Review: Adventure Time Season 8 Episode 4 “High Strangeness”

One of the nonsensical episodes.

Spoilers Below

While Tree Trunks and Mr. Pig are asleep in their house, an alien portal suddenly appears on their bedroom wall. An alien steps through and drags Tree Trunks through the portal into its dimension: a slow-placed, light-colored space without any grounding point. Inhabiting that plane are more aliens that look like the first one, a bipedal praying mantis, and small, faceless elephants that resemble Tree Trunks. 

Mr. Pig wakes up and finds his wife gone, but when he goes back into the bedroom, Tree Trunks has returned. Tree Trunks explains that every few years, she meets up with her alien consort to spend time with her alien children. Mr. Pig laughs it off, thinking that she is joking.

Princess Bubblegum is hosting a fireworks show, and Mr. Pig is interested in attending. He asks Tree Trunks to go with him, but she has hesitations, as she is still upset with Bubblegum for ruining her wedding. Mr. Pig finally persuades her, and they go to the show.

The fireworks display is actually Princess Bubblegum launching a small rocket into space. On its way into the atmosphere, the rocket accidentally lodges inside a spacecraft that resembles the aliens’ U.F.O. The alien respond to the danger by teleporting Tree Trunks into their dimension to witnesses the rocket unleashing swarms of small candy people. The candy people start attacking the aliens, and Tree Trunks is horrified. She tries to deter Bubblegum, but Bubblegum brushes her off.

Tree Trunks declares Bubblegum to be a false idol and stages a protest in town. Her actions catch the attention of Chewey, who introduces her to the Veritas Brigade. Tree Trunks finds the Brigade to be too laid back, and succeeds in convincing them to form an assault team to stop Bubblegum.

The Brigade breaks into one of Bubblegum’s labs, and discovers an army of rocket ships, each teeming with swarms of tiny candy people. Bubblegum catches the trespassers, and is about to punish them, when the aliens beam both her and Tree Trunks into their dimension. The small candy people have since propagated, and have started to grow in size by forcing the aliens into parasitic relationships. Bubblegum sees firsthand the damage she has caused. She calls off the tiny candy people and sends them back in the rocket. 

She and Tree Trunks both mysteriously wake up in a crater, far away from the Candy Kingdom. Bubblegum admits that she sent up the rocket to create a new Candy Kingdom somewhere out in space in case Ooo was destroyed. Tree Trunks recognizes Bubblegum’s dedication to her people, and while the two of them will never get along, they agree to call a truce.

The alien visits Tree Trunks one last time. It says that they will assist Bubblegum in achieving her goal by flying her rocket to their abandoned home planet. However, the journey will take over forty years, so he has come to say goodbye to Tree Trunks. Mr. Pig wakes up in terror at the realization that Tree Trunks had been him telling the truth. Since the alien and Mr. Pig are both Tree Trunks’ husbands and dear to her, Tree Trunks makes them both shake hands. 

Overview:

Tree Trunks’ episodes tend to be hit or misses, and this episode leans towards the latter. While it is certain that Bubblegum’s rocket probes and small candy colonies will have significance in future episodes, her plan is still in its early phases. The episode ends leaving us wondering what is to come. It is clear that her probes are at the very least effective at propagating, and could theoretically create a new world on their own. The propagation process is a very scary one, as the tiny candy people use whatever organic material they can find for incubation. They are not just limited to cell cultures, but also to living beings. In that sense, the candy people can actually behave similarly to bacteria in their most basic state.

While it was nice to see Tree Trunks and Bubblegum reach a truce, most of the understanding came from Tree Trunks. At best, Bubblegum is indifferent to Tree Trunks’ feelings since she has a kingdom to run. 

Unfortunately, most of the fury and protest we see from Tree Trunks does not really come across as all that important to the audience. It’s understood intellectually where she is coming from, but there is not an emotional followthrough, since what she was up in arms about— her alien children being in danger— was initially presented as a joke. The concept of Treetrunks having an alien consort with mysterious alien children is shown through a ridiculous, acid trip sequence. Something like that is taken to be fantastical and humorous, so the twist that it was all real and could have possible serious consequences was lacking in impact. Ooo is filled with fantasy creatures, so aliens are really not far-fetched. However, the way the episode was presented did not make the aliens seem real, so it failed in that regard. 

Unfortunately, the most interesting part of the episode was setup for future events, and the rest was something akin to an LSD trip.