I wasn't a fan of this last episode at all. The part with Starchy's secret society was funny but the rest was really bland. I preferred Princess Day to Nemesis.
Yeah, Princess Day was just fun. This latest episode though just seemed like it was depressing for the sake of being depressing. We already knew that Peppermint Butler was evil--the series has been playing around with that for a while. And at the end of the episode, he was still evil, alive, and the only thing that had changed was that he had completely fucked over Peace Master, with it being ended on the note that Peebles still thinks that Peace Master is the problem and still has no clue about her Butler at all. The episode wasn't fun at all, had no real point other than "evil wins sometimes" (I guess it's setting up Peacemaster as potential adversary to him, but with the way the series is going, I wouldn't be surprised if we never hear from him again or if they just kill him off randomly if we do), and is just depressing.
Fake Edit: And as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that another kind of odd thing about this Peppermint Butler stuff is that they already have a complete total dick spellcaster character in the form of the Magic Man who could have easily stood in for the mint man and the episode really wouldn't have been different at all (in fact, it probably would have been better for it, since Magic Man pulls off that role better) and it just makes it even more odd that this episode was basically set up to tell us things we already know.
And that's kind of my problem with Adventure Time in general these days--too much shit in the series is just way too depressing lately and too many of the episodes just really aren't that fun or interesting or anything. I mean, first we have all of Finn's relationship drama which was fine by itself since he is a teenager and he's just going through the growing pains of his first relationships like any teen and so they're going to be all kinds of weird and awkward and stuff until he gets older and starts to actually figure that stuff out for himself, like anyone.
But on top of the drama Finn was already dealing with concerning his relationships, they decided to give him more drama due to his dad being absolutely terrible. Then we have Bubblegum being unhappy about the state of the Candy Kingdom for some reason and also seeming to be increasingly hinted at either being totally messed up in the head or some type of lawful-evil or something. Then, out of fucking nowhere they decide to kill Root Beer Guy off-screen for absolutely no fucking reason and retroactively steal and ruin the happy ending his and his wife's happy ending, with no benefit from it or anything (I really enjoyed "Root Beer Guy," so this one really grinds my gears, especially since it doesn't even seem to be in homage to a voice actor or anything as far as I can tell).
And even in happy, sweet, and fun episodes like say "Little Brother" there have to be bittersweet twists, such as implications that the plot point about Shelby having a girlfriend seeming to be dropped and them deliberately making up a stupid excuse to force Kent to go off on his own instead of just letting them be happy together as brothers or even have Shelby go after him and decide to go with him or whatever.
Of course, looking at the episode list of Season 6 so far, I realize that I'm not exactly being fair here, and there have been a lot of happy and fun stuff as well and in fact that's the majority of them so far. I suppose it's just kinda rubbing me the wrong way realizing that the vast majority of the cast of the show seem to be stuck in a state of perpetual unhappiness and the writers seem to want to keep them there, and it's wearing on me. I mean, I already covered characters like Finn and PB and stuff, and then you have all of the Ice King and Marceline's stuff (which of course actually are great episodes, but still), and then you have LSP's entire character being built around drama and her terrible relationship with her parents and herself just being kinda terrible and absolutely failing with relationships and stuff due to that and her inability to learn anything, and the writer's decision to make terribly depressing episodes like "Bad Timing" with her than for her to actually learn a thing at all and so forth.
Like I said, I realize I'm not exactly being fair here since this stuff
isn't the focus most of the time and most of the stuff is still more lighthearted, but I guess it still bugs me that it even has as much focus as it gets, especially since they only seem to be putting more spotlight on that stuff with just adding layers of drama on top of existing drama with all of the stuff surrounding Finn's dad and Bubblegum and stuff, before they even finished dealing with any of the current problems surrounding Finn's love life or Simon dealing with the curse of the Ice King's crown and just letting it all build on top of each other and snowball instead of tying up some of those lose threads before dealing with new stuff so that it doesn't feel like it's just taking an increasing part of the focus and feel like things are going more and more downhill and Ooo (actually, thinking about it, I guess that really is my main problem I guess--the fact that they do just keep adding more and more lose threads and drama and crap instead of dealing with the drama that was already in the show before piling it on. Like, maybe it would be more fine with me if they had actually taken care of that other stuff first, but since they haven't...), if that makes any sense. I dunno.
And speaking of snowballing, didn't really mean for this to turn into such a rant as a writing it, but it just kinda happened and was a lot of stuff I guess I've meant to put into writing somewhere about this show for a while now and just needed to get out of me somewhere. Sorry about that, but I definitely do feel a bit better now, getting it out! xD
That's part of the issue for sure. It feels like they want to tell completely different stories than they originally did to do the show in the first place. That's fine and it's their show to do it and take it down it's path. I don't believe they can do the stuff they want to do in 11 minute episodes.
In addition, this last episode took a heavily political tone to explaining income inequality and how it propagates. I have no problem with telling different stories or even darker stories. They just aren't being done well. Maybe the show would be done better if it was on Adult Swim with less restraint. Last Thursday's episode probably would resonate better there as well and they would have probably been able to do a better job on it.
Yeah, this is also part of it for me. It's not just that the dark stuff is there, but when it is, bar stuff like the Ice King episodes, it just doesn't seem be handled well at all. Whether that's due to the 11-minute episodes, being stuck on Cartoon Network restraining some ideas that might want to take a bit further, some combination of these or whatever I don't know, but something just feels off about it all and I really don't like it.
I'm fine with the episodes this season - they've been great all around.
But the lack of Finn and Jake is growing more and more apparent, and I don't like it. Its fine if they want to go and expand the world. Totally cool. But I do feel like those episodes should be much more spaced out than they are currently.
I actually don't mind the lack of Finn and Jake at all, myself, and have in fact been enjoying a lot of the episodes where they don't show up at all (like "Little Brother" as I mentioned, bar the kind of bittersweet ending, and of course stuff like when they do a Simon episode or whatever). What it makes me wonder though was if they were going to try to get more experimental with the series anyway, and decrease the focus on Finn and Jake (particularly decreasing the focus on Jake in particular and have Finn do stuff more and more on his own anyway without Jake even being there or only showing up in completely inconsequential ways, as they played with on the show itself with the whole Jake being bummed about Billy dying thing) and do more and more stuff with other characters anyway...
what exactly happened with "Jake the Dad"?
Why couldn't they have just let him actually enjoy being a dad just like he wanted to and just let him show up on adventures and stuff only and have Lady watch the kids when it was vitally important for the plot? Why handle it in such a terribly lackluster way (not that it couldn't have been avoided by just having LR and the kids move in with Finn and Jake and having Jake try and constantly juggle the roles of being an adventurer and being a father anyway and fumbling at it, but whatever) if they were going to decrease the amount of focus the two of them got in the show, especially when it was Jake in particular who was getting left out more and more anyway? Just so weird and bleh and stuff and just makes me feel even worse about how they totally robbed Jake of getting to enjoy being a dad like that, when it doesn't seem it it would matter anyway. Just... bleh.
