The Witch's Garden aired on June 7, 2010, and was boarded by Adam Muto, Kent Osborne, and Niki Yang. Muto had previously co-boarded Slumber Party Panic, Trouble in Lumpy Space, Prisoners of Love, The Enchirdion, and Wizard with a variety of different people. Kent Osborne had previously co-boarded My Two Favorite People with Pendleton Ward. This is Niki Yang's first episode.
Like My Two Favorite People, this is an extremely Jake-centric story. Once again, the whole thing is structured around one of Jake's character flaws. In M2FP, this was Jake's jealousy and unwillingness to consider the consequences of his actions; here, Jake's flaws are pride and laziness. This trait deliberately places Finn and Jake at loggerheads, as Finn's optimistic energy is roundly cancelled out by Jake's refusal to take any kind of action beyond wallowing.
However, Jake's laziness has its natural limit. Once Finn is put in danger, Jake is willing to do anything necessary to get him out, even apologizing to the crone who owns the rose garden.
This leads to, once again, the easiest critique of season 1 of Adventure Time: the casual sexism. The two female characters that are in this episode are horrifying creatures beyond redemption. The mermaid has an explicitly sexual reaction to Finn, and the show seems happy to laugh at this.
It's not that the show is ideologically sexist - it's that it hasn't yet developed the tools by which it will become much better at specifically this.
Next time: What is Life?
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