I don’t really watch much TV nowadays. This is on account of many reasons: I’m not in very much to watch it; I have the internet; I don’t have a telly in my room; a lot of telly is patronising, mindless, unoriginal bullshit; I’m not in it. Ok, so the last one’s not true. I’m in some of it. But really most of telly nowadays seems to be based on hitting high ratings rather than expanding people’s minds, posing original ideas or ever taking any risks. I was almost ready to give up on telly entirely, turning only to repeat viewings of DVDs and wearing a cardboard box on my own head and acting in the mirror to make my own shows, when last Saturday Jim Smallman told me about a show called Adventure Time. I am eternally grateful to Jim for such things. Adventure Time is quite possibly the best show ever ever.
Its difficult to explain why it works as a TV show. Its meant to be for kids but its really not for kids. Instead its for big kids, who will happily sit mindlessly watching a show that contains a high level of bizarre imagination, brilliantly written lines and some of the brightest colours and weirdest characters you’ll ever see. Based entirely on Finn The Human and Jake The Dog going on adventures its the sort of show I wish I’d thought of, and it seems to do everything I wish it would. A distressed talking piñata, prank playing balloons that just want to die, a small trippy senile elephant called Tree Trunks, people punching each other with whales and battle cries such as ‘Algebraic!’ and ‘Mathmatical!’ its pretty much perfect.
I want to give you in depth analysis of what’s so good about it. I’d like to go all telly critic and provide you with several paragraphs of looking into what it means and how it challenges the mind, how it constantly throws up the unexpected and how its the closest you’ll ever get to someone’s brain pouring out fun onto the telly. But I’m not very good at that so just go here, watch several episodes and become hooked. Trust me:
Sorry, not really a blog today but more of an advert for Adventure Time. Thing is, despite meaning to do so many other things, I’ve pretty much been watching Adventure Time episodes back to back. I worry its warped my mind a tad. Hopefully you’ll all watch it, it’ll warp your minds too and then we can go roughhousing. Yes indeed.
Incidentally, I am on kids telly today. Watch the Slammer on BBC1 at 5pm on CBBC and see me be shit at art. I’ll post up the iPlayer link to such things tomorrow.
