Have to check this out one of these days!
1. Adventure Time
Yes, a children’s cartoon about a human boy and his talking dog is the best show on TV. I’ll try to explain.
Adventure Time has been on the air essentially nonstop since its Cartoon Network premiere in 2010 (though technically, season five began a few weeks ago). On paper, the show might sound indistinguishable from any other kid’s show – each week we follow the ramshackle adventures of Finn the Human and Jake the Dog, two best buds who travel the magical Land of Ooo, a storybook world populated by characters like Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, and Cinnamon Bun (who is, you guessed it, a talking cinnamon bun). Stylistically, though, the show is like nothing you’ve ever seen before – a caffeinated mixtape of post-Sega Genesis anime, autotune soundtrack, the visuals of Milton Bradley’s Candy Land as re-imagined by David Lynch, and a big, huge, weird, pubescent heart.
I could go on and on about “I Remember You”, the best 11-minutes of television I saw this year – a devastating parable about coping with an aging loved one’s dementia. Or “Sons of Mars,” a trippy epic that posits Abraham Lincoln as a Christ-like deity, and ends with a tiny lion-unicorn hybrid being freed from a glass bottle and flying off into the sky screaming, “My new prison is shame!” Or the fact that repeat viewers will come to realize that the magical Land of Ooo is actually a future version of Earth, ravaged from nuclear war. Or the terrifying “King Worm.” Or the thinly-veiled masturbation metaphor of “All the Little People.” Or lines of dialogue that I haven’t been able to shake from my head since I first heard them (“This bear is tops blooby,” “In the tree, part of the tree,” “I don’t know if my little boy heart can take it.”)
But this is all stuff better experienced that explained, I promise. I don’t care how old you are, Adventure Time will make you remember what an awesome, terrifying sugar-rush it is to be young.
via The Ten Best TV Shows of 2012 | Filmmaker Magazine.