In her 2002 essay A Time And Place For Everything, Karen Lury talks about the branding of children's television channels, including Cartoon Network: "In one ident, the channel's morning schedule is presented as if the programmes were paintings, so that each show is represented as a framed picture, and they are seen hanging across the screen, side by side. Each programme is therefore apparently 'exhibited' at a certain time of day."
Karen Lury's essay precedes Adventure Times debut on Cartoon Network by eight years, but her close observation of this branding is deeply relevant to both Adventure Time and Cartoon Network as a whole. Prior to Adventure Time, Cartoon Network rarely forayed into serial narrative storytelling. There were exceptions, but these exceptions were clearly demarcated as experimental and were never Cartoon Network's flagship shows. For example, the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon ran from 2003 to 2005 and had an overarching narrative, but its first two seasons aired only episodes that were two to three minutes in length.
Instead, the vast majority of cartoons followed roughly the same standard as Looney Tunes – the status quo was completely reset at the end of each episode, no matter what happened. This type of narrative style aligns precisely with Cartoon Network's decision to promote itself as an exhibitor of cartoons, cordoned off from one another like paintings in a museum: each individual episode stands completely on its own with no need for context from the things around it.
When Adventure Time launched in 2010, it followed this narrative style to a T. The episodes, like those of most cartoons, had, at its most basic level, a formula: Finn and Jake would seek adventure, get into trouble, and then get out by the end of the episode. There was no significant season-long arc and no long-term character growth for any of the characters. Just as Karen Lury suggests, each episode was a distinct enframed piece.
All of this began to change in the second season, when Adventure Time began moving towards a style of storytelling that featured consequences for the characters. Susan Strong introduced the potentiality of other, non-Finn humans existing in Ooo, as well as creating an unresolved and somewhat tense relationship between Finn and the newly-introduced Susan – an arc that remained ongoing until the ninth season. The interpersonal relationship and history between Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum began to develop. A recurring villain is introduced, and his actions at the end of the season dramatically alter the relationship between Finn and Princess Bubblegum.
And yet despite all of this, Adventure Time hardly changed its formula. Although some things played out across multiple episodes or seasons, almost every episode still exists independently of the others in its season. Adventure Time effectively created a hybrid approach between serialized narrative storytelling, like that of prestige television, and the episodic status-quo based storytelling from the era of sitcoms and Looney Tunes.
This new mode reached its apotheosis in the show's fifth season, when the show began to drift away from Finn and Jake. The narrative ceased to move forwards in a linear sense, instead moving sideways among the different characters. Narrative arcs would be abandoned for long stretched, while all around Ooo a patchwork of characters' stories would be told.
This mode of storytelling still technically fit with the idea of Cartoon Network as a curatorial network, but it pushed the format to its breaking point. The shows that might be considered Adventure Time's heirs – those created by former Adventure Time creative figures – eschew Adventure Time's hybrid formula of storytelling, instead typically opting for a more typical prestige-inspired narrative structure. Steven Universe, for example, a TV show created by Adventure Time storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar, follows a linear course of development while retaining the goofy and lovable traits characteristic of Cartoon Network's flagship shows. Over the Garden Wall follows the structure of a miniseries of the kind you might see on any kind of live-action drama TV. Adventure Time even launched several miniseries within the show itself that follow this sort of dramatic arc.
This new dramatic approach to shows on Cartoon Network that has evolved out of Adventure Time's fractured narrative storytelling has not, however, been followed up on by the branding of the channel itself. Cartoon Network's scheduling choices do not reflect that the shows it is producing have a coherent narrative arc. This is the schedule of Adventure Time's final season:
As you can see, Adventure Time aired its 13 10th-season episodes on a total of four days across the whole season, taking a break of three months between each day for the first 12 episodes, aired in four-episode "bombs,", and then a six-month break before the final episode. From the perspective of a continuing narrative arc, this makes no sense whatsoever, and it clearly bears no relationship to the plans of the show's creative figures. However, it makes sense when considered from the perspective of an "exhibitive" style of presentation – each Adventure Time "bomb" is tonally and aesthetically consistent and fills an hour's worth of time. Furthermore, this wouldn't harm a show with a continually resetting status quo.
But as Cartoon Network grows to rely increasingly on narrative-driven shows like Steven Universe, O.K. K.O., and Infinity Train, this becomes more of a problem. There are articles written with titles like "Steven Bombs are a terrible way to air Steven Universe episodes" and frequent threads on Reddit and Quora with questions like "why is the release schedule for Steven Universe so bad?" and "Why does it take so long for Steven Universe episodes to come out?"
The disjunct between curatorial branding and narrative products can only last so long. Eventually something will have to give.
Karen Lury's essay precedes Adventure Times debut on Cartoon Network by eight years, but her close observation of this branding is deeply relevant to both Adventure Time and Cartoon Network as a whole. Prior to Adventure Time, Cartoon Network rarely forayed into serial narrative storytelling. There were exceptions, but these exceptions were clearly demarcated as experimental and were never Cartoon Network's flagship shows. For example, the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon ran from 2003 to 2005 and had an overarching narrative, but its first two seasons aired only episodes that were two to three minutes in length.
Instead, the vast majority of cartoons followed roughly the same standard as Looney Tunes – the status quo was completely reset at the end of each episode, no matter what happened. This type of narrative style aligns precisely with Cartoon Network's decision to promote itself as an exhibitor of cartoons, cordoned off from one another like paintings in a museum: each individual episode stands completely on its own with no need for context from the things around it.
When Adventure Time launched in 2010, it followed this narrative style to a T. The episodes, like those of most cartoons, had, at its most basic level, a formula: Finn and Jake would seek adventure, get into trouble, and then get out by the end of the episode. There was no significant season-long arc and no long-term character growth for any of the characters. Just as Karen Lury suggests, each episode was a distinct enframed piece.
All of this began to change in the second season, when Adventure Time began moving towards a style of storytelling that featured consequences for the characters. Susan Strong introduced the potentiality of other, non-Finn humans existing in Ooo, as well as creating an unresolved and somewhat tense relationship between Finn and the newly-introduced Susan – an arc that remained ongoing until the ninth season. The interpersonal relationship and history between Marceline the Vampire Queen and Princess Bubblegum began to develop. A recurring villain is introduced, and his actions at the end of the season dramatically alter the relationship between Finn and Princess Bubblegum.
And yet despite all of this, Adventure Time hardly changed its formula. Although some things played out across multiple episodes or seasons, almost every episode still exists independently of the others in its season. Adventure Time effectively created a hybrid approach between serialized narrative storytelling, like that of prestige television, and the episodic status-quo based storytelling from the era of sitcoms and Looney Tunes.
This new mode reached its apotheosis in the show's fifth season, when the show began to drift away from Finn and Jake. The narrative ceased to move forwards in a linear sense, instead moving sideways among the different characters. Narrative arcs would be abandoned for long stretched, while all around Ooo a patchwork of characters' stories would be told.
This mode of storytelling still technically fit with the idea of Cartoon Network as a curatorial network, but it pushed the format to its breaking point. The shows that might be considered Adventure Time's heirs – those created by former Adventure Time creative figures – eschew Adventure Time's hybrid formula of storytelling, instead typically opting for a more typical prestige-inspired narrative structure. Steven Universe, for example, a TV show created by Adventure Time storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar, follows a linear course of development while retaining the goofy and lovable traits characteristic of Cartoon Network's flagship shows. Over the Garden Wall follows the structure of a miniseries of the kind you might see on any kind of live-action drama TV. Adventure Time even launched several miniseries within the show itself that follow this sort of dramatic arc.
This new dramatic approach to shows on Cartoon Network that has evolved out of Adventure Time's fractured narrative storytelling has not, however, been followed up on by the branding of the channel itself. Cartoon Network's scheduling choices do not reflect that the shows it is producing have a coherent narrative arc. This is the schedule of Adventure Time's final season:
But as Cartoon Network grows to rely increasingly on narrative-driven shows like Steven Universe, O.K. K.O., and Infinity Train, this becomes more of a problem. There are articles written with titles like "Steven Bombs are a terrible way to air Steven Universe episodes" and frequent threads on Reddit and Quora with questions like "why is the release schedule for Steven Universe so bad?" and "Why does it take so long for Steven Universe episodes to come out?"
The disjunct between curatorial branding and narrative products can only last so long. Eventually something will have to give.
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