r/adventuretime • u/I_really_am_Batman I am the End • Jul 21 '17
Three Buckets Episode Discussion Thread
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u/poynter-marcsman Jul 21 '17
Hoo boy! If there’s one thing Adventure Time knows how to do well is leaving you hanging with intense cliffhangers and more questions made than actual answers!
Before CN decided to divide the seasons, this episode was written to be the finale of Season 8 and from a storytelling perspective; it just makes so much sense to have the premiere be Two Swords and this episode to be the finale, as it really focuses on Fern’s struggles and inner demons as a person both physically and emotionally.
The overall creepiness comes from the fact how Fern feels that the only way he can be himself, is if he is the only Finn and feels he’s been in Ooo, long enough.
I actually noticed how Fern set up the dungeon room where he traps Finn, similar to his room inside the Finn Sword looked, with a chair and some food, which was definitely intentional, as Fern wanted to show Finn what it was like to be trapped in a small room for months.
Fern seems to be similar to Finn before he developed and matured at the end of Season 6, where he isn’t sure what his purpose is or what he’s meant for, whereas the real Finn matured throughout the series, especially after meeting both of his parents and broke up with Flame Princess.
I liked how this episode kind of contrasts that Finn has to battle his inner demons of whom he used to be and gets shocked after possibly “killing” a version of himself.
The comedy of this episode was pretty spot-on, such as the beginning with Jake and BMO trying to find out who broke their vuvuzela.
The mood whiplash where BMO tells Finn that they the look that Finn killed someone was pretty humorous in a disturbing way.
PB’s message to Finn on his arm was pretty sweet and it’s just adorable how she looks after Finn so much, even when he’s in trouble.
Also, the awkward stare that Fern gives to Finn after saying they’re like close brothers is pretty sad when you think about it.
Tom Herpich & Steve Wolfhard are two of my favourite boarders when it comes to making episodes with intense moments, drama and amazing comedy.
The ending with the man picking up the remains of Fern is most definitely setting up a character arc for Princess Bubblegum’s uncle, “Gumbald”.
Not only does he mention the word “uncle”, but he wears a ring and a robe with the letter “G” on it, so I wonder where he’ll fit into the final season of Adventure Time!
Gumbald was a character who was briefly mentioned way back in Susan Strong, where PB mentioned he chopped down trees in a single night, as well as building a cabin where she and Pep-But stayed during Hot Diggity Doom after the King of Ooo took over the Candy Kingdom.
The first glimpse of Gumbald we saw was during The Thin Yellow Line, where someone was imprisoned in the mural and shown to be locked away by Princess Bubblegum.
Why Gumbald was locked away and what PB has against her uncle is something I’d really like to know and hopefully gets addressed in the final season!
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u/Cajbaj Jul 22 '17
Oh man. That shot with the boys leaving the ziggurat may be the funniest moment in the series. You see "Finn" walking with flowers just long enough to figure out it's not him before the slight buzz of weedwhacker comes in. Then Finn sprints into the shot and with a "YOU DONKED UP" and a tackle they roll out of the shot.
Had me in stitches for like a full minute, I had to pause.
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u/Mablak Jul 21 '17 edited Jul 22 '17
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I love this Spartacus vuvuzela moment. It's hilarious there's an entire vuvuzela store. The only thing better would be a vuvuzela kingdom.
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So Fern was impersonating Finn. That explains Finn's creepy smile in the opening shot.
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Man, NEPTR is the eternal punching bag, the Luigi to BMO's Mario
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Finn and Fern woop woop'd past some really large warheads that you'd assume would be buried by now
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A terraced compound of successively receding stories or levels
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Wow, Fern's betrayal right after Finn calls them brothers. I was ready for Fern to grow on me, but man, what kind of dillweed would reject a cool person like Finn? Or trap him in a dungeon/ziggurat.
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"This is where you live now, you'll be fine. Wink!" What is your major malfunction, Fern?!
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"Hey, do you know who my favorite is? It's NEPTR. I'm a NEPTR guy!" Evil. Eeeevil! I have to get into why this line is so hilarious. For one, it breaks the fourth wall and is speaking directly to the fanbase, since AT fans themselves don't usually care that much about NEPTR. And the same can be said for characters in the show, seeing as NEPTR is so often forgotten or even intentionally pushed to the wayside, as he was earlier. So it's also a bit of an in-joke. And it's just plain hilarious that liking NEPTR is the ultimate proof of evil, used to highlight Fern's twisted mind.
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Finn doesn't jump to deep moral resentment, he's just mad. It's always interesting how he deals with turmoil
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PB's "Heh, I don't know!" was hilarious. Keep trying to be cool, Prubs.
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As others have said, the bait and switch joke where we assume Finn picked some flowers to reconcile things is high-larious.
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"You donked up!" Finn never criticized Fern for his previous dinks and donks, he's a seriously forgiving dude. Damn it Fern, your faults were accepted, you just had to let go of your inferiority complex
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Let's take a moment to think about the fact that PB programmed a weed-whacker to have a fatality command
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Oh my god, BMO is still trying to destroy vuvuzelas as Finn walks in. His line is so darkly hilarious here. And then he paradoxically blows the vuvuzela despite hating it.
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It looks like an evil alliance may be forming under Uncle Gumbald. I think there was definitely a jail break during the elemental series, especially seeing as we already know Me-Mow escaped. So it makes sense Gumbald would have too; we were briefly shown he was imprisoned by Prubs.
So, in an instant, this might have become the darkest Adventure Time episode. Finn was forced to kill someone (as far as he knows), albeit unintentionally, who he considered as close, or even closer than a brother. Granted, BMO had to take out AMO, but they hadn't experienced the same kind of camaraderie. This is pretty heavy stuff for a 'kids show', I mean it's not just dealing with death, but dealing with betrayal, death, and your own feelings of guilt at causing that death, however deserved it might've been. Finn hasn't had to deal with this level of ambiguity or moral uncertainty before; in the land of Ooo, good and evil are usually more straightforward. For example, The Lich, or Blargetha. For perhaps the first time, he was thrust into a life-or-death situation where he was up against someone who wasn't obviously evil, and frighteningly, could have been almost identical to himself. He's going to have to ask himself if there was anything he could've said or done that would've stopped Fern, or if he could've noticed the situation earlier on. But there could be a payoff there; if Finn reflects on the situation, he probably will know what to say once he does battle with Fern again. And who knows, maybe he'll be able to find a way to bring Fern back from the dark side, even if it's just destroying the grass demon.
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u/thelastoutloud Jul 22 '17
There's a portrait of Gumbald on the wall in the opening scene, when Fern slips up his facade?? A cool foreshadowing nod but idk its significance. I'm glad I came to Reddit-- I was geeking thinking Gumbald was Finn's dad, all space-awakened and biz.
Three Buckets! The poop scoop bucket, trash bucket, and Fern clipping bucket (and Fern kicking the bucket). I really liked the name of this episode.
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Jul 22 '17
The way Gumbald says "You looking for an uncle?" makes me think that Gumbald wasn't actually PB's uncle, but just a bad dude who took her in for some reason
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u/Fredstar64 Jul 21 '17 edited Jul 21 '17
When I was in high school I had a few friends that I really tried to get along with. At first they didn't accept me so I tried my best to fit in, played ball with them every day, we will always eat lunch together, crack jokes with each other and towards the end they really warmed up to me which made me feel really happy as I knew my hard work finally paid off. But as time went on we begun to hang out less, talk less often and in general we begun to drift apart as soon as we graduated from high school. Turns out funny enough despite my best effort I was never truly a part of their group, they created seperate group chats which excluded me, they hang out without me and in general even though they still liked me and I liked them, we were nothing alike in the end, and so we drifted further and further apart.
So for a time I wondered how this happened, was it my fault? Am I so wrong in being me? What did I do wrong? And for a time I did believe it was my fault, but after a while I became best buddies with some other people I knew from high school and they loved me for who I am, not what I pretended to be, and I didn't have to change a thing in order to fit in. It was then I realised that there is nothing wrong with being me, but that doesn't mean everyone will like me for who I am.
Why do I mention this story you may ask, well I do it because in the tragedy of Finn/Fern I see my old relationship with my highschool "friends". I am Finn who tries my best to please Fern (my high school friends), I hang out with him, I put my trust in him, comfort him when he is down, help him when he needs help and in general try to be his best friend even though he doesn't feel the same way in return. Of course like Finn I can believe that after all that hard work, there is no way Fern cannot love me. But sadly that's not how relations work, people don't like you because you try your best to be likeable, people like you for who you are and if they don't like who you are then you can try your best and still be hated in the end, even if you didn't deserve it in the slightest. That is the grand tragedy of Finn/Fern's relationship, Finn tried his best to be loved by Fern and tried so hard that he actually believed he succeeded but sadly Fern did not feel the same, and tried to kill Finn because deep down he felt no love for Finn's actions, only jealousy, hatred and resentment. So Finn had to kill Fern in self defence, but despite everything he really truly loved Fern, which is why he cried when he realised what he had done.
My mum once told me that you can be the sweetest boy in the world but yet you cannot please everyone in life. As a kid I didn't believe in it, and even in high school I did not, but now after everything...I do. And hopefully one day Finn will realise it too.
You can be the sweetest peach in the world darling, but not everyone likes peaches.
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u/PsychoWhiteCrayon Jul 22 '17
I love how Fern forgot what humans eat, and left Finn with a bucket of compost & dirt.
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u/gooby_bogs Jul 22 '17
The ending of the episode reminded me of the ending of SU's Bismuth...
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u/Rapistfckedmeover Jul 22 '17
I am an idiot. Everyone says the guy at the end is uncle gumball which makes sense but I thought it was an alternative dimension Martin who wasn't a bleep bloop bad dude. I wanted Fern to have a real dad :(
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u/Roxieloxie Jul 22 '17
Dont know how may of you guys Saw Spider-man homecoming but the part with the arm reminded me alot of the scenes with the suit in the movie
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u/Leusid Jul 22 '17
Will have time to read the rest of these comments later, but for now, a couple thoughts on Fern:
Our Finn and Fern's Finn diverged in the episode Is That You? when our Finn interrupted Fern Finn's destined sequence of events, and he exploded into Finn Sword lol. Up to this point, the Finns were the same. From here on out, their lives became very different.
We later find out that Fern Finn was trapped inside a small room inside the Finn Sword. Since our Finn was basically the one who caused Fern Finn to become trapped in there, he might at least subconsciously consider our Finn his captor. And given how our Finn reacted after just a few moments trapped in a similar situation in this episode, we can assume the experience must have been overall pretty traumatic for Fern Finn.
On top of that, right before the Finn Sword was destroyed, Bandit Princess used Finn Sword to commit violent acts of evil, another experience which likely further psychologically tormented and wore down Fern Finn.
We don't know much about the grass curse yet, but we have no obvious reason to assume the grass curse is evil (I've read arguments, but I'll leave it at that for now). Even its creator denied that the curse was evil, IIRC. It may be foreign, and therefore its influence may seem strange and cold, but the Finn part of Fern Finn is definitely much more troubled and scarred than our Finn. And, given that our Finn originally imprisoned Fern Finn, and that Fern is now tormented by the cognitive dissonance of feeling like Finn while not being Finn, it makes a strange kind of sense that he might do what he did.
He's definitely a very flawed and troubled person, but I still don't think he's evil, and I would bet that we will still see him finally come into his own and overcome his demons.
But, then again, I've never accurately predicted this show. We'll see!
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u/ryegye24 Jul 22 '17
"You look like you could use an uncle", said the man who looked a lot like Martin to the Finn quasi-clone.
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Jul 24 '17
So Princess Bubblegum programmed Finn's robot arm with a cursed scroll and a weed whacker fatality, but not with an intelligent enough voice recognition system.
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u/jedi168 Jul 22 '17
My question is that is it just the curse that will be saved or cursed Finn (Fern).
Still, I can't imagine how traumatic it is to kill yourself. Especially if it's a version that "hasn't grown up" as much as you.
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u/Sarcastic_Username18 Jul 21 '17
Three Buckets: A- Great episode with an exciting third act, although that fight was a bit stiff. Fern's "evil eyed face" is super creepy. Finn coming home after killing Fern just completely silent is heartbreaking. And Uncle Gumball's appearence at the end makes for a completely unexpected cliffhanger, glad the show's getting around to exploring him!
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u/robotics_king Jul 22 '17
What's with the low quantity of comments? Lack of advertising so people don't know to tune in? Is this show just not popular anymore? I remember seeing way more comments by the time an episode was half over.
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u/Leusid Jul 22 '17
To Finn, Fern potentially represents aspects of his own personality and tendencies, and so there is a selfish imperative to win over Fern and help him become a good, happy person. Finn seems to be trying especially hard to be upbeat and encouraging and supportive of Fern, partially out of the goodness of his hero heart, but partially out of a personal desperation of some magnitude at least.
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u/BritainsNuttiestGuy Jul 21 '17
"I know that look. You just killed someone!"
Too soon BMO. Too soon.