The Witch's Garden (episode)

Synopsis
After an incident, a witch steals Jake's powers and won't give them back unless he apologizes to her. During a series of events trying to find a way to get Jake's powers back, Finn's life is then held on the line, but will Jake's new laziness get the best of him?

Plot
While Finn and Jake are stalking a frog holding a crown, the frog goes through a gate and Jake uses his powers to go over the wall. Soon, they stumble upon a garden filled with sweets, doughnuts, cupcakes, etc. growing on bushes. Jake begins to sniff a doughnut to find out if it contains any poison. Suddenly, the owner of the garden, a Witch, arrives and accuses Jake of eating one of her doughnuts. Jake disagrees on this, but sees the doughnut in his hand and eats it. Enraged, the Witch casts a spell on Jake and suddenly his body from the neck down is transformed to resemble a small man wearing underwear. The Witch explains that she took away Jake's powers and won't give them back unless he apologizes to her. Jake refuses to, and so the Witch teleports Finn and Jake out of her garden. Then she starts talking to a bagel and—upon realizing the bagel is not a doughnut—she transforms it into a small Bagel Human wearing underwear too.

Finn tries to help Jake get his powers back, but now that Jake is powerless, he is lazier than ever. He remembers as a puppy, he rolled around in a mud puddle, and he comes to the conclusion that he got his powers from that same puddle. Finn decides to help him find the puddle and head out to find some mud puddles. As they start their journey, Jake becomes too lazy, making Finn carry him to the mud puddle. They arrive at River of Junk, where they see a mud puddle on the other side. Finn begins to swim through the river to reach it, but Jake decides that it's too hard to try to reach the other side thanks demotivation from his subconscious. Finn makes a catapult to get Jake over to the other mud puddle, but the mud puddle is useless, and Jake is still powerless. Suddenly, Gary (a mermaid) appears from the River of Junk and kidnaps Finn (after a battle), taking him to her nest and leaving him as food for her hatchlings. Finn is unable to fight back, however, because he has been knocked unconscious by the mermaid's sludge attack.

Jake tries to rescue Finn, but is too lazy to climb up the tree and even asks for help to get up there. With no choice, Jake decides to go back to the Witch and apologize to her. The Witch allows Jake to get into her garden, but she refuses to accept Jake's apology, as he took too much time. Now the Witch makes Jake do humiliating stunts, like slow-dancing with his subconscious with flowers in his underwear. But then, Jake's subconscious dies, as he was the subconscious of Jake's old magical self. Sad that his subconscious is dead and his best friend is going to be eaten by giant birds, Jake begins to cry about what will happen to him. The Witch, planting cupcakes, murmurs, "Let this be a lesson to you, cupcakes." Thinking Jake learned his lesson, the Witch gives Jake his powers back and restores his normal body, while his Subconscious comes back to life. Jake then knocks away the Witch's cane, takes another doughnut, and when the Witch asks if Jake learned his lesson, he replies simply, "Nope." Jake returns to the mermaid's nest and pushes the mermaid back to the River of Junk, then scares away the birds. When Finn asks Jake if he got his powers back by apologizing, Jake lies and says he found the right mud puddle.

Major characters

 * Finn
 * Jake
 * Witch
 * Gary

Minor characters

 * Hatchlings
 * Jake's subconscious
 * Two-Headed Duck
 * Snail
 * Crown Frog
 * Bagel

Trivia

 * The Witch's spell "Magicusnomoreicus" seem to give the target a man-baby body and white briefs, as both Jake and the bagel are given them.
 * This is the first episode of the show to air after the network changed their logo on May 29, 2010.
 * The outside of the Witch's garden has a monster face appearance, with two windows for eyes, a branch nose and a mouth made of two roots.
 * The River of Junk is shown beneath the ruins of a large, elevated freeway.

Episode connections

 * Jake steals and eats the Witch's doughnut without realizing it, just as he stole some boots but didn't notice it in the episode "City of Thieves."
 * The witch uses the magic word "Razzmafu" previously used in the episode "Wizard." The spell appears to be used for teleportation.

Production notes

 * In a cut scene, the Witch's video does end up on her newsletter, and a bunch of princesses and Lady Rainicorn watch it on a computer.