Review: Adventure Time “Stakes”; “Marceline the Vampire Queen”;“Everything Stays”

Let’s not split hairs. We all know that Adventure Time: Stakes will be watched solely in binge-format as soon as that option‘s available – we have the backstory pot swirling, and it seems like it’s going to be a-baddy-an-episode from here out. Also, Part 1 and 2 are essentially one, double-strength dose of Adventure Time awesomeness. So, both parts will be reviewed together.

A new intro – worth watching a few times – drops us off at the beginning of an eight-part, four-day, vampire-face-punching, Adventure Time saga. Stranded under the single tree in a desert of sand and finger-burning sun, Marceline does the only rational thing: She rips the tree out of the ground and carries it to PB’s house.

Aside from wanting to show off her tree-carrying skills, the Vampire Queen also wants to ask Bubblegum for a scientific favor. Marcy doesn’t want to be a vampire anymore; she wants to grow up. So she undergoes an experimental procedure that tickles, a lot.

That night, Marcy dreams the kind of dream that borderlines on being an acid trip. The village awakes to find all their livestock have suspicious neck wounds that render them mere puns of their former selves. Finn and Jake go to arrest the only suspect, Marceline the Vampire Queen. Jake’s bad-cop instincts tell him that Marcy’s excuses amount to little more than a “boom-boom mountain,” and he wants real answers.

On their hunt for the truth, Finn, Jake, and Marcy come face-to-face with a cow-eating nightmare. Jake and Finn follow the fiend, while Marcy is captured by a mob a villagers.

Inside a cold, dark cave Jake admits he ‘aint ignorant of his fear of vamps; right before he passes out. A pitchforked-torch carrying villager tells Finn that they have tied Marcy to a stake for being a monster; right before he realizes killing someone makes him a monster too.

Finn loses a race against the sun, and Marcy is engulfed by morning light. Her last request is that of any sane person: burn her journals, because they’re her therapy.

After that, or Part 2, we get an extra helping of flashbacks. Marcy remembers: how her mom’s sweater felt, her time spent with the Simon the Ice King, the one time she lassoed Finn the Bunny, the other time that she rocked out on her bass, that animal hats protect against vamp bites, how she got her float-power from a butt/elf/vampire, to stay away from hungry looking rainbow, and the Vampire King.

A lot of talk around Adventure Time: Stakes focuses on how the leading forces behind the show are female and how the miniseries’ focus is on a female character. But that is a very superficial criticism. A team’s ability to tell an entertaining story – whether it’s about a boy, a dog, a girl, a Bubblegum princess, a rainicorn, etc. – not gender, should be on highlight. That maybe a little idealistic, but Part 1 and Part 2 present an excellent example of how to utilize the beginning of a story to setup theme, characters, backstory, foreshadowing, and all the little pieces that draw us into a world.

I’d bet a hoagie that the Adventure Time crew didn’t craft a feminist piece on the oppression felt by young women coming of age in America. I’ll bet they tried to tell a kick-ass story about a rad vampire and her friends.