Adventure Time 6.21 “Dentist”

We fell a little behind with our Adventure Time reviews here at PDI, so get ready for an Adventure Time onslaught! Today and tomorrow will get us caught up on back episodes, and then every day this week we’ll have reviews of the Adventure Time Corn-Ooo-Copia marathon of new episodes that aired Thanksgiving Week! Tell your friends!

Look, I hate going to the Dentist but if I had to jump through the same hoops Finn did to get his tooth fixed, then I think I would opt for “no teeth.”

Finn’s got a hurt tooth. Princess Bubblegum tells him to “go Dentist.” Jake, who’s trying to fix the tooth from inside Finn’s mouth, also says to “go dentist.” Apparently, “going Dentist” means getting thrown down a well full of butter and snakes.

This was a fairly trippy episode. I had no idea what was going on until about halfway through. Neither did Finn, so I didn’t feel alone. To receive free dental service, you get conscripted into the ant army to battle worms who fight for flies.

And people complain about Obamacare!

Luckily, the explanation comes from Lucy Lawless voicing the Queen Ant with true military precision.  If I had it my way, every explanation I ever needed would come from an ant smacking a horse crop against visual aids.

Finn joins the service and gets partnered with Tiffany, last seen in “One Last Job” as one of Jake’s criminal gang. Tiffany longs to be Jake’s best friend and unleash his criminal potential on the world. Finn is the obstacle standing in his way. There hasn’t been a better pairing since Riggs and Murtaugh.

Finn does his best to convince Tiffany that they are similar people and could be friends but Tiffany will have none of it. His hatred burns too deep.

Dig the new sword!  The sword from “Is It You?” is actually Finn from a previous time, transformed by being touched by an alternate timeline Finn.  The Finn Sword has a “little Finn” in the jewel.  Finn Sword even dropped Finn’s last name: Mertens!!  Waaaaay back from earlier this season, the Finn Sword appeared in “Breezy”, carried by Bubblegum in Finn’s hallucination.   Since that hallucination (if it was) triggered the flower on his severed arm to grow wild and replace his limb, you can bet the thorn on his hand is connected to the Finn Sword.

As the worms attack, the two are forced to work together. And they work well!! Sadly, Finn loses his footing and finds himself dangling from a ledge over the Worm Queen’s open mouth. Tiffany pulls a dagger to finish Finn off but decides against it. Even though he can’t kill Finn, he also can’t bring himself to save him. So he walks off to leave Finn to his fate.

All right. One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is “the villain dying by his own actions.” The scene usually goes like this:

Hero: I have you at my mercy but I won’t kill you because that would make me as bad as you. So I’m just going to turn my back and walk away.

Villian: How foolish of you to turn your back on your opponent, I will stab you now!

Then the villain slips on a banana peel and lands on his own knife, killing him.

I hate that. Hate it. And it happens all the time. It’s a way for us to get the satisfaction of watching the villain get what he deserves but they don’t have to soil the hero’s hands for the effect. Drives me nuts.

That’s pretty close to what happens here. Jake falls into the Queen Worm’s mouth, she spits him out and he knocks into Tiffany who falls backward to his death as the Queen eats him. By not saving Finn, he signed his own death warrant. Ugh.

The ants fix Finn’s teeth and all is right with the world.

Except Tiffany’s MIA, assumed KIA, but we know how these things work. He’ll be back.

Not a bad episode but not my favorite. It was a fun way to spend 11 minutes.