Adventure Time! Come on, grab your friends, we’ll go to very distant lands With Jake the Dog and Finn the Human the fun will never end. Adventure Time! Is there any show in the history of television more insanely creative or wildly bonkers than Adventure Time? If there is, I’ll have to see it to believe it, because Adventure Time is nuts! It’s the silly and off-the-wall adventures of Finn and Jake in the magical land of Ooo. But ask any fan and they will tell you that Adventure Time is more than just ADHD-inspired insanity. It’s a show with wit, charm, and on a few surprising occasions, real pathos. Also, the dog is magic and there are candy people!

Why is it that people love Adventure Time so much? I’ve heard one theory that people watch for the nostalgia of their own childhood adventures. And I’m sure there are some people who won’t watch unless they’re high as a kite. For me, Adventure Time is a great show because they mix the maniacal with the mundane. The ideas are out of this world. From Abraham Lincoln being the King of Mars to a short, apple-loving old lady elephant named ‘Tree Trunks’. The show is insane.

But at the same time, quite frequently, most of the characters in the show treat this insane world as mundane. Like the time Finn and Jake returned to the Nightosphere and were being held prisoner in a cage full of bananas. When they were approached by the demonic, bat-like prison guard, the guy just made conversational small talk about the end of his shift. I love the tone of moments like that, and they’re sprinkled all throughout the weirdness of Adventure Time.

So even though the show is (hopefully) far from over, and the fifth season has only just begun, here is a list of my 6 favorite episodes (so far) of Adventure Time! I’m going to assume that anybody who reads this is already a fan of the show, so full SPOILERS are in effect as I talk about each episode. And if you haven’t seen the show, perhaps this will convince you to give it a try!

6. Holly Jolly Secrets

If Finn and Jake are the heroes of Adventure Time, then the evil Ice King is most definitely the villain. He controls the ice and snow, has a big white beard, spends all his time kidnapping princesses and keeps penguins for pets. But he’s also lonely, awkward and kind of clingy. He’s the kind of character you hate to love, because he’s just so creepy. But as this wonderful Season 3 two-part Christmas special revealed, the Ice King is far deeper and more interesting a character than anyone could have predicted. When Finn and Jake steals a suitcase full of the Ice King’s private video tapes, the evil wizard launches his snowmen to assault their treehouse to get them back. But the two heroes are determined to see what’s on those tapes, and in doing so, they uncover the Ice King’s deepest, darkest secret: he used to wear glasses!

True, but actually, the boys learn that the Ice King was once a nice, normal person named Simon Petrikov. These flashback tapes reveal a a never-before-seen secret history of the Ice King, that he was driven mad by the Ice Crown that he’s worn since we first saw him on the show.

I don’t think I ever considered the Ice King to be anything other than just the weirdo villain of the series. And that was probably the point. We were never supposed to think anything deeper about the Ice King, his crown or his weird personality. It’s just a cartoon show, after all. But the writers showed us that appearances can be deceiving, and that beneath the weird, funny surface of Adventure Time, there can be sadness.

5. Fionna and Cake

This episode is probably one of the most fan-favorite of the entire show, and for obvious reasons. Seemingly just for kicks and giggles, the entire episode is just a gender-swapped adventure. Instead of Finn we get Fionna. Instead of his dog Jake, we get her cat Cake. Prince Gumball instead of Princess Bubblegum. The Ice Queen instead of the Ice King. And it’s just as much fun as it sounds! The adventure itself is pretty standard, with Fionna nervous about spending time with her crush, Prince Gumball. Of course, all of this focus on romance is no surprise when it’s revealed that this Fionna & Cake tale is a work of fan fiction written by the Ice King! Either mocking or embracing fan fiction writers, I can’t tell.

What I do know is that fans have embraced this episode! Especially cosplayers. Because it’s far, far cuter for girls to dress up as Fionna than for boys to dress up as Finn. That’s just a fact. I especially like how far the show goes to embrace the gimmick, including reworking the entire opening credits. It’s just a neat concept embraced with wicked glee by the creators, then embraced even more so by the fans. And speaking as a fan, I love when that happens.

4. What Was Missing

What can I say, I love the song. What Was Missing is an entirely ordinary episode as Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen have some of their favorite possessions stolen, then have to get them back from the Door Lord. Typical insanity. But in order to get past his mystical door, the group has to put aside their differences and team up to play one awesome song!

It doesn’t even matter what the Door Lord took or how they beat him up at the end of the episode. That is just one catchy song, with a fun story behind it as all of the characters stop being mad at each other through the power of song. Finn doesn’t have the best singing voice in the Land of Ooo, but I’m not going to hold that against him. It’s a fun, upbeat and touching tune about friendship and pasta. Adventure Time does a great job with songs. Rather than show-stopping, well-sung Broadway numbers, they’re usually just amateurish little ditties put together by people who just aren’t very good at singing (Marceline being the exception, of course). ‘What Am I To You?’ is my favorite song on the show, catapulting What Was Missing into my list of favorite episodes.

3. BMO Noire

I love BMO. He’s just as weird and wacky as anything else in the show – what with his being a living TV/video game console – but he’s just so cool! And it helps that he’s also Finn and Jake’s third roommate, treated with all the respect of a normal person, even though he’s really just their TV come to life. I also love BMO’s voice. So computery and fun! Giving supporting characters their own episodes is a TV tradition, but rarely is it done with as much style as BMO’s. When Finn and Jake head out on one of their adventures, BMO is left alone at home and decides to investigate Jake’s missing sock – turning the treehouse into his own film noire detective story! Hearing BMO’s electronic voice spouting the typical hard-boiled noire narration is just a treat.

Can you really blame BMO for going a little stir crazy? It’s not like Finn and Jake ever invite him along on their adventures. He’s left in the treehouse all day, with only rats, chickens and N.E.P.T.R. around for company. And who hasn’t imagined themselves as a noire detective when daydreaming? I think this is all perfectly healthy for a person to do, even if they’re a sentient video game cabinet. Plus the episode is just funny, with BMO pretending to speak for all the other players he interrogates, like the rat, the chicken and the remote control. So it’s like BMO’s already awesome voice times 10! Oh, and their chicken’s name is Lorraine.

2. It Came From the Nightosphere

This is the outright funniest episode of Adventure Time, at least as far as I’m concerned. Meeting Marceline’s demonic overlord father is a hoot! The episode starts with a soulful song from Marceline about how her father ate her french fries. And when we finally meet the guy, he’s just as evil as she suggested – but like I said, he’s so mundane in his evil! He’s got a suit and talks like a normal dad – except when he’s trying to eat Finn’s soul, and the souls of all the other citizens of Ooo! And once he’s unleashed on the world, it’s a fun jaunt as he meets different weird Ooo citizens and sucks their souls! It’s fun for him. And the best exchange, of course, is when he encounters Gunter the Penguin, and they argue over who is the more evil creature, and who should suck out whose soul.

The images in this episode is just as fantastic as the humor. The animation on Adventure Time has always been fun, but perhaps a little low key. However, they totally crank up the detail for Marceline’s demonic father. From his fiery entrance to his gruesome, demonic transformations, he is a wicked beast straight out of Revelation. He’s the kind of thing that should give kids nightmares for weeks! But taken with the humor, it’s just absolutely hilarious that a giant, horrific, soul-eating monster could be this funny.

1. I Remember You

Devastating. Powerful. I cried like a little baby. Adventure Time spent all four seasons building to this glorious episode, and nobody knew it. Every hint that was dropped about the Great Mushroom War and the destruction of Earth, every tease about when Marceline was a little girl or when the Ice King was normal, old Simon Petrikov, even the very fact that nobody probably noticed that neither character had appeared in an episode together; all of it was building towards this emotional, powerful episode about the secret history shared by the two characters and the pains of living with mental illness. It’s an episode that really proves how songs and cartoons can tug at the heartstrings, even when they’re normally just silly, zany fun. And the episode is so expertly put together, starting off with the usual wackiness, but then slowly drawing back the curtain to a brilliant flashback ending that redefines almost everything you thought you knew about the series and its characters.

As we learned in Holly Jolly Secrets, the Ice King used to be a nice, normal person named Simon Petrikov. But then the Ice Crown turned him into an insane, blithering idiot with no memory of his past. And in the episode Memory of a Memory, we learned that Marceline the Vampire Queen was a little girl 1,000 years ago, when the planet Earth was destroyed by war and all the people were killed. The Great Mushroom War is never mentioned in the series, but there are hints and secret Easter Eggs about it everywhere. So back in the wreckage of the world, Marceline was a scared little girl, all alone – but who should find her but Simon Petrikov, who survived the war due to the unhealthy magic of the Ice Crown. And we learn that, for some time, Simon watched over and took care of the young Marceline, using the Ice Crown to prolong his life and help him survive in the post-war wreckage. But as we know, the Crown was driving Simon insane. And we learn that he accepted the sacrifice of the Ice Crown’s madness in order to stay alive and take care of Marceline.

And, of course, we learn all of this in a song. Because Adventure Time is awesome like that.

This episode is so expertly put together. I remember hearing about the plot, that Marceline and the Ice King write a song together. That alone sounds awesome. But as the episode progresses, the viewer starts to realize that a lot more is going on that we don’t yet know about. Marceline knows something that we don’t, some reason why she’s willing to put up with the annoying Ice King. Then she finally reveals everything in song, but even then, the Ice King can’t remember. He has no idea what she’s talking about, because the Ice Crown drove him mad a long time ago. He just thinks she’s singing their song. But Marceline is trying desperately to get through to her old friend, hoping that some part of him is still inside and still remembers her. But, sadly, her efforts are futile.

This must be what it’s like living with a loved one who has Alzheimer’s. And that’s a pretty powerful theme for a cartoon show  that’s supposed to be about a magic talking dog and his 13-year-old buddy.

Those are my favorite episodes, what are yours? Let me know in the comments!