Properly Hooked

Something I need: endless distraction. Spend enough hours on the internet doing whatever it is I do, and you crack if something isn’t running on the other screen. Films work sometimes. What you really want is a series—animated, preferably. Something funny. Something you don’t have to work at.

I’d made it through all the obvious ones. Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers. Once you hit those, you’re digging through cable looking for something new. That’s where I found Adventure Time.

It’s about a kid named Finn, his shape-shifting dog Jake, and a place called Ooo that is thoroughly broken in the best way. Candy Kingdom with a hot dog princess. An Ice King who won’t stop stealing her. Giant horny snails. Wizard magic. Korean unicorn rainbows. Everything in that world is fractured and nobody there gives a shit. Every episode my brain pops.

One of them had stuffed animals throwing a rave inside a depressed monster’s stomach, then crawling out its ass. Another had zombie businessmen taking over by making everyone fat. The Ice King is just a sad old man obsessed with kidnapping princesses. Nothing connects. Nothing needs to.

Season three just started and I’m one of those people now. Can’t stop. It works perfectly as background noise—weird enough that you want to actually watch it, dumb enough that you don’t have to think, and every few minutes something so surreal happens that you look up just to catch it.

What hooks me is how far it’s willing to go. The logic of that world is simple: if it’s funny or weird or sad or scary, it works. No need for anything to make sense. I watch it and think about how I want to draw like that—not the style, but the thinking. The refusal to explain. I don’t know if I’ll still be watching once the novelty wears off, but right now I’m properly hooked.