Adventure Time: Thanks For The Crabapples, Giuseppe

July 25, 2014 11:45 AM - Season 6, Episode 13

Abracadaniel and the Ice King get some Wizards together for a road trip.
posted by drezdn (17 comments total)

Another episode with things blooming... I wonder if it's building to something.
posted by drezdn at 11:47 AM on July 25, 2014

I really liked the water nymph bit. You expect to see some fancy water magic.
posted by squinty at 2:58 PM on July 25, 2014

This is a great episode on a thematic level, so I hate to be nerd-pedantic, but...why didn't the Ice King turn back into Simon when he gave Abracadaniel his crown, and why didn't AbracaD flip out and go straight Ice King? The show is pretty inflexible on how that happens. Did I miss something?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:18 PM on July 25, 2014

Remember "Simon & Marcy"? Simon has worn the crown for so long that its magic has changed him into Ice King. In "Betty" he lost the magic and turned into Simon again, but then he got it back and reverted to the full-blown Ice King. The crown has thoroughly corrupted him such that not wearing the crown for a short time won't cause him to revert.

As for Abracadaniel, maybe being magical already insulated him from the corruption, or maybe it's too bonded to Ice King to corrupt anyone else so quickly. Also, you can wear it for a little while and suffer no permanent damage, as seen in "Holly Jolly Secrets" during the first part of Simon's video message.
posted by Small Dollar at 3:35 PM on July 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

That follows. I was thinking about stuff like the parallel world from the top of last season where Alternate Universe Finn was corrupted almost instantly, but that Finn was a put-upon little kid and Abracadaniel, however...well...lame, is an experienced magic user. And yeah, I can think of other episodes where we've seen the Ice King without the crown for a while, now that I think back on it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:26 PM on July 25, 2014

I wonder if they'll ever explain why wizards are predominantly dudes? And sad loser dudes at that! Maybe the fact that wizards are idealized by sad loser dudes made them suitable models for wizards themselves? They are socially backwards nerds in pre-Harry Potter fantasy tradition.

I went back and watched Wizards Only, Fools! after this, and I don't think I saw any lady wizards.
posted by ignignokt at 7:25 PM on July 25, 2014

There is Huntress Wizard, who basically seems to be too cool to associate with any of the loser wizards.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:37 PM on July 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

The wizards this episode were sort of the group of sad loser dude wizards who were fed up with the other wizards being cliquey jerks and just decided to make their own club.

There's a couple lady wizards in Adventure Time, actually. The most prominent female wizard is probably Huntress Wizard, but there are also the background characters Lady Wizard 1, and Lady Wizard 2, plus Maja the Sky Witch and a couple other female magic-users.
posted by Small Dollar at 8:38 PM on July 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Not to imply it's nearly "enough", but canonically there are lady wizards represented at least a little.
posted by Small Dollar at 8:41 PM on July 25, 2014

Oh, yeah, the wizard gladiator episode! I should check that out again. Counting witches, there's also the witch played by Maria Bamford that had the donut garden.

Maybe being a wizard is actually kinda useless? Finn and Jake are impressed by "powerful magicks," but Princess Bubblegum certainly isn't. (I think the same goes for their view of dungeons – they're kind of a juvenile thing.) I feel like wizards are regarded as sometimes dangerous oddities, but not necessarily fearsome as in some kind of Robert E. Howard thing.
posted by ignignokt at 5:51 AM on July 26, 2014

ignignokt: “Maybe being a wizard is actually kinda useless? ”

That's an interesting point. In "Wizards Only, Fools" one of the candy people won't take Bubble Gum's medicine. They only want a magic potion. I wonder if Bubble Gum's scientific bent is less common than we might think.

What I thought was interesting is how they wanted to perform this ritual together because they felt excluded from wizarding society. Yet they all followed Ice King's lead in excluding poor Guiseppe. Even though Guiseppe was apparently the most powerful of the group.

Did I hear Dana Synder's voice in there as one of the wizards?
posted by ob1quixote at 9:51 AM on July 26, 2014

That's an interesting point. In "Wizards Only, Fools" one of the candy people won't take Bubble Gum's medicine. They only want a magic potion. I wonder if Bubble Gum's scientific bent is less common than we might think.

The impression I got from "Wizards Only, Fools" was that PB's take is that most of what Ooo considers magic is actually science they don't understand, and furthermore that this lack of understanding leads people to believe in some "magical" things that don't work at all. In the context of a show like Adventure Time -- featuring ghosts, vampires, hell, etc. -- this basically makes PB Scully. She doesn't disbelieve in Jake's stretching ability, because that would be to deny the evidence of her senses; she just knows there's a scientific explanation for it, because there has to be, or it couldn't exist. This...kind of makes science an article of faith, but...
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:52 PM on July 26, 2014

I must be in the minority here because I really didn't understand this episode. I'm wondering if what Giuseppe is/was will be explained later on, because as it is, it didn't make sense to me that Giuseppe did a nice thing for them when they (well, really Ice King I guess) just left him behind. They were basically dicks to him, yet he still rescued them? Maybe he represents the power of, um, niceness, or something?
posted by Librarypt at 7:40 AM on July 27, 2014

Giuseppe definitely represents something or it's just a very loosely written episode. He's basically the Michael Langdon of the show. He appears for the bus trip and the only time he's relevant to the other characters is when he helps them by getting the crab apples and then later when he saves them in the swamp. Obviously, his specialness was hinted at when the Ice King began reading what he'd written on the toilet paper, and while that should have telegraphed his return to fix the problem, I wasn't expecting it. At the least, he's just a nice guy with a flatulence problem.

I loved when Jake and Finn came running out to join the trip and saw it'd left without them.

The nymphs were fun. I tend to forget they're about, and the manner in which they just promptly gave up and left is one of those things I consider a hallmark of Adventure Time. It's very much a show where the Little Engine that Could can sometimes say screw it and go back down the mountain.

I was also caught a little by surprise by the Ice Crown, but I think Small Dollar is right on concerning it. Didn't he take it off after he shaved and all the princesses became interested in him? Incidentally, Abracadaniel shows that either he has a magical power to subdue the power of magical objects or the Ice Crown isn't necessarily super powerful, so much as it responds to the magical ability within its wearer.

The heads switch was also nice.
posted by Atreides at 8:19 AM on July 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

I really like the ice kings awed
"Guisseppe how have you done this"
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:10 PM on July 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the Ice Crown transformation (both to and from) is very gradual.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:49 PM on July 29, 2014

I always felt like the Ice Crown was like low-level radiation. It won't mess you up for a while, but once it has it's permanent.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:04 AM on June 19, 2015 [4 favorites]