Review: Adventure Time ”Water Park Prank”

Been a while since I caught myself watching a new Adventure Time and said, “Wait, what?” And not in the delicious, freeze-frame bonus way, but the, “Was that it?” kind of way.

“Water Park Prank” is season six’s second guest-animated episode of Adventure Time, the first being Food Chain. This time, our guest animator is Dave Ferguson whose work can be seen at http://www.swatpaz.net/ – in case you’re like me and had no idea who Mister Ferguson is. If you don’t want to view his archive, I browsed a few and can assure you that “Water Park Prank” will give you all of the Dave Ferguson you’ll want. I believe he also voiced our whistle-person lifeguard. “Water Park Prank” definitely looks like it was created by something from the internets, and it sounds like something written by something from the internets. It has the whimsical pacing of a web-comic, the animation style of Nick Jr. cartoon, and nothing you were expecting after “Hoots” last week.

This week’s Adventure Time begins with Finn and Jake on their way to the water park. Finn forgot his underwear and had to go back for it. There he saves Princess Orangutan from some very depressing toxins and gets a magical coin. Don’t think too hard, because the magical coin doesn’t come up again. Thus begins the giggling YouTube-poop-level silliness that makes up “Water Park Prank.” After hitting the slides, Finn and Jake overhear Ice King’s latest evil plot: after he rides this slide, he’ll freeze all the water in the park!

Thus our heroes must enact their most bodacious water park prank to stop Ice King from ruining the park for everyone.

Adventure Time!

Except, well, huh, the channel guide says Adventure Time… I guess this is Adventure Time.

The titular prank involves saving the day by getting Ice King banned for annoying the water park staff. Don’t worry if you miss it, because its the only thing that happens in the episode, and they do the routine three times. BUT DO NOT MISS IT. Because this, my fellow Mathematical Warriors, is the episode. No one slides down a water slide into a buried nuclear bunker. Magic Man doesn’t zap us into a musical. No one croaks. Just a joke that while funny, wouldn’t be out of place on any other show. Ice King and Jake have some funny lines – at least, I thought they were funny. In all honesty, the gag reminded me of a similar scene The Simpsons did. I might have started watching that episode in my head by the third time Ice King was sliding up and down again. After succeeding in getting Ice King banned, the episode ends about where it never began (if you can even say it “began”): with Finn covered in Daddy-Sad-Heads, repeating a visual gag that I’m sure is testicular in nature.

Nothing will make sense, because it doesn’t need to. It just needs to look funny, sound irreverent and hit eleven minutes. The animation is odd, but the biggest sin is noticeable when you see some of the zany movements recycled. There are a few scenes where the voice actors seem to be unsure about the episode: Hynden Walch’s voice doesn’t sound much like Princess Bubblegum until after her brief scene is all but over.

“Water Park Prank” seems like an excuse to show off Ferguson’s entire animation catalog. If not for the animation shift, this would have been the first five minutes of a typical Ice King silliness episode.

Normally, these fluffy nonsense episodes are a good balance to the oft-traumatizing land of Ooo and its various states of nuclear destruction. “Food Chain” was impossibly good, I suppose. Masaaki Yuasa does “The Circle of Life“ meets “End of Evangelion” is a tough act to follow. A follow-up about going to a (very mundane) water park and splashing around in monkey hair doesn’t have a chance.

Surely, somebody in the fanbase loved “Water Park Prank,” and I’m going to bet they’re under the age of thirteen. There was nothing overly cringe-worthy, but nothing too intelligent either. On the one hand, episodes like these are half of the Adventure Time formula, and guest-animated episodes are a cool concept and unique feature of this generation of animation. But stretching a three-minute concept out to twelve and then trying to sell the rest on a quirky art style is not cool. Adventure Time is not a walkie, whatever else it may be.

Last week with “Hoots,” we learned an important lesson about life (it sucks for no reason). “Graybles 1000” before that was a clever spin on an old theme and about self-actualization. “Water Park Prank” does not follow these two hits, and only made me wonder about better episodes of other shows I’d watched in the past. By far, “Water Park Prank“ may be a front-runner for the worst episode in the series, if only for lack of content.