Another Way

"Another Way" is the twenty-third episode in season three of Adventure Time.

Synopsis
When Clown Nurses make Finn uncomfortable, Finn ignores all options except his own when he decides to get cyclops tears to heal his and Jake's broken toes.

Plot
The episode begins with Finn and Jake being treated by Clown Nurses that Jake hired after he and Finn jumped off flying birds and broke their toes. Finn reads in the Enchiridion that there is a cyclops whose tears can heal any injury. He tries to prove that there's another way, but they insist that he leave the healing to them. The nurses wish to cure the duo by kissing their feet, but Finn refuses. The Clown Nurses are determined to 'cure' Finn, so they hold down his arms so he can't move and kiss his toes. Finn pleads at them to let him go and has a sudden nightmare about the nurses, flips out and leaves the Tree Fort, determined to do things his way. Jake liked the kisses, so he stayed behind.

Screaming all the way, Finn runs up to the forest of Trees and comes to a fork in the road with a Stump with a direction sign on its head. She tells Finn to choose one of the paths, the left path being Hair Fall-Off Path, and the path on the right, Smelly Path. Still haunted by the thought of the Clown Nurses, Finn proclaims he will do things his way, kicks the direction sign off her head, and rushes through the thorn bushes behind her.

He comes up to a river, with a rude Talking Bush along the shore. After Finn tells the talking bush of his quest to find the cyclops, the talking bush tells Finn that it is impossible to cross the river. The river's current is much too fast, the water is acidic, the bridge above the river is a Trap Bridge, and there are electric eels in the water. Still determined to do things his way, Finn rips the Talking Bush out of the ground and runs through the river, swatting the water out of the way with the Talking Bush, but doesn't even make it to halfway across the river. Ignoring the destroyed Talking Bush's warning to go back, he tosses him to the far bank and runs through the acidic water.

Finn rushes up to a little hairy man named Pan with watermelons in a broken wagon and uses one of the watermelon's juices to rinse off the acidic water. Pan asks him to get his wagon's wheel to out of a tree so he can get the watermelons to his wife down the path, since he was too short to reach them. Finn, having gone mad with doing things his way, smashes the cart and the watermelons roll down the hill and smash the man's house and flatten his wife, Rainy. The distraught Pan tells Finn to go away.

Finn, having snapped back to reality, realizes what he has done that day and sings a sad song in his auto-tune voice on top of a cliff. The cliff, it turns out, is the Forest Cyclops and it tells Finn that it knows he's here for its tears and that Finn won't get any because he never cries, along with stating that he is evil. Finn tells the cyclops he doesn't want his tears anymore, but the cyclops doesn't believe him and attacks Finn. Finn tricks the cyclops into bringing its head near him under the pretense of hearing Finn beg for mercy, and punches the cyclops in the eye and causes its tears to fall on him. Finn, now healed, defeats the cyclops and takes its still living head and heals all the people he hurt on his journey (including an inanimate Sandwich, which he brings to life).

Back at the Tree Fort, Finn tells the Clown Nurses to kiss the cyclops head, which they do. Jake tells Finn he prefers his way of having the nurses kiss his feet, instead of being healed by the tears. Finn accepts that everyone has their own way, much to Jake's amazement.

Main characters

 * Finn
 * Clown Nurses

Minor characters

 * Forest Cyclops
 * Jake
 * Tree People
 * Tree Stump With Sign
 * Talking Bush
 * Rainy
 * Pan
 * Trap Bridge
 * Electric Eels
 * Birds (mentioned)
 * Sandwich
 * Snail

Songs

 * Melons

Trivia

 * The reason Finn and Jake are injured is because they jumped off birds. This is depicted in the title card.
 * The music playing in the background during the parts of the episode where the Clown Nurses are shown in the Treehouse, such as at the beginning, is a music box version of the German yodeling song "Das Kufsteiner Lied."
 * Finn was able to walk even though his foot was broken, although he could also walk while his legs were broken in "No One Can Hear You"
 * It is unknown how Finn crossed the acid river after he healed the bush.
 * On the back of the Enchiridion, the numbers "8, 13, 21" can be seen; these numbers are part of the famed Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two numbers immediately previous to it, and is a series that is closely, if not then intimately, related to the Golden Ratio.
 * The word "way" was mentioned at least 25 times.

Continuity errors

 * Finn's shoes were back when he got home after gaining the cyclops' head but at first when he removed the bandage he has no shoe.
 * After Finn's encounter with the small, hairy people the scene shows an impossible river in the distance. It also shows it closer but only a little of it.
 * Before Finn's nightmare the coffee cup on his bedside table is plain gray. After the nightmare it has a blue stripe in the middle.

Episode connections

 * Finn is seen with the Enchiridion for the first time since the episodes "The Enchiridion!" and "Evicted!" back in season one.
 * The picture of Finn and the unknown green bear from "Still" appears again, except it's at Jake's bed.
 * Finn's hair is slightly longer since he last took off his hat in "No One Can Hear You."
 * This episode marks the first time Finn has sung in autotune since "Freak City."

Production notes

 * This was the last episode made by the Tom Herpich/Bert Youn duo. It features the first song written by Tom Herpich for the show.
 * On iTunes this episode and "Ghost Princess" are incorrectly labeled as part of season four.

Videos
Video:"Another Way" Animatic|Animatic Video:Adventure Time - Another Way (preview)|Preview TDJDd32fGgE