Jump to content

Come Along with Me (Adventure Time)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by George6VI (talk | contribs) at 04:26, 28 November 2018. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

"Come Along with Me"
Adventure Time episodes
Episode nos.Season 10
Episodes 13–16
Directed by
  • Diana Lafyatis (supervising director)
  • Cole Sanchez (supervising director)
  • Sandra Lee (art director)
Written by
Story by
Original air dateSeptember 3, 2018 (2018-09-03)
Running time44 minutes
Guest appearances
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Diamonds & Lemons" 		Next →
—
Adventure Time (season 10)
List of episodes

"Come Along with Me" is an American animated television special based on the animated television series Adventure Time. The special, comprising four episodes, serves as the series finale of Adventure Time, as well as its tenth season finale. The special first aired on September 3, 2018 on Cartoon Network.

The series follows the adventures of Finn the Human (voiced by Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake the Dog (voiced by John DiMaggio), who has magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. In the special, the duo must help their friend Princess Bubblegum battle Gumbald, her vengeful creation. When the antagonists realize that violent conflict is unnecessary, they team up to keep the malevolent deity GOLB from destroying the Land of Ooo.

Plot

A thousand years in the future, the "King of Ooo", BMO, recounts to a cat-like being named Shermy and his friend Beth the story of the "Great Gum War" and the "end of the world":

In the present day, Finn, Jake, and Bubblegum are preparing for war with Gumbald. Finn asks Bubblegum to parley with Gumbald before the fighting starts, and they go to meet him and Fern. After Jake activates a vial of "Nightmare Juice", the five are incapacitated and awaken in a nightmare world. While Bubblegum and Gumbald are forced to experience the other's misery (Bubblegum becomes a regular Candy Person, while Gumbald becomes the unhappy leader of the Candy Kingdom), Fern and Finn fight. Eventually, the latter two manage to kill the Grass Demon within Fern's psyche; this frees him from its negative influence but causes him to begin disintegrating. Soon after, the five reawaken, and Bubblegum offers peace to Gumbald; however, it is revealed he was planning on betraying Bubblegum, and he is permanently incapacitated. His helper Lolly then agrees on a peace treaty with Bubblegum.

Suddenly, the malevolent chaos deity GOLB appears. King Man sends Ice King to talk to his time-displaced fiancée Betty, who is communicating with GOLB. Ice King and Betty are eventually consumed by GOLB, as is Finn, who was trying to help them. GOLB then attacks Ooo by raising up a chaos creature. Bubblegum and her allies fight the creature, but it is too powerful, destroying Finn and Jake's treehouse and nearly crushing Bubblegum. Marceline sees this and smashes the creature in a rage, but Bubblegum recovers and the two embrace and kiss. Jake is despondent at the loss of his home, but BMO sings to him to calm him. It is revealed that the song's harmony weakens GOLB, and so Bubblegum encourages everyone to sing along, further weakening GOLB's power.

As the battle rages, Finn discovers himself with Ice King and Betty in GOLB's stomach—a small, shrinking room. As he is digested, Ice King reverts to Simon and recognizes Betty, who confesses that she summoned GOLB to save Simon from the curse of the ice crown. As the walls close in, Finn resigns himself to death, but BMO's song opens a hole leading outside. Finn and Simon escape, but Betty remains, using the crown to wish for a way to save Simon; this causes her to merge with GOLB. Gunter then puts on the crown and it reacts to his wish of being like Ice King, fusing with him and transforming him into the Ice Thing. Before Fern dies, he leaves Finn and Jake a seed resembling a hilt. The duo plant him among the remains of the treehouse, sprouting a tree with a new Finn Sword embedded in the highest branch.

Back in the future, Shermy and Beth ask what happened afterward, to which BMO replies that Finn, Jake, and their friends "kept on living their lives". Later, Shermy and Beth find the tree sprouted from Fern's seed. They climb to the top, pull the Finn Sword from the highest branch, and assume a pose similar to Finn and Jake in the show's title sequence, suggesting that they will become the next heroes of Ooo.

Production

Background

During the last seasons of Adventure Time, there was talk at Cartoon Network about concluding the series. Olivia Olson, who provided the voice of Marceline, said that since this discussion wore on for awhile "the ending of the show was getting stretched and stretched and stretched".[1] Chief content officer Rob Sorcher told the Los Angeles Times of the network's decision to end the series, saying:

Adventure Time was playing less and less on Cartoon Network, yet we were moving towards a large volume of episodes. And I really began thinking "[The end] can't come quickly as a sudden company decision, it needs to be a conversation over a period of time." And it did also strike me that if we don't wind this up soon, we're going to have a generation of fans graduate through the [television] demo[graphic that Cartoon Network targets] and we won't have completed a thought for them.[1]

Consequently, on September 29, 2016, Cartoon Network confirmed that the series would conclude after its tenth season.[2]

Development

Ghostshrimp looking to the camera
Background artist Ghostshrimp is one of several former staffers from Adventure Time who returned for the finale.

The special was written and storyboarded by Tom Herpich, Steve Wolfhard, Seo Kim, Somvilay Xayaphone, Hanna K. Nyström, Aleks Sennwald, and Sam Alden, and Graham Falk. The story was developed by Herpich, Wolfhard, Ashly Burch, showrunner Adam Muto, head writer Kent Osborne, Jack Pendarvis, Julia Pott, and series creator Pendleton Ward.[3] Former head background designer Ghostshrimp returned after having officially left the series during the fourth season.[4]

According to Osborne, Cartoon Network provided the writers with "an opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about the finale" before production ended.[2] In an interview with TV Guide, Muto explained that the show's writers used many of the episodes preceding the finale to conclude minor character story arcs "so we wouldn't have to cram too much in at the very end here."[5] This allowed the finale itself to be "less dense" by simply "hitting the big [beats] and then finding vignettes for all the characters ... so we could get snapshots of where they could end up."[5]

Princess Bubblegum and Marceline kiss in one scene and are shown developing a romantic relationship in the special's epilogue.[6][7][8] Muto said that the relationship was "an ongoing conversation... It certainly wasn’t in the show’s original pitch. It was a relationship that evolved over time." The outline of the episode merely called for the two characters to "have a moment"; Nyström, being responsible for the scene, was given creative control as to the nature of the "moment". Muto noted, "When Hanna boarded that, there was a little note in the margin that said 'Come on!' with a big exclamation point. That was the only note. I can’t argue with that."[9]

According to Pendarvis, storyline writing for the series ended in mid-November 2016,[10] with the last storyline meeting being held on November 21.[11] A tweet by Osborne revealed that the series' final script was pitched to storyboarders, with Alden and Nyström in attendance, on November 28.[12][13][14] This episode was then pitched to the show's producers during the third week of December 2016.[15][16] Voice recording for the episode ended on January 31, 2017 as confirmed by a number of cast members, including Maria Bamford and Andy Milonakis.

Like miniseries Stakes, Islands, and Elements,[17][18][18] Come Along with Me features a unique title sequence. The sequence was animated specifically for the episode by Masaaki Yuasa's company Science SARU[5] and storyboarded by Wolfhard.[19]

Music

Former storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar returned to compose the song "Time Adventure".

Former storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar returned to compose the song "Time Adventure", which BMO sings to Jake in order to calm him.[20] Sugar said of the song:

I wanted to write about how even if something ends, it continues to exist in the past, nothing ever really goes away, you only feel like it does because our mind has to process information one moment at a time in order for us to function as humans. I'm so nostalgic for the time that I spent working on Adventure Time and I find it comforting to think that I still exist in that office with Adam [Muto], working on those stories. I would be so happy to come to work and brainstorm with him and sit down and draw on paper and pitch these stories with Post-its tacked up to the wall, just like they did in the 1930s with the stick and the song and the dance, the most traditional way of doing cartoons.[21]

When Sugar debuted the song at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, she joked that she wrote it "Because she can't stay away [from Adventure Time]."[22] DiMaggio said that "The last day we recorded we had to do the final song that Rebecca Sugar wrote. I was a wreck when I first had to sing [... it was] like, 'Thank you, Rebecca Sugar, for your beautiful music.'"[21]

Willow Smith guest stars in the special, providing the voice of Beth. She also recorded a cover version of the show's opening theme for the episode.[23] Smith, a fan of the series, previously wrote the song "Marceline" based on the character for her 2015 debut album, Ardipithecus.

Reception

In its initial airing, "Come Along with Me" was viewed by 0.92 million viewers and scored a 0.25 Nielsen rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. The special was the twenty-fifth most-watched cable program on the day of its airing.[24]

Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club gave the special an "A" letter rating, saying that it was "a celebration of what makes [the series] so special".[7] Eric Thurm of Polygon wrote, "By focusing on this payoff—years of communicating that what's important isn't the adventure itself, but the people you're with and the feeling it gives you—Adventure Time put itself in a position to open up the future of Ooo to all of those other moods, other tones, other perspectives..."[25] Daniel Schindel of IGN gave the episode a 10 out of 10, saying "[it] easily ranks with the best of Adventure Time's episodes, but more importantly, it acts as a perfect capper for the series. It’s a thrilling exclamation point, an intriguing question mark, and a poignant, quiet period all at once."[26] Darren French of Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an A rating and the series overall an A+, titling his review "One of the greatest TV shows ever had a soulful, mind-expanding conclusion".[27]

Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave "Come Along with Me" a B+ rating, calling it "a 45-minute assemblage of showdowns and confrontations designed to bring together every facet of its fantastical universe [that] salutes the best and worst of the Adventure Time journey".[8] Kohn praised Bubblegum and Marceline's relationship, writing: "It's unfortunate that Adventure Time has to play catch-up with these characters so late in the game, but it nevertheless illustrates the extent to which the show has pushed beyond the conservative boundaries of mainstream entertainment".[8]

Dylan Hysen of Overly Animated called the episode "one of the best series finales in television history" and "beyond what I could have imagined for its conclusion", because it managed to "conclude so many aspects of an entire series ... in such a satisfying way".[28] Hysen wrote of the ending that "[T]he vision of the entire ending depicted is just poetic and I think thematically resonant for the entire series".[28]

Dave Trumbore of Collider.com wrote that the finale "is the kind of finale you always hope for with animated series" and was "perfectly handled... both in keeping with the style the show has become known for while also delivering a satisfying conclusion to the mythology that's been a driving force behind the fandom".[29] Trumbore applauded the open-ended nature of the ending and its emotional value, concluding: "'Come Along with Me' is expertly crafted and worth watching again and again in years to come, which is just what you’d expect from Adventure Time".[29]

References

  1. ^ a b Lloyd, Robert (August 23, 2018). "As 'Adventure Time' Wraps, a Look Back at How the Series Broke Barriers and Changed the Genre". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  2. ^ a b Dutton, Sophie (November 4, 2016). "Interview with 'Adventure Time' Head Writer Kent Osborne". Skwigly. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
  3. ^ Sanchez, Cole and Diana Lafyatis (supervising directors); Sandra Lee (art director); Tom Herpich, et al. (storyboard artists) (September 3, 2018). "Come Along with Me". Adventure Time. Season 10. Episode 13–16. Cartoon Network. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Ghostshrimp (January 31, 2017). "Rumor has it that I will be doing some new backgrounds for the final story arc of Adventure Time!". Facebook. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
  5. ^ a b c Kulzick, Kate (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time Is Going Out with an Epic, Emotional Finale". TV Guide. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  6. ^ Valdez, Nick (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time Fans React to Princess Bubblegum and Marceline's Big Finale Moment". Comicbook.com. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
  7. ^ a b Sava, Oliver (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time Concludes with a Celebration of What Makes It So Special". The A.V. Club. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  8. ^ a b c Kohn, Eric (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time Finale Review: Cartoon Network's Cultural Phenomenon Ends On a Bittersweet Note That Feels Just Right". Indiewire. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  9. ^ Muto, Adam (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time EP Talks Bubblegum and Marceline's Series Finale Moment: 'There's Enough to Draw a Conclusion'". TVLine. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
  10. ^ Germain, Siomara (November 1, 2016). "Brockport Welcomes Adventure Time Writer Jack Pendarvis". The Stylus. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  11. ^ Pendarvis, Jack [@JackPendarvis] (November 21, 2016). "Starting my last ADVENTURE TIME meeting in about half an hour. Bah, I say! But also I'm excited about the story! But also my stomach hurts" (Tweet). Retrieved November 22, 2016 – via Twitter.
  12. ^ Osborne, Kent [@kentisawesome] (November 28, 2016). "Last Adventure Time handout meeting :(" (Tweet). Retrieved November 29, 2016 – via Twitter.
  13. ^ Alden, Sam [@samalden] (December 8, 2016). "@HannaKtweet @kikutowne my board however is going to be hot garbage, ruin the show, etc" (Tweet). Retrieved December 12, 2016 – via Twitter.
  14. ^ Nyström, Hanna K [@HannaKtweet] (December 7, 2016). "hold me tight and tell me this board will be good. rock me to sleep" (Tweet). Retrieved December 12, 2016 – via Twitter.
  15. ^ Alden, Sam (December 26, 2016). "Pitched my last Adventure Time storyboard last week". Instagram. Retrieved December 26, 2016.
  16. ^ Muto, Adam [@MrMuto] (December 26, 2016). "from last week's final Adventure Time storyboard pitch" (Tweet). Retrieved December 28, 2016 – via Twitter.
  17. ^ Adventure Time production staff (October 28, 2015). "'Stakes' Main Title". KingOfOoo. Tumblr. Retrieved October 29, 2015. Note: Information taken from the show's official Tumblr account.
  18. ^ a b Adventure Time staff (December 9, 2016). "December 9, 2016". King of Ooo. Tumblr. Retrieved December 10, 2016. Note: Information taken from the show's official Tumblr account; animation house and storyboard artist information are in the image's tags.
  19. ^ Adventure Time production staff (September 4, 2018). "Adventure Time: Come Along with Me – Main Title". King of Ooo. Tumblr. Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
  20. ^ Joho, Jesse (September 3, 2018). "Saying Goodbye to Adventure Time, the Show That Taught Us to Let Good Things End". Mashable. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  21. ^ a b Lloyd, Robert (August 23, 2018). "As 'Adventure Time' Wraps, a Look Back at How the Series Broke Barriers and Changed the Genre". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  22. ^ Jao, Charline (August 11, 2018). "Rebecca Sugar Singing the Song She Wrote for the Adventure Time Finale Will Make You Cry". The Mary Sue. Retrieved August 29, 2018.
  23. ^ Ng, Philiana (August 27, 2018). "Willow Smith to Guest Star on Adventure Time Series Finale – and Sing the Theme!". Entertainment Tonight. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
  24. ^ Metcalf, Mitch (August 9, 2018). "Top 150 Sunday Cable Originals & Network Finals: 9.3.2018". Showbuzz Daily. Archived from the original on August 9, 2018. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; September 5, 2018 suggested (help)
  25. ^ Thurm, Eric (September 3, 2018). "Adventure Time's Series Finale Lives Up to the Show's Spirit and Leaves the Future Open". Polygon. Retrieved September 3, 2018.
  26. ^ Schindel, Daniel (September 4, 2018). "Adventure Time Finale Review: 'Come Along with Me'". IGN. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
  27. ^ Franich, Darren (September 4, 2018). "Adventure Time Finale Review: One of the Greatest TV Shows Ever Had a Soulful, Mind-Expanding Conclusion". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved September 4, 2018.
  28. ^ a b Hysen, Dylan (August 27, 2018). "'Come Along With Me' is a Fantastic Conclusion and Perfect Encapsulation of Adventure Time". Overly Animated. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
  29. ^ a b Trumbore, Dave (August 27, 2018). "'Adventure Time: The Final Seasons' DVD Review: Revisit the Series Finale Again and Again". Collider.com. Retrieved August 27, 2018.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Come_Along_with_Me_(Adventure_Time)&oldid=870978080"