Adventure Time (season 1)
The first season of Adventure Time, an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward, premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, 2010 and concluded on September 27, 2010. The season was produced by Cartoon Network Studios and Frederator Studios. The series is based on a short produced for Frederator's Nicktoons Network animation :wikt:incubation|incubator series Random! Cartoons. The season follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and size at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with the other main characters of the show: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO.
After the original short became a viral hit on the internet, Cartoon Network picked it up for a full-length series that previewed on March 11, 2010, and officially premiered on April 5, 2010. The season was storyboarded and written by Adam Muto, Elizabeth Ito, Pendleton Ward, Sean Jimenez, Patrick McHale, Luther McLaurin, Kent Osborne, Pete Browngardt, Niki Yang, Armen Mirzaian, J. G. Quintel, Cole Sanchez, Tom Herpich, Bert Youn, and Ako Castuera while being produced by Cartoon Network Studios and Frederator Studios.
The first episode of the season, "Slumber Party Panic" was watched by 2.5 million viewers; this marked a dramatic increase in viewers watching Cartoon Network when compared to the previous year. The season ended with the finale "Gut Grinder" on September 27, 2010. Soon after airing, the show began to receive critical acclaim as well as a large fan following. In 2010, the Adventure Time episode "My Two Favorite People" was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short-format Animated Program, although the series did not win. Several compilation DVDs that contained episodes from the season were released after the season finished airing. On July 10, 2012, the full season was released on Region 1 DVD; a Blu-ray edition was released on June 4, 2013.
Development
Concept and creation
The season follows the adventures of Finn the Human, a human boy, and his best friend Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and grow and shrink at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, wherein they interact with the other major characters, including: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, and BMO.Common storylines revolve around: Finn and Jake discovering strange creatures, rescuing princesses from the Ice King, and battling monsters in order to help others. Various other episodes deal with Finn attempting to understand his attraction towards Bubblegum.
According to series creator Pendleton Ward, the show's style was influenced by his time attending the California Institute of the Arts and his experiences working as a writer and storyboard artist on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. In an interview with Animation World Network, Ward said he strives to combine the series' subversive humor with "beautiful" moments, using Hayao Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro as inspiration. Ward has also named Home Movies and Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist as influences, largely because both shows are "relaxing" and feature "conversational dialogue that feels natural not over the top cartoony and shrill". Ward described the show as a "dark comedy"; he said "dark comedies are my favorite, because I love that feeling – being happy and scared at the same time. It's my favorite way to feel – when I'm on the edge of my seat but I'm happy, that sense of conflicting emotions. And there's a lot of that in the show, I think." Executive producer Fred Seibert compared the show's animation style to that of Felix the Cat and various Max Fleischer cartoons, but said that its world is also equally inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and video games. Ward intended for the show's world to have a certain physical logic instead of "cartoony slapstick"; even though magic exists in the story, the show's writers tried to create an internal consistency in how the characters interact with the world.
Although the show is set in a post-apocalyptic setting, according to Ward, the original intention was for the Land of Ooo to simply be "magical". After making the episode "Business Time", in which an iceberg containing the bodies of reanimated business men floats to the surface of a lake, the show suddenly became post-apocalyptic, and Ward noted that the production crew "just ran with it." Ward later described the setting as "candyland on the surface and dark underneath".
Production
The show began as a single stand-alone animated short titled "Adventure Time", which ran for seven minutes. It aired in January 2007 and again as part of Frederator Studios' Random! Cartoons on December 7, 2008. After its release, the short video became a viral hit on the internet. Frederator Studios then pitched an Adventure Time series to Nicktoons Network, but the network passed on it twice. The studio approached Cartoon Network, which said it would be willing to produce a series if Ward could prove the short could be expanded into a full series while maintaining elements of the original's pilot. Rob Sorcher, the chief content officer at Cartoon Network, was influential in getting the network to take a chance on the show; he recognized the series as "something that felt really indie ... comic book-y really new". Ward quickly rethought the concept of the pilot; he wanted a potential series to be "fully realized", rather than be characterized by the "pre-school vibe" that permeated the original film. Ward's college friends Patrick McHale and Adam Muto helped him produce a rough storyboard that featured Finn and Princess Bubblegum going on a spaghetti-supper date. Cartoon Network was not happy with this story and asked for another. Ward then created a storyboard for the episode "The Enchiridion!", which was his attempt to emulate the style of the original Nicktoons short. Cartoon Network approved the first season in September 2008, and "The Enchiridion!" was the first episode to enter into production.While many cartoons are based on script pitches to network executives, Cartoon Network allowed Adventure Time to "build their own teams organically" and communication through the use of storyboards and animatics. Rob Sorcher, Cartoon Network's chief content officer at the time, explained that the network allowed this because the company was "dealing with artists who are primarily visual people" and by using storyboards, the writers and artists could learn and grow "by actually doing the work." As such, Ward soon assembled a storyboarding team for the series, which was largely composed of "younger, inexperienced people" who had been found using the Internet. However, Cartoon Network, worrying about the status of the show and the inexperience of its production members, hired three veteran animators who had worked on SpongeBob SquarePants to help guide Ward and his team: Derek Drymon, Merriwether Williams, and Nick Jennings. Thurop Van Orman, the creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, was also hired on as a supervising producer, providing guidance for the series' first two seasons.
In addition to the 26 episodes created during the first season, several others were commissioned and storyboarded, but not produced. These include the episodes "Brothers in Insomnia", "The Glorriors", and "The Helmet of Thorogon". "Brothers in Insomnia" had been pitched to the network, although it was later scrapped. "The Glorriors", according to Frederator Vice President Eric Homan, "was a casualty of jumping into production without having had any serious development time." "The Helmet of Thorogon", despite initially being assigned the production number 692-008, never made it to the storyboard stage, although several pieces of background art for the episode were designed by Ghostshrimp. The storyboards for "Brothers in Insomnia" and "The Glorriors" and the outline for "The Helmet of Thorogon" were later released on Fred Seibert's official Scribd page. Furthermore, the episode "What Have You Done" was given the production number 27, despite only 26 episodes being ordered. This is because the original sixth episode was scrapped during production, and "What Have You Done" took its place, but was given a different code. Due to this, some sources like The Futon Critic, give it the production number 692-006, whereas Frederator gave it the number 692-027.
All of the season's episodes began as simple two-to-three-page outlines that contained the necessary plot information. These outlines were then handed off to storyboard artists, who would then expand the rough outline into a full storyboard. The episodes' design and coloring were done in Burbank, California. Animation was handled overseas in South Korea, by Rough Draft Korea and Saerom Animation. The season was storyboarded and written by Muto, Elizabeth Ito, Ward, Sean Jimenez, McHale, Luther McLaurin, Armen Mirzaian, Kent Osborne, Pete Browngardt, Niki Yang, Cole Sanchez, Tom Herpich, Bert Youn, Ako Castuera, and J. G. Quintel. Quintel, who would later go on to create the popular Cartoon Network series Regular Show, co-wrote and boarded the episode "Ocean of Fear" after asking Ward if he wanted any freelance help for Adventure Time. Quintel and Ward had previously worked together on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.
Cast
The voice actors for the season include: Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio, Tom Kenny, Hynden Walch, and Olivia Olson. Ward himself provides the voice for several minor characters, as well as Lumpy Space Princess. Former storyboard artist Niki Yang voices the sentient video game console BMO, as well as Jake's girlfriend Lady Rainicorn in Korean. Polly Lou Livingston, a friend of Pendleton Ward's mother, Bettie Ward, plays the voice of the small elephant Tree Trunks. The Adventure Time cast records their lines together as opposed to doing it individually. This is to capture more natural sounding dialogue among the characters. Hynden Walch has described these group session as akin to "doing a play reading—a really, really out there play."The series also regularly employs guest voices for various characters. For instance, in the episode "Enchiridion!", John Moschitta, Jr., Mark Hamill, and Fred Tatasciore all lend their voices to various beings. In "Ricardio the Heart Guy", actor George Takei voices the titular villain. "Business Time" features Brian Posehn as one of the business men. Erik Estrada portrays King Worm in the episode "Evicted!" In "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain", Matt L. Jones voices the talking mountain. Andy Milonakis appears as the pie-throwing robot N.E.P.T.R. in the episode "What is Life?" Hamill reappears in the episode "Ocean of Fear", which also features opening and closing narration courtesy of Clancy Brown. Kerri Kenney-Silver portrays the Ice King's bride in the episode "When Wedding Bells Thaw". Michael Dorn portrays Gork in the episode "Freak City". Brown reappears in the episode "Dungeon" as a demon cat. Kevin Michael Richardson portrays the titular character in the episode "Donny". Finally, Lou Ferrigno plays the part of the being Billy in "His Hero".
Various other characters are voiced by Tom Kenny, Dee Bradley Baker, Maria Bamford, and Steve Little.
Broadcast and reception
Ratings
The episodes "Business Time" and "Evicted!" each were "previewed" on Cartoon Network before the official series launch date, on March 11 and 18, respectively. The series officially premiered on April 5, 2010. It debuted with the episodes "Slumber Party Panic" and "Trouble in Lumpy Space". The episode was watched by 2.5 million viewers. The episode was a ratings smash; according to a press release sent out by Cartoon Network, the episode's timeslot saw triple digit percentage increases from the time period of the previous year. For instance, the entry was viewed by 1.661 million kids aged 2–11, which marked a 110 percent increase from the previous year. Furthermore, it was watched by 837,000 kids aged 9–14, which saw a 239 percent increase. This also made it the most-watched episode of the first season. The season finale, "Gut Grinder", was watched by 1.77 million viewers. Originally, the first ten episodes were bundled into 30-minute airings. This means two of the eleven-minute segments were combined into one. Starting with the eleventh episode, "Wizard", the episodes dropped to only one, eleven-minute segment. The first season aired on Mondays at 8:00 pm.Reviews and accolades
The season has received largely positive reviews from critics. Television critic Robert Lloyd, in an article for the LA Times, said it "strikes as a kind of companion piece to the network's currently airing Chowder and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Each takes place in a fantastical land peopled with strange, somewhat disturbing characters and has at its center a young male person or person-like thing making his way in that world with the help of unusual, not always reliable, mentors." He went on to say that the show is "not unlike CN's earlier Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, about a boy and his imaginary friend, though darker and stranger and even less connected to the world as we know it." Lloyd also compared it to "the sort of cartoons they made when cartoons themselves were young and delighted in bringing all things to rubbery life."After its release on DVD in 2012, the season received positive critical attention, although many reviewers initially expressed their unhappiness that the set was not initially released as a Blu-ray edition. Wired wrote positively of the set, and applauded the release's bonus features. R.L. Shaffer of IGN awarded the set a 7 out of 10, denoting a "good" release. He called the show a "rare treat", but was critical of the release's packaging, noting that "a few too many episodes are crammed onto the discs, leaving little room for these transfers to breathe" and that the video compression left something to be desired. Tyler Foster of DVD Talk "highly recommended" the set, and wrote that the series is "bursting with imagination, sweetness, and a ridiculous sense of humor". Foster was particularly pleased with the characters, citing Ricardio and Marceline as highlights of the season. Furthermore, he wrote that "even the worst episode in this —and I'm hard-pressed to pick one—is beautifully designed and packs at least one or two killer gags."
The episode "My Two Favorite People" was nominated for a 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short-format Animated Program, although the episode did not win.
Episodes
Home media