What Time Is It? (Time to talk about ADVENTURE TIME!)

This is the time of year where cable TV dramas tend to enter a period of doldrums. Most "prestige" dramas have either just ended (Downton Abbey), haven't begun yet (Mad Men, Game of Thrones), or can't string three consecutive good episodes together to save their life (Walking Dead). Luckily for lovers of quality television everywhere, there is one standout cable show that is not only airing new episodes right now, but is getting better and better by the year. I speak of course, about Adventure Time!

Currently in its fifth season, Adventure Time follows best friends Jake (the dog) and Finn (the human) as they adventure throughout the land of Ooo. Of course Jake is a mutant talking shapeshifter, Finn has an obsession with swords, and Ooo is a world populated by Candy Kingdoms, Vampire Queens, partying bears who live inside a monster's belly, and a surprisingly large number of fully-manned D&Desque dungeons.

Suffice to say, the show can be a bit odd.

Adventure Time's style of humor tends towards the absurdist. Bizarre catch-phrases and visual non-sequitors abound but the zany antics are grounded by how easily all the characters accept their world's strangeness as perfectly normal. Finn and Jake approach every problem with the same commitment and zeal, whether they're starting an uprising in hell through a political freestyle rap or just trying to help a fellow snail-bro get some ladies. Throughout everything, the varied landscape of Ooo does wonders to provide the show with an inherent flexibility: week to week one never knows just what type of episode they'll get.

Weird? Yes. But never boring.

Yet while Adventure Time exults in its crazy setting to make "rule of fun" plots, underneath all the wackiness is a startling level of growth and development for its characters. As the show has gone on, initially one-note side characters have received rich and frequently tragic backstories; jerkish vampire Marceline has slowly come to embrace some friends after centuries of being lonely and betrayed, while its revealed that the villainous Ice King has been slowly driven insane and senile by the magic that kept him alive. Meanwhile, Jake entered into a long-term relationship that's been going strong for years and recently became a father

But no character's evolution has been as impressive as Finn's. At the outset, Finn was your typical rpg adventurer, fighting evil because it was evil and always charging ahead towards the next challenge. Adventure Time, however, has let Finn age in real-time, and in the process the show serves as a nuanced coming-of-age story for the boy. Over the years Finn has suffered heartbreak, started dating, learned to feel empathy for his enemies, and slowly matured into a thoughtful hero one ten-minute segment at a time. This growth is anchored by a spectacular voice performance by actor Jeremy Shada, who is aging along with his character and does an amazing job at getting the viewer inside Finn's head.

Of course, since Adventure Time is primarily a children's show the storytelling mostly leans towards the lighter side. But in recent seasons the writers have done a fantastic job at layering darker themes for older viewers within the subtext at the edges of the series. The wacky and magical land of Ooo is eventually revealed to be Earth millenia after a 'Great Mushroom War', making Finn not just the only human around, but possibly the last of his kind. The episode "I Remember You" becomes a metaphor for losing a parent to dementia, while still being an episode told half in jam session-style song. And then there's the world of Fiona and Cake. Gender-swapped versions of the cast, these characters originated in a one-of episode that was ultimately revealed to be a fan-fiction invention of the Ice King's. But the idea proved so popular that they've already been brought back again, and the second episode "Bad Little Boy" takes advantage of the nested-story concept to tell a story begging for metafictional analysis.

...and once I start talking about Adventure Time's meta-commentary on itself I should probably stop. I don't mean to oversell the series; it's not as though the next The Wire is secretly airing on Cartoon Network. But Adventure Time is a fantastically enjoyable comedy that also has a surprising level of depth and pathos. The stories it tells can be simple, but the show uses these simple tales as building blocks to create something truly unique. Adventure Time proves that a series doesn't need to be dark and gritty in order to be compelling and dramatic, and its that attitude that makes it one of the best shows on the air.