That Ekko vs Jinx scene is quite something.
Outstanding episode that shows how Michael, deep down, believes in what he does and the people he supervises, no matter how inept he may be at his job. There's lots of laughs in his embarrassing speech to Ryan's class, and lots of great human moments, like when he gives Pam the acceptance she needs when her art show's going poorly. Really great work on both the comedy and emotion front.
No God, please no! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[9.5/10] Such a classic. An absolute masterpiece of cringe comedy that not only plays out the barely-restrained resentments between Michael and Jan, but adds so much weird detail to their lives together, until you get the most awkward party of all time. Everyone in the cast is on fire here, and it's reassuring that after the writer's strike, everyone put their heads together and came up with this bit of brilliance.
"The goal is to get from point A to point B as creatively as possible. So, technically, they are doing parkour. As long as point A is delusion and point B is the hospital."
Lord knows that if The Office was going to get anything right, it needed to be Jim expressing his feelings for Pam, and boy does it pull that off here. The confession is harrowing, sad, and heartening all at the same time, with Pam's shock and reaction to something she, deep down, already knows, adds to the charged atmosphere. The rest of the episode is fun, as Michael inadvertently inviting two dates to the same event is a bit of cliche but still full of comedy, and the other antics around the work party are enjoyable. But it's that last moment, that pays off so much built up emotion and drama, that really makes this one great.
Jim finding out Pam is pregnant is one of the cutest thing in this show! probably the MOST cute!
Seriously, what the heck did I just watch?
I'm not sure who thought any of this was a good idea but it will probably go down as the worst episode of the entire series? Just, wow.
Really love that moment between Walter and Jane's father but it was so sad to see that Walter let Jane die.
I hate this. Even if she was a little despicable, she didn't deserve to die. And most importantly, this is obviously going to blow up in the future and ruin the relationship between Walt and Jesse, maybe even make them kill each other. Hate this. It can't be fixed.
I'm not crying, you are crying!
Jesse Pinkman is one of the best fictional characters out there I'm dead
Sarah Lynn has always been a source more of humor than of drama on BoJack Horseman. Sure, there's always been a dark edge to the jokes made about her drug-induced lifestyle and the ways in which she was doomed from a young age, but for the most part, it was part and parcel with the satire of Hollywood and its dark side that stretches throughout this series. And yet, in this episode, that humor is brought down to Earth. It's not that there's no ridiculousness here, but suddenly the show starts taking that part of Sarah Lynn's background seriously.
And the tragedy of it becomes much more clear. Both BoJack and Sarah Lynn have been harmed by this lifestyle, bereft of empathy and only seeking thrills and substances to try to fill that hole in their lives. But the difference is that BoJack came to acting as an adult. Sarah Lynn was forced into it as a child, she never had a choice, and she never had a chance, and that's tragic. That's what makes something truly tragedy -- not just that it's sad, not just that it's unfair, but that it's the horrible result of forces beyond a person's control.
There's a Trainspotting vibe to this episode, a sense in which both BoJack and Sarah are letting go of whatever control they have as they take a feverish jaunt across L.A. and eventually across the country. That leads to the episode feeling somewhat shaggy in places, but it works with the rambling, unfocused, black out experience of the main characters, and so it works. That tack gives the story momentum even when it's rolling all over the place.
That spree takes BoJack (repeatedly) to the door of Ana Spanakopita, where she delivers an assessment of BoJack that is possibly even more harsh than Todd's. When BoJack asks why she abandoned him when he needed her the most, she basically tells him that he is not only unsaveable, but that he brings down anyone who would try to help him. He doesn't quite understand it, but there's a cold truth to those words, especially as they come to fruition in the rest of the episode, as BoJack brings down two young women.
The first of these is Penny. After a frantic, misguided attempt to make amends to all of the people BoJack's hurt (which leads it a hilarious "Dianne is just Asian Daria" routine), BoJack stalks Penny at Oberlin. In the process, he discovers something surprising -- she's just fine. She seems happy; she has friends, and she seems cool and comfortable where she is. That is, until BoJack shows up to mess that up. His presence reminds her of what happened and rattles her in what seemed like a safe environment. As Sarah Lynn points out, she was good until he showed up.
Sarah Lynn doesn't have the same kind of self-awareness about the way in which BoJack brought her down as well. It's hard to say that BoJack is truly the cause of Sarah Lynn's downfall. After all, in the past there were her parents and the other parts of the Hollywood machine that helped turn her into the person she became, and in the present, the very fact that Sarah Lynn was only engaging with sobriety so that she could get a really good high later suggests this would have happened eventually regardless of what BoJack did. (And, true to life, people who relapse often overdose, because their tolerance has diminished but they still consume their drug of choice in the quantities they used to, which overwhelms their systems.) To a degree, there was an inevitability to this.
But BoJack could have been there, could have eased her away from it, could have been a voice of experience and an angel on her shoulder rather than someone who brought her into his desperate race away from his own misery. Instead, BoJack was feeling bad for himself, and had managed to alienate literally everyone else important in his life. So he resorted to his old co-star, the one he was a father figure to, and jumpstarted the process that led to her demise. Maybe this would have happened eventually anyway, but BoJack was there, he hastened it, and took part in it, and managed to lose one of the last people who'd bother speaking to him in the process.
BoJack has his own damage to deal with, and much of it isn't his fault. He has an emptiness and a selfishness that he inherited, both through nature and nurture. The problem is that he prioritizes his own pain over everyone and everything else, and doesn't care about what his means of trying to feel better, or at least feel less, does to anyone close to him. That's what makes Ana's words so vital here -- BoJack really is drowning, he really is thrashing and kicking and trying to keep his head above water. He has legitimate problems, and sometimes he even makes legitimate attempts to fix them, but he's oblivious to those connections to others in this terrifying world, and that's his greatest sin.
So we feel for him when he loses out on that Oscar. It represents something important for him -- a signifier that his life and his work meant something. And we sympathize when he wants to do anything but face reality when that falls apart. But then Sarah Lynn wins an Oscar, and we see how meaningless it is for her. All she can do in that moment is think about what it should mean, what it would have meant to her, before she went down this path. BoJack is a victim, but also a perpetrator. As far as we see, Sarah is just a victim, someone who was poisoned before she even really knew how to read. And BoJack could have done something to stop it, to help it, then and now, but didn't.
Because BoJack just wants to try to anesthetize himself from his own pain, to hold himself back from his own damage. That's why when he looks into the projected stars of the planetarium, he absolves himself. BoJack never accepts blame, never takes the fault. He looks at the vastness of the universe and the eons that pass in a blink when pulled out to that scale, and declares that he need not feel bad for anything he does because nothing he does matters. To put it in Brothers Karamazov terms, anything is permitted. BoJack takes it to the self-serving extreme, to ignore his fractured attempts at making good so that he needn't feel guilt.
There is, however, a catch the nihilist's way out. Try as he might, BoJack still feels a connection to Sarah Lynn. As they sit on that bench together, gazing at the sunset as they've done in the past, he realizes that she is one of the few people equipped to understand him. They may have come to it on different terms, but they've been through the same thing. He cares about her. He may not want to care about anyone. It's easier to justify your own bad actions, to compartmentalize all the terrible things you've done, if you don't care about anyone.
But he does. And Sarah Lynn dies. And he was there for it all.
That's the kicker. Maybe your choices don't matter on a cosmic scale, but they matter on a personal one. You can hurt the people you care about, and no matter how many beers you drink, how many drugs you take, how many false amends you yell into the night, you will still feel that. BoJack will still feel that. All of his attempts to run away from his pain have only caused more pain, for many innocent people whom he's dragged beneath the waves with him, and for himself.
Who knows if Sarah Lynn would ever have become an architect. Maybe she would, as Tony Soprano once put it, ended up selling lawn furniture on Route 9. But maybe she would have been happy. Maybe BoJack could have helped her be happy, made himself happy, or at least avoided letting one more lost soul into his morass of discontent. Instead, a young woman dies, and for all his attempts to avoid his own hurt, to avoid the results of his bad acts, they finally catch up to him, and to those unfortunate enough to be in his wake when that reckoning comes.
Damn, Andy's character has gone a complete 180 this season. They've turned him into a right knob. What's the point of that?
Fun fact: the lactant specialist is Jenna Fischer’s husband
Pam, I am so proud of you.
Dwight: Everyday, for eight years, I have brought pepper spray into this office to protect myself and my fellow employees.
And everyday, for eight years, people have laughed at me.
Well, who's laughing now?
I like that Jesse got back the house and how he got it back. His parents deserved it. Walter's lucky that he met Gus before those two guys decided to come and go after him.
[8.1/10] I’m a believer in the idea that television shows should die the way they lived. And “Come Along With Me” pretty much does that. Sure, there’s some special things that Adventure Time pulls out of its hat to signify that this is its series finale, but this show was never shy about having climactic battles and bouts of elliptical symbolism and poignant bits to tug at your heartstrings. Putting a capstone on a series this wide in scope, this versatile in terms of tone, this...well...adventurous, is a big task, but for the most part “Come Along With Me” rises to the challenge in a way that feels true to the spirit of the show.
The episode begins with Shermy and Beth, a pair of Finn and Jake-like adventurers in some distant future, tracking down the fabled King of Ooo about Finn’s robot arm. The King of Ooo turns out to be BMO, and the explosive events of the series finale are mostly told through his eyes, as he recounts the Great Gum War and the fight with Golb to the pair of adventurers. This frame story is packed with easter eggs and teases, but mostly serves as a nice way to bookend the episode and deliver some exposition in a cute and unobtrusive way.
When we get to actually live through those events, the show occasionally tries to pack too much in, but still manages to hit the major themes of the show and the characters, which is ultimately satisfying, if not jaw-dropping.
“Come Along With Me” puts a capstone on Finn the pacifist. From the moment that young Finn refused to destroy an “unaligned” ant, he’s been on a journey of learning that there’s more to heroing than just puncha-ing yo buns. Now, on the brink of war, he does everything in his power to keep the forces of Princess Bubblegum and the Uncle Gumbald from coming to blows. He enveigels them into a dreamland, forcing to confront their common ground. And he does the same for himself and Fern, trying to show them as two sides of the same coin, and refusing to fight.
I like that Finn’s final adventure in this show is one to stop violence and foster understanding, even when he has every opportunity to thrive in glorious battle. For a sometimes wacky cartoon show, Finn has grown a great deal over the course of ten seasons, and his noble commitment to stopping his misunderstood foes without resorting to violence, to ending a war before it stops, and to loving his enemy as much as himself are a tribute to the laudable place that Finn has reached at the end of the series.
There’s also a sense of empathy to all of his, another trademark of the show. After some characteristically loopy and engaging dream scenes, Jake retrieves Finn’s vault, which is enough to show both him and Fern that they’re fighting the same fears, having to confront the darkness head-on, and it’s only then that they can free Fern of the grass curse. It united the two of them, even if leads to a tragic but poignant departure for Fern.
At the same time, Princess Bubblegum, who’s pragmatic to a fault, develops some empathy too. She gets to experience what it was like for Gumbald to be reduced to a brainless candy person, while Gumbald experiences PB’s anxieties over protecting her kingdom. Sure, Gumbald seems poised to doublecross her anyway, but it’s enough to convince the war-hungry PB to stand down after understanding where her opponents were coming from. It’s the sort of war-averting swerve, founded on pacifism and empathy, that feels true to form and to the values of the show.
But it wouldn’t be a series finale if there were no fireworks, so we get the surprise appearance of Golb, the god of chaos whom we saw for the first time (I think) in the Pillow World episode. A combination of Betty, Normal (nee Magic) Man, and Maja the Sky Witch have summoned him to Ooo, and he creates a pair of eldritch monsters who have the creative, colorful, and mildly disturbing designs that you would expect for this show and its climactic battle between the good guys and bad guys.
“Come Along With Me” uses Golb to tie up a few loose ends that have been running through the show for a long time. A close call with one of Golb’s minions makes it seem like Princess Bubblegum has been crushed to death, causing Marceline to spring into action and defeat the creature in a fit of fury. When PB recovers (thanks to some magic/scientific armor), Marceline expresses her concern and feelings for Bubblegum, and the two of them kiss on screen for the first time in the series. (Rejoice Bubbleline fans!) It’s all kind of rushed, but the dynamic is right, and the moment is earned after all we’ve seen previously, so it’s a nice sop to the fans at the end of the series.
It also uses Finn, Ice King, and Betty being swallowed up by Golb (after a failed attempted by Ice King to use fan fiction to reach Betty’s heart and snap her out of her trance) to turn Ice King back into Simon. It has something to do with Golb “digesting” them, by peeling away their layers. As with PB and Marcy, it’s all a little quick and a little convenient, but developments always did come fast and furiously on this show, and having a brief moment of lucidity between Betty and Simon, plus the neat claustrophobic design of the trio being caught in an ever-shrinking cube which creates a sense of urgency to thing, helps cover for some of the rapidity of all of this.
After all, Adventure Time is a show that has always run on its out of the box creativity and heart more than any consistent logic. Sure, there’s continuity nods and character development, but even its more byzantine and intricate plots have the flavor of an eleven-year-old’s playtime imagination, even when suffused with far deeper and more adult themes.
But one of the core themes of Adventure Time has been harmony -- of these disparate and often weird individuals coming together to do things both great and silly (and sometimes both at the same time). It’s fitting then that the show literalizes that idea, with BMO’s stirring song, meant to comfort Jake, becoming a weapon against the discord of Golb, especially when all of our favorite characters join in the melody, and free the heroes trapped inside his belly.
It’s the content of the song, however, that poses the most potent theme in “Come Along With Me.” While the series finale is certainly about tying up all those loose ends and putting a semicolon, if not quite a period on the adventures of Finn and Jake and all their pals, it’s just as much about coming to terms with the end of things.
That is, in the great Adventure Time fashion, literal, meta, and more than a little philosophical. The episode has both Finn and Jake fearing that this will be the end of the road for them in the midst of Golb’s attack. Finn believes his capture in Golb’s gullet to mean curtains for him, remarking that he envisioned himself dying in the process of saving someone. Simon reassures him that no one gets to choose how things end, and it’s a small moment of shared comfort in the face of tragedy, of a piece with Toy Story 3, in wrestling something deep and affecting out of what is nominally children’s entertainment.
Naturally, there’s a last minute reprieve for everyone but Betty. She remains behind to use the crown’s power to try to defeat Golb, and when that’s beyond its capabilities, she asks for the power to keep Simon safe. The result is that she melds with Golb, becoming a part of him and losing herself in the process. There’s the sense that Betty couldn’t accept that her time with Simon had ended, couldn’t accept that there would never be a permanent end to those threats, and couldn’t accept that it wouldn’t erase the time they’d shared together, becoming part of a monster in her denial.
BMO -- ironically the one character we know survives until the unspecified future that makes up the episode’s frame story -- does accept that though. Her song is an effort to comfort Jake, to remind him that even though something ends, that doesn't mean it goes away. Their “happening happened.” Their piece of the timeline will always be there.
That lesson fits for a series finale. There may be no more new Adventure Time episodes to come, but we’ll always have these 283 stories, etched in ones and zeroes if not quite etched in stone. In a way, “Come Along With Me” is meant as a gentle easing into that, a reassurance that it’s okay for one of your favorite shows to come to an end. All the old stories will still be there, and they still mean just as much, even after they’ve come to an end.
There is a force to that beyond the meta-notion of a television series playing its final episode. Adventure Time’s finale contemplates, without seeing through, the notion of all of our heroes dying. But it offers the same comfort to them that it does to us -- that the relationships we make, the friendships we build, the experiences we have, are still sewn into the fabric of the universe.
The opening lines of BMO’s song, suggesting that time is just an illusion to help us make sense of things, and that the whole of our existence is all still there, can’t help but call to mind similar ideas posited in Slaughterhouse 5. There is reassurance in it, in the very notion of endings, that the marks we have left, the lives we have touched and that have touched ours, cannot and will not be erased, no matter what happens after.
That’s the trick. There are no endings. This may be the last episode of Adventure Time, but there is a startling but refreshing lack of finality. Sure, the show loops back around to its closing theme, given new poignance by the episode’s demonstration of the literal power of music. And there’s a montage full of hints about where our heroes’ lives lead them in the future. But that’s all we get -- hints and suggestions, more to show us that the story continues than to put a firm “The End” on one.
To put it differently, everything stays, but it still changes. There’s reassurance in that too, in the frame story that tells us that Finn and Jake and PB and Marceline and more simply “lived their lives” after the curtain falls on our glimpse into Ooo. And the adventure continues. We know, from the remade treehouse born of Fern, from a lumbering Sweetpea, from a denizen who looks a lot like a rainicorn pup, that the characters we’ve come to know and love over the course of Adventure Time have left a legacy, echoes that still reverberate a millennium later.
The episode ends with that sense of cotninuity and continuation, with Shermy and Beth following in the footsteps of Finn and Jake in a world still rife with adventures, striking a familiar pose in a fashion that suggests their spirit lives on. Television shows should die as they lived, and this finale accomplishes that.
Adventure Time is a show that became so much broader in scope than a story about a boy and his dog rescuing a princess from an evil wizard. It expanded to cover trauma, parenthood, growing up, politics, community, spirituality, horror, music, and straight up goofy humor. It had a soul that could not be contained, by the bounds of expected children’s television or even the bounds of time. This finale is just as ambitious in scope, expanding to fill the space, and reassuring its fans that Finn and Jake may depart, the show may leave the airwaves, but what it accomplished, the ways it touched us, moved us, and surprised us, never will, even if it has to come to an end.
Most people don’t notice the police calls Dwight by his name when they pull him over. I always find it hilarious.
Trivia
+Near the end, Stanley delivers a soliloquy about losing seven pounds and then bows his head and raises his right fist. This scene is a homage to two black American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who won gold and bronze medals in the 1968 Olympics. They generated controversy by raising their fists while on the medal stand as the national anthem was being played.
+We find out Pam's weight in this episode. According to the scale calculations, the entire team weighed 2,336 lbs when Pam was on the scale and 2,210 lbs when she got off. So Pam weighs 126 lbs.
+When Jim visits Pam at her Residential Advisor room, Jim misdirects the cameraman away and closes the door. This is the only time where you hear the "documentary" camera crew, namely a sigh.
+Holly's real first name is Hollis.
+When Holly is shown at her desk, right before she finds Kelly making her juice, you can see her name plate revealing her real first name to be Hollis.
+There is a point where Jim is talking about having to spend his lunch with different people while Pam is away, during this time Michael is shown without a goatee, which he has had the entire episode because Ryan has one. Michael is shown afterwards leading a meeting with his goatee still there.
+It is revealed via Holly's whiteboard that the remaining Dunder Mifflin branches in operation are: 1) Scranton, PA; 2) Nashua, NH; 3) Camden, NJ; 4) Utica, NY; 5) Buffalo, NY; 6) Albany, NY; 7) Yonkers, NY; 8) New York City Corporate Center.
+As Pam is running over to Jim at the gas station, she comments that "Montclair would have been closer" (as in, to meet halfway). Montclair is a real city in northern New Jersey popular for its arts centers and restaurants.
Goofs
Continuity
+Michael's goatee disappears in a lunchroom scene and returns for a weigh in. He later shaves it off.
+Pam comments to Jim at the gas station that: "Montclair would have been closer, so you have to buy lunch". This is untrue. Montclair, NJ, is 1 hour/ 50 minutes away from Scranton, PA (Jim) - but only 55 minutes from midtown Manhattan (Pam). That is not at all halfway between the two locations. Newton, NJ, would have been a better compromise.
Spoilers
Jenna Fischer actually kept the engagement ring that her future husband, Jim, gave to her in this episode. She has been seen wearing it sometimes in public and in interviews.
I liked Michael at the end; it turns out, he can be normal and kind.
Hey, Mr. Scott! Watcha gonna do?
This episode might have one of the best jokes in the entire series. Let me set the stage. The camera is set in the distance as Michael Scott approaches in his PT Cruiser, loudly playing Lady Gaga's "Just Dance." He pulls up next to the camera, car top down. "It's Britney, bitch. And I am back." I always laughed at the pure absurdity of this scene. But it took me forever to notice he's listening to Gaga, not Britney. Well played, Office Writers.
The moment when Pam is crying and Dwight gives his handkerchief to her is soo sweet.
''too many people, we need a plague..'' that hits hard now lmao
Ugh, I felt so bad for Pam :(
Trivias
+The kiss between Michael and Oscar in the conference room was not scripted. The scene had been shot a couple of times with Steve Carell not kissing Oscar Nunez. Then on one take, Oscar saw "[Carell's] lips coming closer and closer". Nunez recalled "I'm like, 'Dear God, he's going to kiss me.' And sure enough, he planted one on my face." The other cast members were laughing during the kiss but because the camera stay focused on Carell and Nunez, the scene was still usable.
+It won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.
+First appearance of Andy Bernard (Ed Helms).
+The exterior shot of the Stamford Branch was formerly the office location for the company Starwood, and is directly across the water from NBC Sports in Stamford, CT. NBC is the network that aired The Office.
