When the previews for this show came out (back in 2008 or 2009, I believe) I was pretty excited. Cartoon Network had recently started to air a lot of shows that weren't good (and they'd started the CN Real block). Adventure Time looked like it was going to be great. But I did't like it. In fact, it really annoyed me. I'll admit, I only saw 13 episodes of the 1st season, which is exactly half of the episodes of that season (not the *first* thirteen, by the way, just thirteen from the season). Maybe that's not enough to judge the show fairly. I hear that there are actually story arcs in the more recent seasons. Still, 13 is better than 1 or 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 or 12) and I'd rather not torture myself with more or this unfunny show just to judge it fairly (sorry if that sounds evil). I'm saying all this so you know the context of this brief review.
My main problem with Adventure Time was that it seemed that the writers expected viewers to laugh at things just for being...weird. The thing is weird ≠ funny. Something weird *can* be funny, but not necessarily. Another thing that is bad about this is that when there are so many weird things happening in each episode, we start to expect everything to be weird and suddenly nothing is weird. Yet another problem is that stories suffer. I think comedies need compelling stories to be funny. They don't necessarily need to be complex. A usual episode of SpongeBob from Seasons 1-3 had a simple plot. Take the episode "Life of Crime," for instance. It's about SpongeBob and Patrick stealing a balloon on "Free Balloon Day" and having to run away because they think they'll be thrown in jail for it. Anyway, Adventure Time can safely be classified as fantasy as well as comedy, like many children's cartoons. I think Robert McKee explains in Story (just paraphrasing here) that a fantasy needs even more stringent rules than a non-fantasy or it will fall apart. Adventure Time didn't seem to have any rules. If a cartoon takes place in a world where anything can happen, if there's no logic or order, decent stories can't be fashioned for it.
Let me give you a few examples of the weird humor in Adventure Time that I just didn't get:
1. Finn gets turned into a foot because a magician felt like turning him into one. (The episode seemed to be setting things up for a moral, which would have fit the story, but there isn't one. Cartoons don't need morals but if you're setting up a moral, I think you should go with it or you should subvert it in some clever way.) 2. Marceline drinks the color red instead of blood. (It's funny because...vampires drink blood and not the color red?) 3. There's a guy, who's a giant peanut, who has an addiction to pudding. (There's one scene that really struck me with how badly it was thought out. The guy asks for pudding and Finn gives him a plastic pudding cup. Finn then gets a spoon from his backpack to give to the peanut guy but when he turns around, he sees that the guy has swallowed the cup itself. And then there's a short pause for the audience to laugh. Were the writers serious? This is a world where anything can happen and the main character is already talking to a giant peanut and the thing that's supposed to make the audience laugh is the fact that the peanut guy ATE THE PUDDING CUP INSTEAD OF EATING THE PUDDING INSIDE WITH A SPOON. I guess since the writers thought that random = funny and in a world where everything is random nothing is random, then they'd have to write a non-random joke since the only random thing is something that isn't random. Fries your cerebral cortex doesn't it?)
I will admit, there was occasionally a funny line or scene (such as Finn reacting to a drop of water hitting his face or when Jake says, "I imagined my mom naked!" or when Finn sings The Hero Boy Named Finn) but the bad things about the show just overwhelm the good things about it, in my opinion.
Darn, cartoons were better back in the 90s and early 00s. Let me explain what I mean when I say that because a lot of people get really, really defensive when you tell them that. There were good cartoons back then and good cartoons now and there are bad cartoons back then and bad cartoons now. What I mean is that the amount of good cartoons relative to the amount of bad cartoons was bigger back then than it is now.
Not long after Adventure Time began, Cartoon Network started airing another show called Regular Show. If you want to see a cartoon that does erratic humor right, watch that. Regular Show made me laugh more than any other post-2008 Cartoon Network cartoon (or any cartoon on any channel, for that matter).
My main problem with Adventure Time was that it seemed that the writers expected viewers to laugh at things just for being...weird. The thing is weird ≠ funny. Something weird *can* be funny, but not necessarily. Another thing that is bad about this is that when there are so many weird things happening in each episode, we start to expect everything to be weird and suddenly nothing is weird. Yet another problem is that stories suffer. I think comedies need compelling stories to be funny. They don't necessarily need to be complex. A usual episode of SpongeBob from Seasons 1-3 had a simple plot. Take the episode "Life of Crime," for instance. It's about SpongeBob and Patrick stealing a balloon on "Free Balloon Day" and having to run away because they think they'll be thrown in jail for it. Anyway, Adventure Time can safely be classified as fantasy as well as comedy, like many children's cartoons. I think Robert McKee explains in Story (just paraphrasing here) that a fantasy needs even more stringent rules than a non-fantasy or it will fall apart. Adventure Time didn't seem to have any rules. If a cartoon takes place in a world where anything can happen, if there's no logic or order, decent stories can't be fashioned for it.
Let me give you a few examples of the weird humor in Adventure Time that I just didn't get:
1. Finn gets turned into a foot because a magician felt like turning him into one. (The episode seemed to be setting things up for a moral, which would have fit the story, but there isn't one. Cartoons don't need morals but if you're setting up a moral, I think you should go with it or you should subvert it in some clever way.) 2. Marceline drinks the color red instead of blood. (It's funny because...vampires drink blood and not the color red?) 3. There's a guy, who's a giant peanut, who has an addiction to pudding. (There's one scene that really struck me with how badly it was thought out. The guy asks for pudding and Finn gives him a plastic pudding cup. Finn then gets a spoon from his backpack to give to the peanut guy but when he turns around, he sees that the guy has swallowed the cup itself. And then there's a short pause for the audience to laugh. Were the writers serious? This is a world where anything can happen and the main character is already talking to a giant peanut and the thing that's supposed to make the audience laugh is the fact that the peanut guy ATE THE PUDDING CUP INSTEAD OF EATING THE PUDDING INSIDE WITH A SPOON. I guess since the writers thought that random = funny and in a world where everything is random nothing is random, then they'd have to write a non-random joke since the only random thing is something that isn't random. Fries your cerebral cortex doesn't it?)
I will admit, there was occasionally a funny line or scene (such as Finn reacting to a drop of water hitting his face or when Jake says, "I imagined my mom naked!" or when Finn sings The Hero Boy Named Finn) but the bad things about the show just overwhelm the good things about it, in my opinion.
Darn, cartoons were better back in the 90s and early 00s. Let me explain what I mean when I say that because a lot of people get really, really defensive when you tell them that. There were good cartoons back then and good cartoons now and there are bad cartoons back then and bad cartoons now. What I mean is that the amount of good cartoons relative to the amount of bad cartoons was bigger back then than it is now.
Not long after Adventure Time began, Cartoon Network started airing another show called Regular Show. If you want to see a cartoon that does erratic humor right, watch that. Regular Show made me laugh more than any other post-2008 Cartoon Network cartoon (or any cartoon on any channel, for that matter).