The famous rule of improv comedy is that you never say "no." You say "yes, and..." By this logic, Adventure Time's overall narrative, spanning over 200+ episodes, might just be one of the most complex pieces of improv comedy out there.

Obviously, it's not unusual for children's cartoons to just kind of do whatever. It's more about writing silly, fun episodic adventures for the characters to undergo. And for the most part, that's what Adventure Time feels like for most of its first half. Even when they drop some weird piece of backstory, it's never really referenced again.

Then somewhere in the second half of the show, it suddenly became utterly obsessed with its own continuity. Every weird plot point or minor character moment pays off in a big way or ends up being used to jump-start a long-running narrative. 

Remember that early episode about the buff lady hanging out with a bunch of people Finn thought were humans but turned out to be fish people? Turns out in Season 7 we learn humans all left the continent hundreds of years ago and it's implied the fish people were evolved from the survivors of a ship that got wrecked trying to leave. And then in Season 8 we learn the buff lady was actually a cyborg sent by the descendants of one of the successful voyages off the continent to retrieve Finn and bring him back to his mother.

Many of the show's other plot points follow a similar energy. Famously in Season 6, despite being fairly episodic in its own right, ends with a finale that somehow brings almost every disparate plot point together into one beautiful insane mess where the Ice King's favorite penguin turned out to be an evil alien overlord that got compressed into the form of a penguin.

And this shift towards obsession with continuity isn't just done for its own sake. It also uses this to actually start fleshing out its characters beyond just being vessels for comedic antics. Famously a late Season 4 episode ends on a shockingly emotional note, but to only point to that episode is a disservice. There are many episodes later into the show that also somehow manage to explore emotions way more complex than you'd expect from a cartoon for children. My favorite, The Music Hole, ends on this surprisingly touching meditation about two people who, despite having very different experiences, both feel the same profound sense of loneliness, and the way that feeling brought them together.

I've often heard praise for this show growing up, though I had never seen more than a handful of episodes. I guess I never really believed the hype until now, as an adult, I finally binged the whole thing. And I can confirm that this show actually is something truly special, and although it's a big time investment, I think it's worth seeing no matter how old you are.

Favorite episode: The Music Hole

Specials

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8

Season 9

Season 10