Jermaine (Adventure Time)

"Jermaine" is the thirty-third episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series Adventure Time. The episode was written and storyboarded by Brandon Graham and Jesse Moynihan.

Plot

Jake is in a dream, when he gets sky-boxed and meets his brother, Jermaine. Jake realizes that they must be dreaming at the same time, in similarity to the earlier episode "Crystals Have Power." Jake suggests that they should meet up in the "awake world". Jermaine reluctantly agrees and casts a hole dropping Jake through the box, promptly ending his dream.

Jake wakes up and finds Finn working in the kitchen on a strange harpoon machine. After the machine malfunctions, ejecting the harpoon. They then agree to go and visit Jermaine. As they leave the treehouse, a scan of the landscape reveals a slug pinned down by the metal harpoon.

The two make it to Jermaine's house after being chased by demons, where Jermaine has built a salt barrier that stops the demons from trespassing. Upon arrival, Finn and Jake cause general chaos, much to Jermaine's dismay, and tells them that he has a responsibility to protect all of their parent's strange and valuable loot that he collected, or stole, over the years. Jermaine suddenly looks at his watch and runs away into the hallway.

Jermaine heads down a trapdoor, where imprisoned behind a strange blue force field is a large blue blob-like monster named Bryce. Jermaine flips a cassette tape in a bear, Booboo Sousa, hooked up to wires in the wall that seems to project the force field, and from the conversation it is implied that the ongoing song is what keeps Bryce imprisoned. Bryce threatens to eat Jermaine "from the bottom up", and it is revealed that Bryce is being held prisoner after trying to steal back his poster that Joshua originally stole from Bryce many years ago. Jermaine remarks that he would have let Bryce go with his poster years ago had it not been for all of the psychotic things Bryce says. Bryce threatens Jermaine again, and the brothers go upstairs and make fried rice.

While eating the rice, Jermaine asks Jake what he put in the fried rice. Jake reveals he used sesame oil and salt that he got from the salt barrier. This leads to one of the demons crossing the barrier, and the three quickly make plans to destroy it. However their plans go awry, and Jermaine ends up having to suck the demon up with a vacuum. After sucking the demon up the vacuum, Jermaine runs outside where he chucks the vacuum in one of the other demon's face and fixes the salt barrier.

After the fight, Jermaine begins to get angry and reveals his jealous toward Finn and Jake's do-whatever lifestyle and how he has to stay behind and watch his dad's old treasures. Jermaine then proceeds to assault Jake. As Jermaine tosses random objects at Jake, one combusts and sets the house on fire. Jermaine continues to punch Jake, who lets out a fart which causes Jermaine to laugh and see that "he's built his own cage." Finn tries to get the three of them to work together to put the fire out, but Jermaine, who's come to terms with his life, decides it is okay to let the house burn down.

Once the house burns, the scene changes to daytime and the demons are gone. Jake suggests they are probably gone because their stuff was burned in the fire, giving them no reason to stay to get it back. Jermaine's watch alarm goes off, and he runs over to the trapdoor to find Bryce crawling out clutching his poster. Jermaine and Bryce seem to be completely normal, and walk off together into the woods, with Jermaine nagging at Bryce for being cynical and pessimistic about life. Finn and Jake stare at them from the house ruins as the episode ends.

Production

"Jermaine" is the thirty-third episode of the sixth season of Adventure Time. It was written by Brandon Graham and Jesse Moynihan,^[1] the latter of whom is a veteran storyboard artist on the show.^[2] Graham is an American comic book artist known for his work on Prophet (published by Image Comics), as well as his personal works such as Multiple Warheads and King City (both published by Panini Comics in Italy).^[1] Tom Scharpling stars as the eponymous character.^[3] According to Graham, the episode was worked on in 2014.^[2]

The episode is the first to spotlight the character of Jermaine, who was only shown in flashbacks and mentioned a few times before in the show.^[2] In addition, the episode is the first to use Graham as a storyboard artist.^[3] According to Graham, he came to work on the show after meeting show creator Pendleton Ward at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle. Ward had read King City and offered him a storyboarding test, as well as "proof that you can tell a joke or draw a monster". Graham said that he was aware of the show since the early seasons, on which his old friend Tom Herpich worked. The two were part of the comic book art collective Meathaus in New York City from around 2000 to 2005. The beginning and end of the episode was written by Graham and the middle by Moynihan. The crew gave Graham a rough outline of the events in the episode, from which he would make the storyboard and associated dialog.^[2] In addition to this, he designed the title card of the episode.^[1]

As a fan of Adventure Time, Graham said that having a set idea was helpful as otherwise he would cover all aspects of the episode that he loved. He described a couple of "things" that he put in the episode as fan art, namely BMO, even though the character has a minor part. Happy with how the episode resulted, Graham said that he likes how driven the episodes are by the storyboard artists and that "you can really tell who worked on what". He also said that the work of the storyboard artists is similar to the "kind of stuff" he enjoys and tries to put in his own work. Calling the Frederator Studios crew "great" and "impressive", he said he was terrified when they read through the rough passes on his computer. Later, artist Michael DeForge worked on cleaning up props that Graham had designed. Graham said that it was "cool knowing that such an impressive artist was tweaking what I'd done".^[2]

Broadcast and reception

"Jermaine" originally aired on April 23, 2015.^[4] It was watched by 1.5 million viewers, receiving a Nielsen rating of 0.3 for adults in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. According to TV by the Numbers, it was the 94th most-watched cable television episode of its air date.^[5] Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club graded it with an A, describing the voice acting of Scharpling and DiMaggio as having a brotherly bond that fits with the episode. He called the episode a metaphor for having to let go of "physical reminders of the past" in order to truly escape from something, with Jermaine being the opposite of this. Sava praised Graham and his work on the episode, saying that he is eager to see more from him in the Adventure Time universe.^[3]

References

External links

• Production notes on the episode by Moynihan