Adventure Time

Adventure Time has perhaps the most oddly tiered audience in all of television: pre-adolescents, hormonal teens and self-aware adults, each demographic watching for different reasons – and some of the same. That’s because this series about the experiences of a teen-aged boy and his canine wingman in a post-apocalyptic land called Ooo, is animated alchemy, an impossible mash-up of comedy, horror, fairy tale and coming-of-age fable. The boy, Finn, is our proxy in this strange, pastel world, where the characters have rubbery, joint-less limbs (think Felix the Cat) and range from an Ice King to assorted mutant insects. Creator Pendleton Ward and his cohorts mix silliness and humor with complex, adult thoughts and feelings. The show doesn’t shy away from the philosophical or the scary, it doesn’t avoid the dark caves and corners of imagination, it embraces fear and wonder, excitement and unpredictability. It dumbs nothing down. It lets emotions stand. Characters feel sadness and fear and hope and uncertainty, the candy colors and goofy jokes notwithstanding. It treats those sad emotions as part of the same journey as the fun ones. For its remarkable, boundary-breaking blend of smart and silly, its bizarre yet recognizable characters and its preparatory weirdness, Adventure Time wins a Peabody Award.