Well, it seems like every FUCKIN’ time I start getting comfortable with the show quietly moseying along, some big change hits and I’m stuck with the question, “how much longer can I keep doing this??” We got a whopping THREE new AT projects announced recently – a BMO pre-school show, a show seemingly in the spirit of the first season, and an AT movie, with Rebecca Sugar, Pat McHale, and Adam Muto at the helm.
I’ll give my brief thoughts on each – Adventure Time: Side Quests, which is supposed to be a lighter and more comedic take akin to the early seasons, is probably the one that sounds the least promising to me. I don’t really like the idea of a “strictly comedic” AT series because, well, what’s the point? The whole franchise is supposed to be this blend of weird nonsensical stuff contrasted by really heavy and emotional themes, so I wouldn’t want to see any adaptation of the series lean too far in one direction. The one thing in its favor is that, if it is trying to emulate those very early seasons, I think it has potential to keep their spirit alive where, with only so many episodes to work with for the mainline series, there’s not a whole lotta room to fuck around. But, Adventure Time itself has kind of struggled to replicate this earlier tone effectively, so I don’t know if it’s even something that could be pulled off. That first season is really a time capsule in how much it embellished the energy of early 2010s internet culture and I’m not sure you can really bring that back – but I’ll be prepared to eat my words if necessary. The BMO preschool show is obviously not for me, but I think it looks harmless enough. Very cute that it’s going to be a claymation based series, and I think it’s sweet that older AT fans who have kids will be able to introduce the series to their young ones. I don’t really have any desire to watch it or talk about it, but maybe I’ll get really high one day and then do a write-up about it.
The movie is intriguing, and I love that Sugar and McHale are coming back for it. Based on that, I’d love for it to be a smaller, quieter story about Finn and Jake in their youthful days. Could even make it about them dealing with the grief of losing their parents. I don’t think they would do anything super wild or out-of-the-box for a movie, so I’m hoping the emotional core of it is strong enough to carry it through. But again, if they did something insane that is not easily accessible by people who aren’t already super fans, that’d be rad too! And there’s F&C season 2 on the way. WOOF. Can’t make any promises, but I’m thinking that I’ll probably continue with full episode write-ups for F&C, do a write-up for the movie, and then share my brief thoughts about Side Quests and MAYBE Hey Yo, BMO! I love this series so I’ll probably eat up every morsel of content that I can get, but I can barely keep up with this gig as is! We’ll just have to see where I am when they eventually come out. In the meantime, I’ll be wrapping up with Fionna & Cake season 1 write-ups shortly – Casper & Nova is in the works now. Thanks as always to y’all who keep reading – plenty more on the way! Hopefully!
Adventure Time Reviewed 
One thing that stood out to me with the recent announcements is that going by the names announced to be attached to each project, it seems that Adam’s not involved in Side Quests; the one name attached to it is Nate Cash, who was on AT during the earlier seasons (storyboard supervisor during seasons 2-3; creative/supervising director during seasons 4-5 on Tom/Skyler->Steve and Ako/Jesse eps while Adam and later Elizabeth Ito handled the other 2 teams). Probably his biggest post-AT gigs have been serving as a director on Over the Garden Wall and co-showrunning the Tiny Toons reboot.
Meanwhile Adam is involved in the BMO show, along with Ashlyn Anstee (who on AT was one of the freelancers on Obsidian; and outside of AT has worked on both general audience shows close to AT’s wheelhouse as well as on preschool shows).
I’m guessing that Adam figured he’d be biting off more than he could chew if he oversaw all of the projects (as he’s still showrunning Fionna & Cake and involved in the movie), and maybe assumed that a preschool show should be easier to mess up AT’s legacy in the wrong hands than Side Quests.
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