The Pods

"The Pods" is the thirteenth episode of season two (and thirty-ninth episode overall) of Adventure Time.

Synopsis
Finn takes up a quest from a dying knight to protect three magic beans: two good, one evil. But when he and Jake decide to plant the beans to eliminate the evil one once and for all, will they be able to figure out which is which in time?

Plot
Finn and Jake are walking, perhaps traveling. Jake is eating ice cream and talking about how excited he is for the upcoming Ice Cream Marathon being held the next day. Suddenly, they hear a mysterious croaking sound. Following the noise, they stumble upon a frog in a Gnome Knight costume. It is revealed that the frog is a Gnome Knight magically turned into a frog. He is dying and needs a pure hero to take over his task of guarding a chest with three magic beans inside of it. He states that two of the beans are good and one is horribly evil, but since the beans are identical, he does not know which is which. Thus, he has spent his entire life guarding all three. Jake doesn't want to guard the beans, so he makes an excuse and backs out. But Finn takes pity on the knight and volunteers that he and Jake will assume his task. The Knight gives Finn the chest and also his staff. Then, the Knight dies and Finn and Jake are left with the chest of beans.

Jake wants them to take the beans with them to the Ice Cream Marathon, but Finn insists that they stay where they are. After a period of time, Jake suggests (being bored out of his mind and hot from sitting outside all day) that they plant all three beans and kill off the evil one. With his convincing idea, Finn agrees. They plant the beans and wait all day for when they blossom. They end up falling asleep. The next day, the first bean has grown into a large plant with a bulging sac at the end of the tall, drooping stalk. After prodding, the sac opens to reveal several Baby Pigs dressed in silly costumes (a doctor, a construction worker, a bumblebee, a chef, a cowboy, and a magician). Jake immediately thinks they're good but Finn keeps his guard up and decides to give the piglets personality tests to see if they´re evil. The piglets can't even hold the pencils, however. Jake insists that nothing evil could be this adorable and Finn finally agrees and proclaims the pigs good, even though Finn notices that one drew a picture of ice cream under "Do you have any allergies?"

As they are doing this the second pod grows, its sac releasing magic wands (sticks with stars on the end that release rainbows and glitter when waved). Finn and Jake assume that it is good. So Finn and Jake end up playing games with all the baby piglets, who play with the magic wands. After a long day, all of them fall asleep. When Finn and Jake wake up the next morning, they notice that the third pod has sprouted,it's sac was bigger than the other sacs . Assuming that it's the evil one, they begin attacking it. Jake notices that the sac is "leaking" a brown substance. Upon opening the sac, Jake sees that it's full of ice cream and proceeds to eat some of it. Finn is worried that Jake is being poisoned, but Jake assures him that this pod was "the goodest thing that's ever happened to me." Finn realizes that this pod is good.

They then notice that the piglets have vanished. They find them terrorizing Mushroom Town, using the magic wands to destroy the town and make its inhabitants dance. Jake also gets struck by the wand and starts dancing. Finn, thinking quickly, reviews the personality tests he had given the piglets and finds out that they are allergic to ice cream. Carrying the sac of ice cream on his back, he proceeds to squirt massive jets of ice cream at each piglet, which in turn makes them explode into confetti. He almost gets won over by the adorable gaze of the construction worker piglet but is still able to spray it with ice cream.

The Mushroom People (still dancing) thank Finn and Jake. A citizen then says that the Mushroom people must remove the ice cream covering the town. Jake then eats all of the ice cream covering the town. He then leaves to the Ice Cream Marathon and the episode ends with Finn telling the Mushroom people that, "He just really likes ice cream."

Major Characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Baby Pigs

Minor Characters

 * Gnome Knight
 * Mushroom People
 * Mushroom Mayor
 * Snail

Music

 * Planting Beans Song

Trivia

 * This episode contains warped usage and references to various classic fairy tales, including "The Three Little Pigs", "Jack and the Beanstalk", "The Frog Prince", and "The Red Shoes".
 * When Jake says "I've always got room for ice cream!", this hints back to Business Time, when he and Finn ate ice cream for half the episode, this also hints back to that episode because ice cream was used for battling evil.
 * The colours of the wand also represent the colours of the wand of Let's Work Together.
 * This is the second episode where Jake gets fat by eating ice cream. The first was "Business Time."
 * One of the doves in the beginning of the episode was wearing a ring in the beak.
 * In "Slumber Party Panic", Jake admits that he can't eat chocolate because he's a dog, but eats the chocolate ice cream as part of the ice cream pod. This could be because it was chocolate-flavored ice cream as opposed to actual chocolate.

Analysis
Although the staff of the show has stated that the pod containing the Baby Pigs was the evil one as stated by Natasha Allegri, all three pods have implications on them and could be determined as good or evil:


 * The pigs could have been one of the good pods if they were innocent as Finn determined and that the wands corrupted them. But they could have also been the evil pod if they were planning on tricking him and using the wands all along for themselves.
 * The wands could have been the evil pod considering they were used as weapons by the pigs and corrupted their naive natures leading to their rampage. But being that they were merely a weapon and not the one using it, it could have been a good pod that the pigs would use being "evil" for an evil deed.
 * Though the ice cream feels like it was one of the good pods, it could have been the evil pod from the perspective of the pigs: though they craved the ice cream, they possess a lethal allergy that would kill them if they partake in it, which led to their demise at the hands of Finn. If you think of the perspective that the pigs could believe themselves as good and that their usage of the wands, even in the means of destruction, is also good, then the ice cream is evil in that it would stop them due to their allergy.
 * In a way, none of the pods were evil if the baby pigs hadn't found the wands they would've stayed the same probably. The wands made the pigs evil but without the pigs the wands would not have been used as a weapon and the ice cream pod would not be used.