Since I barely talked about them during their last appearance, it really is time to talk about the two boarders of this episode, Bert Youn and Sean Jimenez, because they're an incredibly important and unique team for the first season of Adventure Time.
Bert Youn went to CalArts at the same time as Pat McHale and Pen Ward, and certainly knew McHale, as McHale voices a character in one of Youn's student films. However, this is not why Youn is important. Youn is important because he has an incredibly specific artistic quirk - his penchant for grotesquely detailed extreme close-ups, such as the one used as the primary image for this post. This crops up numerous times throughout the episode and is evident in Ricardio's basic, bizarrely detailed character design, which is frequently commented on by Jake throughout the episode. Finn is also rendered in this way:
(I do want to quickly emphasize once again that it's impossible to accurately separate exactly what each of these two artists has done in a given episode.)
To begin with, this story is capable of shifting modes and visual storytelling techniques very quickly, and it does so through references to the history of film. During the party scene near the beginning of the episode, everything is composed in the fairly typical Adventure Time house style, with very straightforward framing, composition, and background work:
This is much like the framing in Slumber Party Panic, with the two primary subjects given plenty of space in the center of the frame. However, when Finn and Jake decide to investigate Ricardio for being evil, the episode starts referencing the style of German Expressionism and Film Noir. German Expressionism as a movement in film emphasized the subjective and emotional realities of what was being filmed instead of attempting realism. This can be seen in movies such as "the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari:"
Note in particular the oddly angled and incredibly unrealistic buildings. This is referenced in the background design of Ricardio the Heart Guy:
Film Noir as a genre of film was very much an extension of the German Expressionist aesthetic; two of its calling cards were long, impossible shadows and oblique angles, often emphasizing the discomfort or unease of a situation. Consider these examples from "I Confess" and "the Third Man."
The episode uses this to signal that Ricardio is, in fact, a villain, despite what Princess Bubblegum thinks.
Which brings us to our usual line of complaint against this season - the casual sexism. In this episode, Princess Bubblegum is made a damsel in distress on two separate occasions. She shows no attempts to escape, and she seems completely helpless. This jars significantly with the hyperintelligent scientist we are presented with in Slumber Party Panic, but it squares unfortunately with the pilot. This is an aspect of Adventure Time that must be exorcised.
Also of note within the story is the moving forward of the "will they/won't they" romance between Finn and PB the creative team has been playing with since the first episode. It is at its most explicit here, with both parties affectively acknowledging the nature of Finn's feelings towards Bubblegum, which are much less clear.
The type of storytelling Adventure Time is doing at this point tends to be light, but not independent, of season-long arcs. This, then, is the first real episode that depends heavily on having seen several of the previous series' episodes. Ice King, for example, barely enters the story, despite the fact that his heart is the central antagonist.
It's interesting to discover that Adventure Time, when first pitched, was envisaged as a heavily serialized show. However, this was not agreed upon by the network, and so the creative team was forced to abandon this show.
Next time: Business Time.
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