A post on a Wednesday? Yes! I’m on a break this week so I wanted to try and get an extra post or two in.
A quick heads-up first. I’m getting closer to the end of Season 5 and since Season 6 is not completed yet and probably won’t be by the time I’m done Season 5, I’ll most likely begin a new review project after Season 5. And things are going to be a little bit different, let me explain how.
For one thing, I want to start reviewing books as well as TV shows, so what I’ll probably do is alternate between posting a book review and a show review. How I’m going to work that out I haven’t quite figured out yet. So if you have any suggestions for shows and books you want to see me review, let me know. I have ideas of my own and I won’t guarantee that I’ll review everything that’s suggested to me, but I will take it into consideration at the very least.
Now, the thing about TV show reviews in particular is that I need to make sure whatever I’m reviewing is not only something that interests me but something that would be interesting to write/read about. Plus, my usual format of reviewing something episode-by-episode won’t work well with every single show. That’s why I’ve decided that some shows I review may have to be done differently. Episode-by-episode will still be the standard, but I might review some shows season-by-season. Or, I may just review a couple of requested episodes from a show and only those episodes, or I may just write a post about a certain plotline or character from a show, or about the show as a whole. Basically, there will be a lot more freedom. When you suggest a show, you can also suggest what you think would be the best way to review it or what in particular you want to know my thoughts on, and I’ll try to find some way to make it work.
I also may start making more “miscellaneous” posts, just to give myself a break now and then from straight-up reviews. I might make a post that’s just talking about my favorite genres or my favorite characters, or a post that discusses some random aspect of fandom. These posts won’t happen often and they probably won’t even be scheduled (though I may give a heads-up when one is coming up), they’ll just be written and posted as I feel like it. You can also suggest topics for these posts.
So, those are my plans for my next “phase” of reviewing, let me know what you think and what you would like to see from me, and some time soon I’ll make a post going over everything in more detail and also letting you all know what shows and books are on my to-review list.
Now, on to the review!
This episode begins with Bubblegum waking up, and she’s wearing the T-shirt Marceline had given her. She smells the shirt, like practically inhales it, and then puts on a sweater from her closet. There’s a picture of her and Marceline in her closet with their arms around each other. Oh my God, the Bubbline in this scene is overwhelming. Bubblegum so has it bad for Marceline.
It really does.
Anyway, Marceline actually shows up later and says she wants to hang out with Bubblegum, but Bubblegum doesn’t buy that, so Marceline confesses that she actually needs help finding Maja the Sky Witch. So the two head out, and they come to a barrier of vines and bushes. Marceline tries to force her way through and is unsuccessful, but Bubblegum discovers that if you lean on the barrier and let yourself relax, you can just pass through. On the other side of the barrier is a creepy-looking forest where they can sense strong witchcraft. They come across Maja’s Crabbit, which is some kind of hyrbid between a crow and a rabbit and it can also shape-shift. Or something. Its name is Familiar. Familiar flies away and as it does a feather falls to the ground. It transforms into Hambo, Marceline’s beloved stuffed toy, and it starts talking to her.
- Hambo: Marceline! It’s me!
- Marceline: Hambo!
- Hambo: Yeah, girl. What took you so long? I thought you gave up on me.
- Princess Bubblegum: Your teddy bear?
- Marceline: I’m sorry, man! [starts walking towards Hambo]
- Princess Bubblegum: [holding her back] Yo, wait a sec!
- Marceline: [turns to Princess Bubblegum] WHAT?!
- Princess Bubblegum: Marcy, how old are you? It’s a trick, right? Come on!
- Hambo: Help me out, dum-dum! [fake crying] Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo
- Marceline: [taking Princess Bubblegum’s hand off of her] Get off! [starts running toward Hambo] Buddy!
- Princess Bubblegum: [tackling Marceline] NO!
- Marceline: [on the ground] [grunts] BONNIE!
- [Princess Bubblegum throws the googoomamameter at Hambo, causing Hambo to disappear and wooden pikes to thrust upward through the ground where Hambo was.]
- Marceline: You killed him?
- Princess Bubblegum: Don’t be dense! Hambo can’t even talk! Snap out of it, girl.
- Marceline: He’s been with a witch this whole time. Maybe he can talk now.
- Princess Bubblegum: That’s seriously what this is about? Rescuing your old teddy bear?
- Marceline: Yeah. Sorry I didn’t tell you. You might not have come otherwise.
- Princess Bubblegum: Um, yeah. Raggedy Princess can make you a new Hambo in, like, three seconds… or Raggedy Princess can be your new Hambo. She’d do it, too. That girl’s got, like, zero self-respect. [chuckles] That’s mean—don’t tell her I said that.
I know it’s mean, but that comment about Raggedy Princess makes me laugh. I think it’s just the randomness of it and the delivery, and then the quick backtracking when she realizes how mean it was.
Marceline basically threatens to beat Bubblegum up after this and Bubblegum relents. Marceline notices the broken branches left behind by the Crabbit and flies after him, leaving Bubblegum running after her desperately. She finds a pond that is actually a portal to Maja’s house, and begins searching through the rooms to find Hambo. Marceline has also reached the house and is fighting Familiar. Bubblegums finds a receipt that says Maja bought Hambo from Marceline’s ex-boyfriend, Ash (remember him?). Maja appears and Bubblegum tries to convince her to give Hambo back, but when Maja refuses Bubblegum must persuade her some other way.
By this time Marceline has defeated Familiar, and Bubblegum has come out with Hambo. Marceline asks how she got Hambo back and Bubblegum is vague with her answer. We later find out that Bubblegum traded the shirt Marceline had given her for Hambo. Maja wanted Hambo because she needed an item with sentimental value for a spell, and Bubblegum’s shirt apparently has even greater sentimental value. Aaaaawww, Bubblegum!
Okay, so I’m a huge Bubbline shipper, which means I was going to love this episode no matter what. I am totally here for bi/pansexual candy princesses and bi/pansexual vampires. (And yes Bubblegum and Marceline are most likely either bi or pan since they have shown attraction to male characters as well as to each other.)
Anyway, even putting aside my love for the Bubbline ship, this is just a really good episode. Bubblegum and Marceline’s interactions are great and I’m happy to see that their relationship has improved somewhat since What Was Missing. There’s still some awkwardness, but they get along better and they work well together. The episode is a lot of fun and really creative. It’s also really sweet. One of the things I like most about it is what it does with the idea of sentiment, and how the character who at first seemed to be mocking it ends up being very sentimental herself.
Marceline is a very emotionally-driven character. She’d like everyone to think she’s untouched by everything and she’ll do her best to hide any strong emotions she may have, but… she’s not very good at it. Almost every episode she’s been in has been an emotionally-charged one that doesn’t further plot so much as it does character development, and nearly everything Marceline does and every decision she makes is based on emotion. She had a harder time getting through the vine barrier than Bubblegum because she couldn’t make herself calm and emotionless. She nearly put herself in danger because she fell for the Crabbit’s trick with the talking Hambo, which played on her insecurities and feeling of attachment to Hambo.
Bubblegum, on the other hand, is one of few characters on the show that isn’t driven by emotions. That’s not to say that she doesn’t have any, obviously she does, but she tends to keep those emotions under very tight control. Bubblegum’s decisions and actions are based more on reason. She does what she thinks is the smartest and best decision in the long run, not what she think is necessarily right or even what would make her happy. She’s not impulsive and hot-blooded like Marceline or Finn or… almost every other character on the show. She’s logical and usually calm, which can make her seem cold when she’s surrounded by all these super emotional characters, but she’s not really. She’s just very good at controlling and compartmentalizing and, let’s be honest, repressing those emotions (which is unhealthy but we’ll get more into that some other day). Still, Bubblegum’s shirt supposedly had even more sentimental value than Hambo did, according to what Maja said. So clearly Bubblegum is more emotional and more sentimental than she lets on, it’s just not what drives the character.
So yeah, great episode, and I hope there are more Bubblegum and Marceline episodes coming. I also hope we see Maja again, or that we’ll at least find out why she needed an item with sentimental value.
Rating: 10/10
Finn and Flame Princess are hanging out outside the Tree Fort when Ice King flies by and teases Flame Princess. This makes her angry and she beats up Ice King for it, to Finn’ amazement. That night Finn has a dream that Flame Princess is shooting flame at him and burning him while a disembodied voice whispers something Finn can’t understand. Finn thinks that Flame Princess burning him feels good and he enjoys the dream. Okay, so this is obviously supposed to represent a wet dream. Flame Princess is literally shooting fire at his crotch and Finn is enjoying it. You can’t get much more obvious than that. Finn wants to have the dream again and he’s sure the reason he had it was Flame Princess’ fight with Ice King, so he goads them into another fight.
Flame Princess and Ice King have a second fight, though this time Ice King didn’t say anything mean to Flame Princess. Finn just convinced her that he was making fun of her. Finn’s dream that night has Ice King shooting ice beams at him instead, and this time the Cosmic Owl is there laughing at him. Finn realizes that it was the Cosmic Owl’s voice that he was hearing in his last dream, and he must make himself have the dream again to figure out what it all means. He sends a letter to Ice King that reads:
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- Dear Ice King,
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- You smell like stink. You’re unpleasant, you’re not funny, you’re old, and no princess will ever marry you ever, simple Simon
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- Sincerely Love,
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- Flame Princess
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- P.S. Let us fight.
He also writes one to Flame Princess that reads:
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- Dear Flame Princess,
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- You’re just the worst. Your hair is bad, your feet smell like face cheeks, your stupid candles smell heinous and you can’t even kiss Finn without totes freakin’ out!
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- Let’s meet up and fight, dummy.
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- Sincerely,
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- Ice King
He delivers the letters to them and the two get all riled up to fight each other. Flame Princess and Ice King fight once again, but this time the fight goes on longer and is much more violent. After a while Finn realizes the mistake he’s made and tries to stop it, but the heat from Flame Princess’ fire causes him to pass out. He has another dream, one where Flame Princess is burning him again, but this time Finn transforms into a deformed baby-like creature. Flame Princess is disgusted and walks away while the Cosmic Owl whispers to Finn. This time Finn can understand what he’s saying: “You blew it.”
Finn wakes up and finds that Flame Princess has destroyed the Ice King’s castle. He rescues Ice King and Gunter from the rubble and tries to escape with them before the still-enraged Flame Princess can see. Flame Princess mistakenly attacks Finn while he’s escaping and then apologizes upon realizing what she’s done. However, Finn says that he’s the one who should be apologizing.
- Finn: No, princess. I’m the one who’s sorry. [drops Ice King] Ice King hasn’t been picking fights with you, it’s…it’s been me all along.
- Ice King: [annoyed] What?
- Flame Princess: So, you wrote that letter?
- Finn: Yes, but look, it’s just like, I had this dream and it was because of that fight you had. It was weird, but I also liked it. But it was important because the Cosmic Owl was [Flame Princess decides Finn’s words have no meaning, and all she hears is wah for every syllable for a couple of seconds.] So I had to get you to beat up Ice King-
- Flame Princess: Shh. I should have known. That letter said things in it that only you would know. Personal things, Finn. And you used them against me. I thought you were the one person I could- I need some time alone.
- Finn: Princess!
- [Flame Princess walks away.]
- Finn: But, I said I was sorry.
- [Gunter rips out of Finn’s shirt and falls into the water.]
- Ice King: You blew it, man.
You know you’ve really messed things up with a girl when even Ice King thinks you’ve messed things up with a girl.
I guess Flame Princess and Finn are broken up. I mean, Flame Princess didn’t actually say “I’m breaking up with you” but it’s clear that this is what we were supposed to get from that conversation. The funny thing is that Finn’s first dream was supposed to be warning him about this, but if he’d never had that first dream this would never have happened. It was because he wanted to have the dreams again and figure them out that he goaded Flame Princess into fighting Ice King, and that’s how he “blew it”. The dream became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he hadn’t had it to begin with, everything probably would have been fine.
But let’s talk about Finn for a second. A running theme in this season seems to be “Finn is actually kind of a dick”. I’m guessing a lot of that has to do with puberty and hormones and yeah, I remember what it’s like to be Finn’s age and it’s not a time of my life that I like thinking about. Everyone is a dick at fourteen and everyone is later embarrassed by their fourteen year old self. If there are any fourteen year olds reading this, I’m not saying that you’re all 100% terrible, but trust me, there’s going to be a lot of stuff you did/said/thought at fourteen that in a few years will really embarrass you. Anyway, point is that I actually don’t take too much issue with Finn in this season because it is realistic, but that also doesn’t mean I’m going to give him a free pass.
What Finn does in this episode is not cool. Deliberately goading two people into violence for personal gain is bad enough, but Finn also uses Flame Princess’ insecurities against her. He makes her think that she’s being made fun of, and he knows she’ll believe him because she’s rather naive and very volatile. I’m guessing what really upset her in Finn’s letter was the part where he mentioned that she can’t kiss him without “totes freaking out”. We’ve already seen that Flame Princess is scared of her lack of self-control and of her supposed inherent evil. The fact that she can’t even be physically intimate with the boy she likes without literally overheating and burning a hole through the earth is probably not something she’s happy about. So yeah, using that against her was not something Finn should have done, and saying sorry doesn’t really fix that. (By the way, I like that Finn saying sorry wasn’t treated like an immediate fix for everything. I feel like a lot of people are under the impression that if you apologize to someone they are obligated to forgive you, but while apologizing is definitely the right thing to do it’s important to remember that it doesn’t mean they have to stop being mad at you.)
I wonder what this means for Finn and Flame Princess now. Their relationship surprisingly had very little effect on the show, it wasn’t as much of a game-changer as I thought it would be. Flame Princess isn’t even in that many episodes. So, how is the breakup going to effect Finn? And will we still see Flame Princess at all? I hope we do, and maybe now that she and Finn have broken up we’ll get to see her as more than just “Finn’s troubled girlfriend”. They were setting up some interesting stories and conflicts with Flame Princess and it would be a shame to see all of that go to waste.
Rating: 8/10