Reviews WesternAnimation / Adventure Time

and it honestly felt like the writers were daring us as an audience to continue liking her.

Considering that they've defended her from slurs after "Wizards Only Fools", and all the focus they've given to her arc, maybe just maybe instead of "lookit this bitch" it's "we're doing a morally ambiguous but still good and sympathetic female character and isn't that cool?" But whatever, more complicated lady characters for me then.

maybe just maybe instead of "lookit this bitch" it's "we're doing a morally ambiguous but still good and sympathetic female character and isn't that cool?"

And I think that round about 95% of the time they achieve that, which is why she's one of my favorite characters. Unfortunately, for this small portion in the middle of the fifth season, they really started straining against that "morally ambiguous" label by, for example, making her act like such a spoiled child in Apple Wedding.

Even as PB fans, I think we need to be able to admit that wasn't exactly a shining moment for her character.

I would have figured massacring the gumball robots would've done that more than the Apple Wedding example, but ya know... they were both pretty shitty things to do.

@xivxaw Sure it wasn't, and she's definitely getting... stressed over the course of the series, but it was also really funny. When you have her 0.o face at Tree Trunks having a voyeur fetish at the end, I can't really take it seriously y'know?

Good joke at the end or not, it was part of this strange section of episodes (namely Apple Wedding, Rattleballs, and Wizards Only Fools) that seemed devoted to making her less and less sympathetic with each appearance.

Good review. I have to agree, it's not that the whole season is bad, it's that the bad episodes really stand out. If problem was just boring plots it wouldn't be so bad, but because the problems come from poor characterization people are getting really upset.

In regards to Princess Bubblegum, I think her bad traits are at a serious risk of outweighing her good ones. What I find most frustrating is that I can't even tell how we're supposed to feel about her. In James, even Finn and Jake are extremely uncomfortable with what she did, which is reinforced when the ending confirms that the second James is not the same person as the first James. But in Rattleballs, Bubblegum's sympathy towards the robot seems to completely sweep her destruction of the others under the rug. If that was a one off incident it'd be mostly okay, but the episode doesn't acknowledge that it's just one example of how ruthless PB can be. So what? Are we supposed to find all of her actions justified? Are we supposed to be suspicious of her? Is all of this building to something? That last one's my biggest question. I'd enjoy it if this all culminated in a big storyline that tests the other character's loyalty to PB and forces her to either step back from the abyss or to plunge into it, but I don't have that confidence. Some people might say to have faith in the writers, but I don't buy into that. Writers should be praised for what they actually do, not what they might do.

With Finn, my main problem with Fire and Ice is how willing he is to manipulate Flame Princess. Yes, his dream was portrayed as the equivalent to a wet dream, and it makes sense that he wouldn't know how to deal with those feelings, but I thought his callousness was taken to a point that it felt out of character. If the writers had portrayed more hesitance on his part during the whole situation, fans might have had an easier time accepting it. But I what I really find annoying is how one episode will seem to show him accepting that his relationship with Bubblegum won't be more than friends, or that his relationship with Flame Princess is over, then another episode will have him hitting on them. It doesn't feel like he's having trouble letting go of them, it feels more like he just doesn't care that they've rejected him, and it makes him come off as a douche. It stagnates his character growth.

The show has always balanced a lot of different emotional tones, but for some reason the writers seem to be getting worse at balancing the more serious character moments with the series' trademark weird humor. At first an episode might seem to be setting up a serious conflict, but will end with a lighthearted joke with the original conflict fizzling out instead of being resolved. The episodes revolving around Simon don't have that problem, so I don't know why it seems to be the only storyline the writers seem able to properly handle. And honestly, some of the plots just do not work out for an 11 minute episode.

I remember a fairly early episode where PB had a psychotic hatred for the Nut King because of a really petty reason. In fact, I'd call the Nut King mentally disabled. She was a real jerk there.

I really dislike how Finn was in love with Bubblegum which didn't work so he got together with Flame Princess and botched that so he tries to get with PB again. Finn is going around in circles.

@Austin

And honestly, some of the plots just do not work out for an 11 minute episode.

I actually want to talk about this first, because it was something I really would have liked to mention in the review proper were it not for that confounded 400 word limit.

I'm not really sure what the rest of the fandom thought of Betty, but I thought it was by far the worst victim of this problem to date. What should have been such an emotionally powerful episode about lovers reunited and a girl and her father-figure given another chance(though brief) instead turned out to be a completely procedural rush, with the characters gliding between plot points, never given an opportunity to actually take in the major events going on around them (Credit where its due, though, they did give Marceline a very effective reaction to hearing Simon's voice again). Unfortunately, the greatest victim of this is Betty herself, who goes from being chased by her now psychotic fiancee to being pulled 1000 years into a future full of candy people and flying carpets and barely even blinks. It made her feel... inhuman, really. I couldn't get into her character because there's no way I could relate to her given how ludicrously quickly she adapts to what's happening.

But I can't really use the time limit as an excuse for them, though, because they've shown us they're capable of telling incredibly effective stories in just 11 minutes. Hell, I could probably teach a class on how I Remember You basically won Television. It's by far my favorite episode of anything ever. And honestly, I think that strikes on one of the reasons there was such vocal disappointment with this season: It's not that it's objectively terrible or anything, it's just that we know these guys are capable of so much better.

What I find most frustrating is that I can't even tell how we're supposed to feel about her.

Thing is, that's exactly what I like about PB, that the show refuses to stick her into some clearly labeled Box o' Morality. In fact, the genius of the ending of James is that the show does it's absolute best not to tell us what we should think about what happened. Instead, it gives PB the opportunity to explain the reasoning surrounding her actions, and it gives us a suitably ambiguous ending as to whether or not new James is anything more than a physical copy of old James, as well as all the time in the world to decide for ourselves what we think about all of this.

The thing is, of course, that you have to strike that very delicate balance in order for moral ambiguity to work, and I think that's why episodes like Rattleballs and Apple Wedding don't work: they fail to strike the balance and instead push a bit too far toward the side of presenting her as flat out bad.

With Finn, my main problem with Fire and Ice is how willing he is to manipulate Flame Princess

I won't try to defend this too hard, because again, this honestly isn't something I feel terribly strongly about. However, I will say that I don't think it's too out of character for Finn. We've seen how capable of thoughtless action he is in the past, specifically when he thinks he's doing something heroic. In this case, he's presented with a problem he simply has no idea how to solve, and so he attacks it with that same sometimes mindless zeal and ends up doing something that really hurts someone he cares about.