Review: Adventure Time “Scamps” (S7Ep22)

Pretty great new episode of Adventure Time tonight, called “Scamps”. It centered around a “gang” of marshmallow kids, who the locals felt kept out the “bad elements”. However, the reality is, they’re scamming people, and Finn and Jake (Jake in the form of a police car) confront them. Finn and Jake find out they make a bunch of money, and Jake seems honestly upset about it. Sometimes it seems like Jake is the more mature or “adult” of the two.

As it turns out, Princess Bubblegum has been watching the marshmallow kids, and as Finn tries to show them different “scams”, he ends up “scamming them into scamming”– tricking them into doing useful, valuable things with their time and appreciating nature.

“Scamps” had the feel of some of the early episodes, probably due to the fact it was written by Elizabeth Ito, one of the writers who’s been on the show since the first season. There was interesting commentary about kids today, how they don’t always play outside enough. Plus, there was a lot of focus on the admittedly super-cute marshmallow kids.

At the end of the episode, we see Bubblegum in a frankly tiny miniskirt, and a quick glance at a globe inside a room in perhaps a school– and either the globe was damaged or broken, or you could see a spot where it looks like a meteor had made a crater in the (supposedly post-apocalyptic) land of Ooo. Very good episode altogether.