Adventure Time!

[MekaGojira3k]

[lhb412]

^Ha! I thought it was an hilarious tease!


AT is great at teasing the audience with what they want, only to pull the football away. How boring the show would be if it kowtowed to us!

[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

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The show actually has a very simple formula: Finn and Jake live together, are best friends, have adventures. Having Jake leave to live with Lady would make it a fundamentally different show. As good a show? Maybe, but a different one. The only real, life or death reason for a show to fundamentally change is because it needs to. Futurama has been seriously stale the last few seasons (despite an occasion great episode), and I feel that it needs to change in order to generate new ideas because they seem to have exhausted the prospects of the existing situation. The death, in question, is said staleness.

Adventure Time has become more and more interesting by further investigating why things are the way we are, occasionally challenging our notions of what we think we know about the characters and forcing us to look at the same thing in a different life. The characters have become richer and richer, the adventures are still thrilling and different, the jokes are still funny and original. Occasionally (often, actually) we get some really off-the-wall, experimental, 'that was quite unlike anything I've seen in a cartoon' moment. Something really creative, and the show's creators do it within the confines of the show without breaking it.

I see no problem with the way the show continuing to carry on as it has because it's excellent. In fact, I think this is it's strongest season. When the jokes become repetitive, the adventures shadows of previous ones, and the character development unnatural and head-scratchily ill-advised - that's when the show certainly needs to change, or even end.

[MekaGojira3k]

I think the show is good, but I wouldn't say excellent. I feel like some of it has gotten stale. *shrug* I don't think the show changing the status quo would be such a terrible thing. Because it would still be about character interactions and the like, there'd just be greater stakes and something I'd be far more likely to be invested in, or some of my friends would be invested in.

I also think a show should change when the story dictates it. Several stories, have dictated it, and the AT team have chosen to ignore it and return to square one. Which is distinctly disappointing. It just seems like they're fearful to try anything like that. Although I admit they experiment in other ways.

[lhb412]

I think it depends story to story. Cartoons and comics are unique in that they can commonly create stories that shouldn't change and shouldn't end:

The Coyote and Road Runner should just keep chasing each other forever.

Scrooge McDuck should never figure out that his money is more trouble than it's worth.

Rocky and Bullwinkle deal whatever the problem is and then go back home only to have Boris and Natasha spearhead another scheme that takes them somewhere for another caper (starting in next week's episode!).

Adventure Time (and Regular Show, and a lot of modern cartoons, actually) are interesting in that they're increasingly sophisticated and popular with adult audiences who are used to present day, novel-inspired television where you take the entire series upon completion as a total work with a beginning, middle and end. It's a novel in TV show form.

Is Adventure Time one of these shows, or a more traditional cartoon where each week we turn in to see Finn and Jake at their tree house, only to be whisked away on another adventure? So far the show's purpose seems to be to satisfy the demand of both formats. I might like seeing the show jump forward in time to an adult Finn who settles on a romantic partner and doesn't live with Jake - but AT's child audience would miss when he was a kid like them, and they'll miss him living with Jake. AT, at it's core, is a child's fantasy about living in a adventure-filled world while having cool friends including the coolest who's your roommate/best-friend/brother who's so totally cool that he's a talking dog!

If it became too adult and complex the children wouldn't like it as much. Am I worth more as an audience member than the child audience? As a personal consumer, yes. In the grand scheme of things? No, satisfying the kids is just as important as giving me what I want, maybe more.

[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

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^Hmmm... I disagree. I think the characters in Adventure Time have been fleshed out to a greater degree than anything done in those two (very good) shows - now, it has done that within the confines of a children's adventure program.

[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

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It's sad that Rebecca Sugar is leaving At, because she created so many of the best episodes - but it's awesome that she's getting her own show and this teaser poster promises awesomeness:

[MekaGojira3k]

[MekaGojira3k]

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[MekaGojira3k]

[MekaGojira3k]

Little Dude was good just for having Dana Snyder do a voice for Adventure Time.