Adventure Time - Season 5 Episode 22 - Recap
Recap of Adventure Time - Season 5 Episode 22 - Party's Over, Isla de Senorita
This week's Adventure Time provides us with a nice little diversion from a season that has been otherwise heavily focused on production gimmicks, character backstory, or romantic subplots. The episode hinges, oddly, on Ice King's obsession with Princess Bubblegum, a dynamic not really seen during recent years of the show.
At the start of the show, Ice King is being his usual creepy old self, trying to sneak into PB's room to kidnap her. She wakes up, chastises him, and calls the guards to remove him. He pleads with her, behaving as if they are just a couple that's encountered a rough patch in the relationship. The Ice King is thrown from the castle and heads off on his own (passing by usual series leads Finn and Jake in what amounts to cameo appearances for the pair).
After packing a bag and saying goodbye to his penguins, Ice King makes himself a boat with his ice powers and sets sail (erm, sets oar?) for parts unknown. A storm immediately destroys his ship in one of the gorgeously animated episode's few visual gags.
Ice King wakes up on the shores of an island, humorously coughs up some sea creatures, and comments aloud that the island seems deserted. He constructs himself a hat from palm fronds and ties his crown to his beard, but is surprised to hear singing in the distance. Ice King follows the voice to the top of a hill to find that the singing is coming from the island itself! Turns out the island is a living lady, with the sand forming her body and some forests in the shape of a two-piece swimsuit.
Her and Ice King, through the art of musical montage, become close friends. Post-montage, the island reveals she has been dating Party God, a floating wolf head with a gravely voice and a backwards neon green trucker cap. Turns out he's been neglecting her in favor of parties (as his name would suggest), so after seeing the two interact from a hiding spot, Ice King encourages the island to dump Party God. The island falters, and Party God leaves. Ice King gives chase, to let Party God know that he's been treating the island badly, and we're given a nice little fight scene between Party God and Ice King in the sky.
Ice King defeats Party God, and, in what is the episode's best sequence, uses Party God's unconscious body (uh... head?) as a puppet to get the island to dump Party God. She does, and Ice King, still in disguise (sort of), flies Party God into space and throws him away. Ice King realizes that he needs to get over his obsession with Princess Bubblegum, so he flies back to the Candy Kingdom and "dumps" her, rather humorously describing the island and Party God's situation in his reasoning.
Overall, this episode felt more like a tease for fans of Ice King who want more of his backstory, or possibly a filler episode while Finn's voice actor is busy with other projects on Cartoon Network. Hopefully, as we head towards the end of the season in the next few weeks, the action ramps up and some of the season's arcs start to come together. While these nice one-off stories are fun, the premise in this one fell a bit flat for me. It's probably not the worst episode of the show I've seen, but if it proved one thing to me, it's that Ice King works best when alongside Adventure Time's other usual characters.