Adventures in Animation: Adventure Time

...I don't know what I've been watching.

Adventure Time is probably the biggest animated show since Spongebob Squarepants. Seriously, everyone seems to love it. I've now watched a whole season of it, and I still can't quite figure out WHY.

It's a difficult show to describe. The story follows Finn, a human boy living in a world populated by candy people, witches, and monsters. He goes on adventures with his dog Jake, a shape-shifting creature with the voice of Futurama's Bender.

And that's where the simple explanation ends. The rest of the Adventure Time experience is filled with shoddy character designs, non-sequiturs, and the occasional fart joke. It's a childish show about childish people.

Also: This guy.

So why do I like it so much?

There's no mistake: I DO like it. I bought the Season One DVD collection and have watched it probably five times through. Yet I still hate the character designs, and I still dislike most of the stories.

Adventure Time takes place in a pseudo-epic fantasy world, so the best episodes are the ones that take classic fantasy tropes and play with them. For example, my favorite episode (or the one that's darn near closest to being favorite) centers around Jake trying to convince Finn to play make-believe. He hops around on the furniture, playing "The Floor Is Lava." Finn refuses to play along and defiantly stomps on the floor... only for his foot to catch on fire.

The rest of the episode is a giant trek through the house in search of an "imagination turn off" machine." Along the way, Finn and Jake face hordes of trolls, riddle masters, and deadly traps; however, since they're all products of Jake's imagination, they're all invisible. Not even the audience can see them. And it's seriously hilarious.

So there's the play on conventions, but there's also something about the dialog that brings me back. There's one episode, "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain," that I find particularly insipid. The episode is all about Finn trying to solve the problems of a bunch of bizarre characters. Finn gets emotional when he tells his "origin story": as a baby, he went "boom-boom" on a leaf (which is exactly what it sounds like), and he cried and cried until he was rescued by Jake's parents. I'm more than a little bugged by the potty humor in the story, and I don't care much for it.

But then Jake's father says, "You just kissed a Boom Boom baby, so don't expect any more sugar from me, sweetheart, until we wash your dirty, dirty face."

That's it. I'll watch the WHOLE EPISODE for ONE LINE. And the series is FULL of lines like that

None of this makes the show any BETTER, but I still watch it... and watch it again... and again... and again...