TV REVIEW: 'ADVENTURE TIME'

At the End of the Day, Silliness Is One of Our Most Important Resources

By: Josh Moorhead

April 24, 2011

(Cartoon Network) Somewhere in the land of Ooo lives a human (boy) with a sword (rusty) and a dog (magical), and I wish I could be there. This boy, Finn, and his dog, Jake, populate a world that rocks my socks.

There's an encouraged rule of thumb round here in Buzzine-land that says we ought to write about the things we love and are passionate about -- things we find and want to bring to others like a cat brings a dead bird to the doorstep. And while the humor in Ooo can get as bizarre, maybe as morbid as that little number of a sentence I just wrote, there ain't a dead thing about the whole venture. And I've yet to see any cats.

What is this venture? Why, it's Adventure Time! The show, doing its second season now on Cartoon Network (Mondays at 8:00 p.m.), concerns just about everything I just said and not any dead animals. In the fabulous relief that is cartoons, there's no backstory, no mythology, no explanation, no continuing plot -- there just simply, magnificently, is. This might not be your type of thing if you're into, say, knowing what's going on in a show or, I don't know, the laws of physics and silly things like that. But for its surreality, it has gotten a boatload of fandom and nominations for things like Annies and Emmies (awards, not people). Are you in yet?

Finn is a young boy and is, like most are, impulsive, starting to dig the ladies but too stubborn to say so, hungry for video games and conquest and friendship. His best friend is a dog in his mid-twenties named Jake, kind of an easy-going guy with eyeballs that look like thick-rimmed spectacles and magical powers that let him grow and stretch and contort to all shapes and sizes at will. They live in Ooo -- a land of princesses and knights and monsters, most of whom are made out of food. There's Princess Hotdog and her hot dog knights, for example, and at center stage is Princess Bubblegum, a pink cutie that Finn is feeling those digging feelings for. Too bad Bubblegum is kind of a classy lass and likes things like science and such (yuck). She's also constantly getting into tremendous trouble, so thankfully the always action-ready Finn can regularly save her. Jake is mostly "cool, dude, whatever."  (A nice touch is that Jake is played by voiced actor John DiMaggio, who can also be recognized as Bender on Futurama, as well as a bunch of other stuff). They buddy up and traverse the land seeking out danger to butt-kick other princesses to charm the wise old owls and whales and such that mentor them along the way. (And yes, there are actually some lessons gently peppered in amongst the other flavors, about peer pressure, self-confidence, telling the truth, focus, etc.)

Granted, I stumbled upon this awesomery last weekend, but of the five-plus episodes I've already delved into (each with two 11-minute segments), I've seen stuff like a tandem psychic war elephant, zombie business men controlling a giant robot, rainbow-spewing battle cubes, a murder mystery train with a skateboarding conductor, George Takei as an escaped king's heart named Ricardo, and a sword that slices black holes into space and time. That ain't even the beginning of it, sister.

All this random, magnificent sensibility can be attributed to, duh, its creators (and drugs -- possibly drugs). The show was conceived by Pendleton Ward, an animator who also worked on the Burton-esque Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, also on Cartoon Network. Pendleton created the pilot for a Nickelodeon "animation incubator" (thanks, Wikipedia) called Random! Cartoons, which makes sense in retrospect. But Nickelodeon passed. The pilot went big time online, though, which lead to Cartoon Network picking up the pieces and teaming up with Frederator (which also produces the also good Fairly OddParents on Nick) for their first venture together, this grand, crazy piece of work. Ward says his influences lie in David Lynch and The Office, to name a few. Makes sense because Adventure Time can be as weird as they come without crossing the border into Adult Swim, "are you scared yet, shrooming college kid?" territory (Lynch), and a lot of the dialogue is written in a nigh-improv manner, leaving space for awkward pauses and syntax-jumbling and such (Office). But now I'm dissecting away at something that exists not to be dissected.

I love SpongeBob Squarepants. The dude's yellow, shining disposition and porous optimistic ambivalence really jibes with me. So it's also no surprise that Adventure Time pulls some of the SpongeBob crew. Besides Tom Kenny (the voice of Sponge and the Ice King on Adventure), the show's got Derek Drymon who, after animating Rocko's Modern Life, had a hand in writing, directing, and animating Bob LePonge (trying to class it up for our more astute readers). Now he executive-produces Adventure Time, which seems evident in the show's earnest silliness and momentary dark and strange outbursts. I don't know what to call this type of comedy exactly, except for that thing in Pee Wee's Big Adventure where that woman's face turns into a monster suddenly. (Burton again!) Scared the pants out of me back in the day, but there's something about children's entertainment that goes for magic paired with the mystical, inexplicable unknown and fearful. After all, that's the heart of youth -- discovery, conquering confidence and, at the same time, trepidation that imagines all those shadows to be more sinister things than the clothes in the closet, the open toy chest. But Adventure Time is hardly dark; it lives in a world of simply drawn pastels and round shapes -- might not even be a shadow in the whole thing, actually.

As I further assassinate the show's purposes with my hifalutin-ness (have I used enough big words yet to convince you I got a double degree in college? I so totes did!), lemme just say the following: Adventure Time and shows like it are a blessing. And not just if you have weed. They have an essence about them that life and age and bills and worries that are actually tangible actually do assassinate: wonder. It was wonder, as a kid, that made you believe you could fly if you clothes-pinned on a towel cape, and the same wonder that made you scared about what lived under the bed. The adult says all that's under the bed is dust and old paper work, that if you wanna fly, you'd better go to flight school. Adventure Time doesn't have time for that. It only has time for adventure.

For labyrinths filled with gollums and wish-granting snails, for wolf-headed, backwards-cap-wearing party gods, for game boys you can jump into for extra lives, at the end of the day, silliness is one of our most important resources. It made the Looney Toons looney, it made Bill Murray irreverent, Rebecca Black's "Friday" a sensation. And heck yeah I just listened to it. 

But when it comes to Saturday morning cartoons (and remember, if you're still trying to keep up with Rebecca, "Sunday comes afterward"), don't let it be said they don't make 'em like they used to. Or at least they still do on Monday nights. Adventure Time owns. If you've got kids, watch it. If you are a kid, watch it. If you're experiencing something like a quarter-life or even mid-life crisis, go ahead and get down on it. Don't worry, you're still smart, you still have your day job, there's still no monsters under the bed, and you won't think so if you give up a little seriousness for some cartoon chivalry and zaniness. But you may remember a bit of what you may have lost with your brains and paychecks and tempered rationale -- your imagination, your fun, your k-Id. Even in 11-minute doses, trust me -- having that around is FUN and important, for it is the long shadow the years cast on us that...oops. Sorry. I just farted. Not really. I'm too old for that.

But on Adventure Time, they would have. And I gotta admire it for that.

The pilot that got this all did can be seen here.

To delve into Ooo, go this way.