Watching: Adventure Time

HoboMax has Adventure Time, and soon to have some spinoff specials “Distant Lands”, so I watched seasons 8-10 which I hadn’t previously seen, and I’m now rewatching 6-7 which I apparently don’t remember at all. Who needs linear time?

  • Season 8: Mostly episodic, often great adventure episodes. This is what I liked the show for originally. “I Am a Sword” seems to be adventure, but then introduces a real tragedy, which turns into the Fern sub-plot for the next 2 seasons. “Preboot” and “Reboot” activate Susan’s origin story, and “The Invitation” starts a very long 8-part story about the last of the Humans; individual parts of this were good, but continuity is annoying in a show like this. 11-minute episodes are perfect for delivering the science-fantasy parody, 2-parters are a little long, 8 is (if you’ll forgive the ’80s sitcom reference) enough.

  • Season 9: Immediately starts with another 8-part quest about elemental (Candy, Slime, Ice, Fire) corruption. While I like Ice King/Simon and Weird Lady/Betty in small doses, an entire series about two amnesiac obsessives is excruciating. Since all the elemental princesses and inhabitants are reduced to insanity, there’s really only Jake & Finn to have any sane dialog, and Jake’s just a dog. The last few eps resolve Finn & his weird grass clone.

  • Season 10: Almost all of these were terrible. “The First Investigation” was good, a nice self-contained story. “Jake the Starchild” and “Temple of Mars” are decent science-fantasy stories, but almost not Adventure Time. “Gumbaldia” and “Come Along With Me” (44-minute finale story) set up a final Ooo War between PBub and her insane Uncle/offspring, and halfway delivers on it. But then they ran out of plot, and were unwilling to go all the way and let the Candy Kingdoms nuke each other, so just added a new dumb monster for them to half-ass their way out of. BMO at the end of time with an almost empty world was interesting, and they failed utterly to deliver on it.

I loved classic Adventure Time, but the writers really got wound up too much in continuity and making sense of a senseless idea later on. It’s Thundarr on E, Mad Max with candy characters. That’s fun. A little “oh living in this vale of tears is kinda hard yo” goes a very long ways. Long plots ruin it.

★★★★★ for the single adventures, ★★★★☆ for the first serial, ★★★☆☆ for the second serial, ★★☆☆☆ for the finale.