Adventure Time: season 9

There was a bit of confusion in regards to where season 8 ended and where season 9 begun, but now it’s been officially determined what season goes where, and season 9 covers the multi-part saga where the elementals have taken over and transformed Ooo, then the handful of episodes in the aftermath where Jake looks weird, Finn has to deal with his rogue clone Fern and there’s one more battle with a leftover bit of the Lich.

This sets up the plotline that will dominate season 10, revolving around members of Princess Bubblegum’s family, but feels like a bit of a throwaway season. It doesn’t have a strong identity, not even having been defined as a full season until a while after it finished, and is dominated by a multi-part series that not only isn’t very exciting (Slime Princess’s episode being the most memorable but mostly for being a little disturbing) but is in the shadow of much more compelling and plot-driven multi-part arcs in the season before it. The episode with Jake and his brother Jermaine is a nice human touch in a weird series, which I say in full awareness that the characters are not humans. Otherwise, though, this season is very light on the real character development and world exploration that made Adventure Time hit compelling new heights a couple of years back.

I’ve definitely moved on somewhat from Adventure Time. Obviously it’s a long way from the silly short that kicked it off, and it’s been wildly successful especially with older stoners. But it feels like time to wrap it up, because most of the intriguing background elements that were slowly revealed have now all been shown. There’s not much more to say about Simon’s past, Finn’s parentage, the Mushroom War or the weird alternate universes, and morsels like what happened to Marceline’s mom centuries before the show begins are probably best left understated.

I’ve enjoyed Adventure Time and I’m still watching season 10, but there are better shows to watch and I hope the show gracefully comes to a close soon. Ah, I see that’s what’s planned, so that feels like good timing to me. 

Adventure Time – season 8

After realising season 7 had ended some time ago, I binge-watched the rest of season 8. I have to say, it brought with it a lot of what I had hoped for in the last season. 

Yes, there were some strange throwaway episodes, like diving after a sea lard and finding a strange new world, or the return of James Baxter the horse (though I did like how he got his name). But most of the season was dominated by two much longer, more intriguing plotlines - the development of the elemental guardian plotline that reaches fruition in season 9, but more importantly, Susan Strong providing Finn with a link to find the rest of the humans - and his mother. 

This plotline leads to the final lengthy arc of this season, with its own unique introduction and a bleak portrayal of the future of humanity. Once again, we see the idea of humanity preferring life in virtual reality and getting trapped inside. But Finn's mother and the rest of the humans are part of a different society, perhaps one that works a little too well. 

Finn gets some fine emotional moments and development, and it had already been a strong season for him as we got more exploration of the idea of alternate Finns being trapped in his swords. Finding his mother and of course ending up confronting problems she'd caused before eventually having to return home provided some great emotional highs and lows. Plus Susan became a fully-fledged character too, with her own past to confront, and had a cathartic reunion in the end. 

Now that both Finn's parents are well-established and he's growing up, there aren't so many loose ends left to tie. I think the next season bring Princess Bubblegum's darkness and the loose ends that remain in Simon's stories to a head, and then I feel like we might finally come to the end of this brightly-coloured, often rather dark cartoon that from its beginning has been squarely targeted at stoners and adults. I hope it draws to a natural close before too much longer. There's no point stringing it out until it gets stale, and while this season has been very satisfying indeed, I don't think there's that much more remaining in plot terms to bring out these kind of heavy hits in future. 

Adventure Time – season 7

The last few seasons of Adventure Time have seen very sporadic release schedules. Sometimes there’s a slew of episodes all coming out in a month and sometimes there’s nothing for weeks and weeks. It’s not clear where seasons begin and end most of the time, and I was under the impression that season 7 ended with the episodes ‘Preboot’ and ‘Reboot’, mostly because they took five months to come out after the previous episodes – but now I find out that’s midway through season 8 and I should have done my season 7 impressions in the March of 2016. Oh well.

Season 7 was actually the time that the show lost me somewhat, with season 8 episodes only recently having piqued my interest again. This season’s major events include Princess Bubblegum getting deposed by the cowardly King of Ooo, a lengthy exploration of Marceline’s past and where she got her different powers, and a real visit to the surreal parallel dimension Farmworld. There are also more hints to Simon’s past, with Betty at large in the present day.

But honestly, it’s partly the unpredictable release schedule, partly the feeling that the show’s major ideas are now played out and partly a few dud episodes like trying to figure out underwater political intrigues with blowfish and porpoises. There wasn’t much badly wrong here, but a lot of momentum felt sapped by the longer storylines, which unlike those of season 8 didn’t really feel like they advanced the plot of characters very much, especially Marceline. Princess Bubblegum got a little more depth, though.

In fact, the problem with this season was that unlike the seasons surrounding it, with major arcs largely focused on Finn, there’s not enough contrast between light and shade. Marceline is all darkness, Bubblegum only treading between bright pink and grey. What defines the current Adventure Time, a very long way out from its quirky initial pilot, is that it can contrast its silliness with surprising depth and ambition. I can see that this season brought to the fore some of the cleverer elements thought up for secondary characters, but they really pale beside Finn or the Ice King’s stories. And that leaves this season a little sub-par. But certainly, it remains fun to watch.  

Adventure Time: Season 6

The sixth season of Adventure Time brought a lot of the mysteries that had been building up from the start to the fore, and answered a few of the show’s big questions. Unfortunately, when actually brought into the foreground, some of the answers we were given ended up much less exciting than the open possibilities we had before. Not only that, but a slew of throwaway or dull episodes, a strange release schedule that meant this season aired over the course of more than a year, and severe disappointment over guest animators means that this was where Adventure Time lost me. I still watched the season, at a considerable delay, and I will still at some point watch the next. But I no longer feel particularly excited about new episodes or watch them quickly. I can catch up later. Having watched since Adventure Time was but a silly, random pilot episode where it felt like anything could happen, this is a little sad for me.

Season 6 had some great ideas. The Lich was transformed into a giant baby, and a highlight came when Lumpy Space Princess did a very bad job caring for him. Finn gets an arm cut off and goes through a series of replacement limbs, though nothing much came of them. The latter half of the season constantly foreshadowed significant events coming with the approach of a ‘Catalyst Comet’, with a good sense of continuity and build-up. There was a very interesting flashback episode to long before the start of the series, with Evergreen. And Finn finally met his father, Martin.

But none of these satisfied very much. The Lich turning into Sweet Pea and the backstory introduced in ‘Evergreen’ both held my attention well, but what they set up has yet to develop into anything important, which is also the case for the reappearance of Simon’s wife Betty. The idea of Finn’s dad not being a hero or positive role model but an opportunist with a tendency to abandon those who bond with him is refreshing and quite clever, but makes episodes centred on him a bore. The appearance of the comet was built up well, but especially compared with the Lich in the last season was dealt with far too quickly and the random ways Finn could deal with everything he faced were deeply artificial.

I enjoyed the increased development of minor characters like The Cosmic Owl, Peppermint Butler and Jake’s family (both his kids and his brother), but at this stage I’m a little bored of Lemongrab, the King of Ooo and Magic Man – even if the latter is in a more interesting position now. Susan Strong is a character who probably didn’t need to recur, and the classic characters like The Ice King and Lumpy Space Princess felt under-used towards the end of the season. I really, really hope we never see Chips and Ice Cream or the Ghost Fly again.

Then we come to the guest animation. I was very excited to hear that Yuasa Masaaki was going to do a guest episode. Kaiba remains one of my favourite anime series of all time, and he did such a superb guest episode for Wakfu. But even though it was critically lauded, I thought ‘Food chain’ was a mess. Yes, it was experimental, to a degree, but mostly it felt bereft of new ideas, any actual sense of the established feeling of Adventure Time or any of the emotional sincerity that distinguishes his other work. For me, this was a huge disappointment.

I had no expectations of David Ferguson, but ‘Water Park Prank’ was, for me, the worst episode of Adventure Time yet and I very much doubt it will be topped. The awful ugly art style I could deal with, but the horrible pacing and story of the episode, which again seemed like there was little or no familiarity with what has been established as the Adventure Time world made me feel a faint sense of second-hand embarrassment throughout.

Still, the season was by no means disastrous. I just feel increasingly less intrigued as the show’s mysteries are answered, and feel that there’s a pressing need for the show to establish a kind of end goal for Finn to strive towards, now. Because at this stage it feels like aimless drifting. And we know how stoners can get way too stuck doing that.

Adventure Time - Season V

The fifth series of Adventure Time was long - 52 of its half-episodes, spread out over more than a year, sometimes with only one or two episodes in a month. 

Thus, it seems like a long while since the cliffhanger of season IV, in which we were introduced to the mysterious Farm World, created when Finn wishes that the Lich had never existed. This of course goes awry, but Jake isn't too bothered because he has met a very chilled-out omnipotent being and is able to put things right. 

The numerous episodes since tend to fall into three brackets - straightforward, simple little stories, which are where the show mostly feels a bit tired - though Finn does get a flashy new sword; episodes referring back to previous bits of continuity and bringing them forward, such as where the Ice King regains his sanity and brings someone from his past back; and the out-and-out weird and experimental, like when everything is done in glitchy CG or when an episode is dominated by James Baxter the Horse on his unicycle. 

Really, though a few of the episodes could have been dispensed with and I wasn't a personal fan of the Lemon Hope saga, it was the interplay between these three that keep me watching and make me feel like there's more for the show to say - at a time when plenty of shows have outstayed their welcome. 

I am still interested in Simon's backstory. I am still interested in Finn's inept stabs at relationships. 

I am still interested in Treetrunks and her shady past, Bubblegum and her far shadier one, and even the Earl of Lemongrab with his numerous clones. 

The show can still shock me, like when Lumpy Space Princess misunderstands a device for sending things back in time and blatantly kills someone - only to be made to forget all about it. And I am interested in this newest cliffhanger, and where Season VI will take it. 

From its humble beginnings with the web pilot, I really thought that Adventure Time would either burn very brightly and briefly before ending or that it would get very tired and end up a bad parody of itself. 

There's something in its formula - including occasionally churning out a brainless, uninteresting episode - that makes it stay interesting and relevant, though. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm glad it's there. 

Drawn Together – season 3 / movie

Since I wrote my impressions of the first two seasons of Drawn Together, there has been a third, news of cancellation and then a direct-to-DVD movie. And there, barring a revival, ends the Drawn Together story, to the regret of few. There were great ideas in Drawn Together and some funny jokes, but mostly it became tired and strained and extremely repetitive.

Season 3 was more of the same, 14 new episodes in much the same mould as the previous series – we had episodes in which Ling-Ling had to take part in cockfighting in Mexico, in which Foxxxy is finally reunited with her father and in which Wooldor gets a TV show that turns children gay. So yes, more of the same – overdone jokes about minorities, inconsequential character-based plotlines and lots of gross-out humour. About the only bit of variety went back to what made the show interesting in the first place – its basis in animation tropes – and gave us ‘Drawn Together Babies’, which of course involved killing a babysitter and hiding the body and lots of tiny children in sexual situations. It would seem, judging by the last episode, that the cancellation of the series came as a surprise, but frankly, it was for the best – Drawn Together ran out of ideas early in season two. It was still worth watching because there were occasional funny moments and highly quotable lines, but generally the stories didn’t provide many laughs. Only incidental moments that were funny, from discovering what Captain Hero’s nemesis’ modus operandi really is, or Totoro showing up to play piano for Ling-Ling. But the complaint I had about the first seasons stands – it’s not enough to just portray a bunch of characters with the stereotypes of minorities and/or the mentally ill. You have to make the audience empathise with them, and you have to have some decent jokes beyond hoping that outrage at political incorrectness makes people laugh.

At the end of it all, the most interesting thing to say about Drawn Together is that according to Imaishi Hiroyuki, of Gurren Lagann fame, without the Gainax staff watching Drawn Together while in the US and seeing how far Rough Draft could push what could be shown on TV, they would never have been inspired to create Panty & Stocking.

The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! brought with it a new visual style thanks to being animated in flash by Six Point Harness studio (responsible for crap like the The Ricky Gervais Show) and a storyline based entirely on bitterness about being cancelled. The movie makes big mistakes – not least of which is pretending none of their political incorrectness was meant to be smart South Park-style satire and setting up an opposition between themselves and that show (which took their time slot) suggesting Parker and Stone just tack on meaningless, trite political messages and being funny for the sake of being funny is somehow purer and superior. Though there’s something to be said for the Drawn Together writers being able to recognise their flaws, including those of this film (one gag points out they were lucky to get three seasons and should be grateful), and some of the obvious jokes about Israel, territory and violence (delivered by fan Seth MacFarlane), as well as a series of crude superhero cameos, actually managed to be funny, but trying to get a feature-length plot from shallow, vague ideas about not deserving cancellation just ends up dull. Red Dwarf couldn’t even make it work, so…

Plus using flash doesn’t work for animated pastiche. Despite spirited attempts to imitate cut-out animation and Disney smoothness, from Waltz with Bashir through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Wakfu to Happy Tree Friends, flash looks like flash. And this never escaped the limitations of the media – a glaring flaw when attempting pastiches.

The Simpsons movie

The timing of The Simpsons’ movie adaptation was a little bizarre. Though the story goes that Matt Groening had been eager to make a film since the series’ early days, it certainly seemed to me that the right time had long come and gone without one, so there was real desire to get the hugely successful animated family up on the big screen, where other adult-oriented animated franchises like South Park and Beavis and Butthead got their shot. By 2007, when this film finally found release, The Simpsons was beloved more for what it was than what it had become: generally even its fans believed it had jumped the shark and its glory days were long past.

But perhaps holding out was a shrewd decision. Releasing the film at the height of its initial popularity in the early nineties or in the glory days in the run-up to the Millennium. Supposedly there was a very long production time, from signing on the actors in 2001, through development from 2003 and over a hundred different script drafts before the final version. Releasing in 2007 probably still got as many ticket sales as opening in 2000 would have, with so much of the English-speaking world still loyal in some way to the production, but also had the effect of reviving interest in a flagging series and reminding a younger generation that the franchise was still relevant.

I had low expectations. I went in expecting something atrocious, but I could not call the Simpsons movie that when I left the cinema. With animation coming from the usual US-Korean studios behind the TV show – Rough Draft, AKOM and Film Roman - it broke almost no new ground visually other than having some nice CG shots, and really was just an extra-long episode of the TV show with more high-budget sequences than could usually be justified.

But it was entertaining, that’s undeniable. A lot of it relied on familiarity built up by the show – unlike what happened with the South Park movie, I couldn’t imagine many who were unconvinced would change their opinion of the show after seeing this – but there was some funny writing, interesting action setpieces and some good character moments, especially from Marge, though anyone who’s seen the series has seen her be the affecting voice of reason dozens of times already. Bart and Lisa’s little plotlines were totally undeveloped and the satirical bite that the series often utilised was absent, even with sequences based on government decision-making. Some of the jokes fall flat, especially the ones that are overly surreal yet too obvious, like the people Bart draws or Homer’s commentary on moviegoers, and there was really too much reliance on slapstick (that wrecking ball wasn’t funny in the trailer, so it definitely wasn’t gonna be funny in the movie). But hey, at least a good portion of it was amusing, and the moments of pathos work fine. Not life-shattering, not especially impressive, but no disaster. Still, it cannot hold a candle to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

(expanded from impressions, 5.8.07)

FernGully: The Last Rainforest

I have very little love for FernGully, an early 90s animation from Fox, with the likes of Rough Draft providing the actual animation, before Fox realised they really ought to go to Don Bluth if they wanted something good-looking. I didn’t see the film at the time, so the nostalgia goggles were off, and besides, Disney’s contemporary films had far, far better writing.

Without the least compunction I can say that this film was terrible. Ugly character designs poorly copied from 50s Disney, a preachy, banal and hypocritical environmentalist message, the most anticlimactic defeat of a villain ever, underdeveloped personalities and character relationships, really irritating protagonists, and the false impression of a happy and hopeful ending when what we were actually given was anything but.

The animation was poor, the inbetweening making everything wobble. Rough Draft was still a young studio, probably chosen because they offered their services extremely cheaply. The voice acting was passable, but Robin Williams – giving a remarkably similar performance to his much-lauded one as The Genie in Aladdin (released later the same year, which surprised me, as I had assumed this had been on the coattails of that performance) – was really on autopilot. Only nostalgia could make me like such a horribly manipulative and badly-thrown-together bit of claptrap. But I’d like to think even as a small child I would have found this film lazy, exploitative and dull.

At least Zak doesn’t learn in a few days to be the most skilful fairy who ever lived. That would be the last straw.

(Expanded from impressions, 7.1.09 – after I’d probably have had more to say about Cameron’s Avatar stealing the plot)

Adventure Time (seasons 1&2)

The second season of Adventure Time just ended in a strange fashion – one episode was delayed, so ended up airing after the season finale. But with such an episodic series, it hardly matters, and anyone paying close enough attention to notice has probably heard about the situation and realises the episode wasn’t a continuation of the cliffhanger.

It’s been very interesting to watch Adventure Time transition from extremely silly and surreal Youtube hit, through popular new cult hit, and on to suffering a backlash as a cartoon only smug hipsters like, which has lost its way.

Thinking of the series like this, though, is to care too much about what other people think. It’s certainly changed in tone since that first little pilot, but really, it had to, and while remaining both extremely surreal and quite often the funniest thing on its network, it has also begun to finally show a little depth and sophistication, and towards the end of its second season started to bring to fore post-apocalyptic plot details foreshadowed from the very beginning but until recently only peripheral.

Finn may just be the last human left in his world, after the Great Mushroom War brought an end to civilisation as we know it. In the wake of the disaster, however, all manner of peculiar sapient beings have repopulated the world, including people made of sweets, vampires and flying unicorn-rainbow creatures. Finn’s best friend is a shape-shifting yellow dog called Jake, and together these two spend their days seeking adventure and going on silly quests.

Things certainly changed since the pilot. In changing from Penn (ie a representation of the younger self of creator Pendleton Ward) to Finn, the protagonist had a design change to look more stylised and shorter, his head seeming to grow into his body except in the rare instances he takes off his hat. The world, while still populated by very odd creatures, was more consistent, coherent and self-contained – no more visions of Abraham Lincoln or Jake dialing up to the Internet with his mind. Characters like the Ice King got developed by repeated appearances, and with a few notches less surrealism, there’s a few degrees more accessibility – although arguably you could call that less daring and originality. But of course the pilot still exists, and the two compliment each other well.

Adventure Time is supposed to look amateurish and psychedelic, and thrives on characters that can stretch, change and be drawn very quickly. It’s slapdash and silly – and the writing is intentionally subversive. Several highlights come at the ends of episodes, where something very odd and unresolved might happen moments before the credits roll, with a Pythonesque lack of a punchline.

I don’t care if much of its fanbase are abandoning Adventure Time because they perceive it as having got too mainstream or because they feel it has gotten too far from its roots. For me, it is the most consistently amusing kid-friendly animated comedy I can remember on American TV – even more so than Invader Zim or The Powerpuff Girls, and for that I will keep watching right until the end.

Season 3: link
Season 4: link
Season 5: link
Adventure Time (season 6)
Adventure Time (season 7)
Adventure Time (season 8)
Adventure Time: season 9
Adventure Time (season 10)

Drawn Together (seasons 1+2)

‘Does American animation always have to be funny?’ asked a viewer of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. ‘Of Course it doesn’t,’ came the answer. ‘Just look at Drawn Together.’ A case of rival companies’ cheap jabs, yes, but it has to be said that as a comedy, Drawn Together does fall short.

I thought the premise was a sound one: take the format of a reality TV show, in which a group of people are made to live together and occasionally set challenges for rewards, but base it around various animated clichés. Thus we get a muscle-bound superhero; a Disney-style princess; a rather feminine video game protagonist; a 20s Betty Boop lookalike; a creature with more than a passing resemblance to Pikachu from Pokémon; a black, crime-fighting, ass-whoopin’ detective girl; a crude flash animation pig; and a goofy creature in the vein of Spongebob Squarepants trying to cohabit. Establish the humour as distinctly adult and we have the opportunity for some clever parody and intelligent social commentary.

The writers take a good stab at this, I’ll give them that. Princess Clara and Foxxy Love feud because Clara has been brought up to be a bigot who thinks the black girl must be her servant. Xandir is outed as gay so revels in his stereotype. Ling-Ling speaks mock-Japanese and becomes a send-up of all Asian stereotypes. Toot is soon revealed as the stereotyped past-it bitchy ex-star. You may be able to tell that the humour revolves very much around stereotypes. Not necessarily a bad thing – a lot of Python humour is stereotype-based – but you need to have good jokes to back it up.

Thing is, Drawn Together has an air of desperation to it. One episode revolves around a real-life bad review the show got. Driving through South Park in one of the pastiches, a character remarks, ‘I bet more people would watch us if we lived here.’ The jokes get milked and milked endlessly. Yes, okay, Toot is fat and cuts herself, Xandir is gay enough to wear pink thongs, Captain Hero is a horrible pervert and Foxxy is black. We get it. Now give us some good jokes!

While occasionally the show does hit gold – the musical numbers are all spot-on parodies of such institutions as Disney ballads and 70s band cartoons, Foxxy’s send-up of black stereotypes (‘I’m so mad I’ve been stuck like this for three hours’ was a great line) is well-balanced with her position as ‘the level-headed one’, and the show can be dangerously close to the wire (slave auction scene?) – plus some of the briefer allusions were very funny (He-Man and Panthro from Thundercats shooting up in Popeye’s steroids den), but when there are one or two laughs in half an hour of brain-dead, repetitive, outrageous-for-outrageousness’s-sake guff, it doesn’t work. And having an episode subplot about how fart jokes ARE funny after all doesn’t make them funny.

I was also quite disturbed when they met a fat lesbian who cuts and conforms to many of the other stereotypes mocked in the show and said, ‘You’re not exactly our target audience’. I was laughing at the bigots, at how stupid it was to be so backward, and that made me wonder if I’d got it all wrong. Ah, well.

In two seasons, only one episode was actually really good, the penultimate one in which the housemates enact at great length what might happen when Xandir comes out to them, sending up the usual drama-laden stories of struggling against repression, with most of the cast playing against type. There they hit the nail on the head, because in changing the characters’ personalities for a while, the writers hit on what makes really good satire: rather than having a cast made up of flat and unlikeable characters, make us sympathetic to them first, and THEN horribly abuse them.

There’s apparently more in the works. I’ll watch it, but all the while, I’ll be hoping it’s going to improve.

(originally written 31.7.06)