The More You Moe, The Moe You Know: BMO's Journey to Adulthood (Adventure Time)

[Music] [Applause] thank you out of all 285 episodes of Adventure Time including all the ones that I've Loved enough to give their own video on this channel my favorite outing the series has ever produced is the season 7 two-parter The more you mow the mo you know while it's not an episode that's super important in the show's overall plot or has some great action sequence the episode contains so many genuinely moving scenes all revolving around and his journey in the episode both his physical Journey to the factory he was made in as well as his metaphorical journey of growing up and that's what we're going to be talking about today in this video we're going to go through my favorite 22 minutes of the show talk about every heartbreaking moment and gorgeous shot and discuss how by focusing on how sees the world the show ultimately makes its magnum opus oh boy oh boy is here the episode kicks off by establishing that it's bmo's birthday kinda as he's a robot who wasn't really born and that is the holidays kinda as it's really just PB making it snow the tree house both of these facts contribute to the episode's overall feel as it being bmo's semi birthday reflects upon the growth that he'll experience in the next 21 minutes and the snow makes the episode the series second Christmas special which feels like it was either a corporate request or just an excuse to have the absolutely stunning shots of in the snow that come up later in the episode back to the beginning though bmo's entrance into the episode comes pretty quickly as he announces the coming of Mo his formerly human and currently cyborg Creator which has him pretty hyped up as he's apparently coming to give him a special birthday surprise a knock at the door turns out to be a robotic Mo who tells a confused that he's just mowing a new body as his old one finally gave out spoilers for the rest of the episode obviously if you didn't already see that coming but this robot ends up just being amo in Disguise and I really like how they use this plot element relative to both the plot and the theme of growing up for starters it's not entirely outside the Roman possibility that Mo somebody who has used robotics to prolong his life already would transfer his body to an actual robot as a final step it also works relative to the theme of becoming a different person when you grow up as be more related to in his monologue later in the episode but I'm getting ahead of myself a bit as fake Mo gives the birthday surprise which ends up being a solo mission to find himself and grow up a supposed rite of passage for every Mo Finn and Jake all seem pretty hesitant to agree to this but he assures the trio that it's just a simple trick to and back from the mo Factory and that he's going to be staying with Finn and Jake while being most gone so they don't miss their friend obviously everybody still finds it pretty sketchy but it's decided that in order for to grow up he has to do it and thus he leaves a tree house all alone for the harsh conditions that await him outside before can even say a word the beauty of the episode begins to scream at you with a snow-covered ooh that makes you forget about the plot's convenience that got it there in the first place every shot of this episode that takes place outside has this effect and it kind of takes your breath away with just how well the colors work together in order to amplify the often melancholic Vibe of the episode luckily the dialogue that comes only adds to this terrific scene as monologues to air who befriended back in season 5 and promised to be with him always but air never responds back as vemo begins to feel what he talks about fearing which are the negative parts of growing up as you become a new person and lose touch with who you used to be this monologue is backed by some really fantastic music that makes the lament the lack of a soundtrack for the show as the series accompanies bmo's words of not knowing if he'll be the same person after growing up with some Bizarro images from his imagination of what being an adult is like which use these dull colors in a granny filter to make the scene strangely nostalgic while also just being stunningly well animated and Incredibly clever I mean seriously just look at some of these shots they look like a different show and there are so many details you can pick out with the easiest being remembering fit and Jake completely differently similar to Finn and bahoy emphasizing his fear of losing his current way of life when he changes in the future the scene wraps up with uneasily using Mo's new form as confirmation that you can stay the same person after growing up which quickly becomes ironic given that any hope that he's actually MO is quickly diminished this scene is genuinely fantastic and establishing the tone for the rest of the episode as the usually cheerful is forced to confront some pretty messed up stuff but still looks at it with a surreal imaginative lens continues his journey off screen as we transition back to Finn Jake and melon quotation marks who were awkwardly interacting in the treehouse we cut back to this side of the story pretty often the episode as besides just slowly revealing more and more about amo in conjunction with the discoveries of at the factory it also definitely has my favorite jokes of the episode with one of my favorites being in this first scene well probably really like listens to the sound of the earth decaying the boys are obviously pretty hesitant to fully Embrace sudo-mo as their robotic companion but the character begins to change in order to become more appealing to Finn and Jake which foreshadows his eventual reveal as Amo and Amos programming to Crave love Finn and Jake fall for it which while it initially seems uplifting it pretty quickly becomes ominous as enters the factory to find demo the mo in charge of guarding the entrance Frey to the side as he seems to be hijacked this obviously freaks him out but not in time to avoid falling on the conveniently marked trapdoor leading us to a fun scene with just tumbling down a trash compactor narrowly avoiding being trash compacted and ultimately getting trapped by his foot this marks the turning point of the episode as definitely not actually MO is revealed to the audience to be nefarious which is necessary to have some context to the following scene back outside the tree house as Finn and Jake play in in the snow and inadvertently Bonk their new robotic friend who's desperately trying to get their attention his tears after this moment contrast with in the scene before whose situation pretty clearly indicates a lack of ability to perceive pain in the mo line of robots which makes it clear that he's doing it for sympathy to try to get the pair to go back inside where they're more likely to pay attention to him speaking of we get the second of his imaginative surreal sequences which is equally as impressively animated as he tries to justify most trap as part of his lesson maybe the lesson is dead when you are grown you won't ever be able to tell if everything is going totally Haywire or maybe actually everything is perfectly fine this thought comes as he is freed from his predicament as he encounters the first dark element of the shockingly dark episode ammo who explains their creation with a flashback as they tell of every Mo in the factory being hijacked and commanded the somersault into the trash compactor lemming style resulting in the compression of nearly bmo's entire species into one immobile block of computing which even for the last couple seasons of Adventure Time is super harsh and also somehow not even the most morbid scene in this episode it's a really great moment for establishing the tension in the episode as is the last part before the commercial break as well as Loosely tying into the theme of growing up as seeing essentially his family all end up growing up to lose their individuality and become part of one machine it's both and any Adventure Time's adult audience pretty hard Alma themselves actually seem the least bummed of all parties involved as they explain their predicament of being stuck in the basement with no ability to move and theorize that by combining their super computer intelligence with the most imagination and ability to move or their life experience with the most childhood innocence to continue the metaphor of the episode that the pair can escape the prison after using his imagination to come up with the idea of piling up trash begins to explore the vents of the factory where he eventually stumbles upon the room of Amo the first Mo ever made and the full introduction of the antagonist of the episode there are so many really fun details in the scene that align with almost description of the robot as besides the obvious horror movie-esque love me scribbles on the ceiling there's also a torn up doll emphasizing his desperation for love and his tendency to lash out at those who aren't constantly providing it and a dead hamster which besides answering the question of can Adventure Time get away with showing the corpse of an animal that starved to death with a somewhat surprising yes also further illustrates the juxtaposition between amo's desire for love and his inability to give it this scene is just genuinely tremendous and creating the villain of Amo without him even being there as the character is revealed to be the exact opposite of being though as they were built to receive and give love respectively the ending of the scene emphasizes the ability of to overcome his evil brother in the episodes climax as Amo tells him uh you're stronger than you know meanwhile while is having his crisis on the other side of ooh Finn and Jake are being bored by amo's fake old man Shenanigans and while I spent most of this episode talking about the beautiful visuals and the elegant dialogue and how they both interact in order to add to the episode's poignant theme I think is worth noting that this episode is still really stinking funny even outside of the genuinely amusing Shenanigans the hangman scene just hits with joke after joke with the best of them all having to be be Burgess Meredith I don't know e is this Burgess Paradise again while the slapstick humor of the first couple of seasons is great the more low-key and subdued humor of the second half of Adventure Time has always been my favorite and this episode is fantastic example of that watching Jake get slowly more and more tired of emotion and against until eventually storming off works really well comedically in order to create some levity in the moment in between discovering that his entire family has been involuntarily Voltron and that his brother is probably going to kill Finn and Jake as it holds its own as a b plot against what might be my favorite a plot in the series as it ends with the pair leaving Amo just as everybody else has as his smile Fades once the plots merge in the next scene we get to see another example of Amos thirst for love harming others as after he frames nectar for attacking him in order to get the sympathy of Finn and Jake they immediately call out the scenario as impossible causing emo to lash out and knock them out as well screaming this in a pretty chilling moment you don't know me wake up and love me the rest of the episode is made up of the confrontation of and Amo as well as with a pair of robots each represent as the former chases the ladder across the beautiful snowy Landscapes that surround the Treehouse as approaches him Amo launches into the story of how he found Mo on the brink of death and it surprisingly played pretty straightforward as despite the gag of emo doing the voice for his creator we get to watch as Mo a quasi-human being dies on screen the immediate change in Attitude from anger to grief as learned to this news is portrayed really well in order to give the final climax some more emotional weight as the pair began to fight over most memories as they each try and grasp on to the last semblance of a man who meant so much to both of them watching get genuinely pretty jacked up in the process adds to the surprisingly dramatic scene as a clever use of amo's weaponized Falls sends him hurling off the side of the cliff where we see yet another death of a being that's just as alive as as the last section of the episode is spent dealing with the two deaths that just occurred as begins to work through his problems by talking to a rainbow representation of his subconscious this conversation between the bmos Begins by trying to explain why Amo perished while lived if both of them were just following the heart that Mo gave them and questioning whether or not Amo was just doomed from the start this kind of question is not one that Adventure Time is afraid of as they do a pretty similar thing with Fern but this episode handles it exceptionally well by calling back to homo's comment regarding what is different about in comparison to his brother and whereas every other Mo follows their programming was literally made to be more as he isn't just a creation of Mo but his own being this sentiment is hammered in by the last thing in the episode as it very sweetly concludes with a flashback with Mo and his favorite creation I feel so very very proud of you saying that the entirety of Adventure Time and a good chunk of the best episodes are about growing up shouldn't be a revolutionary statement as it's a fairly easy conclusion to draw and one that I talked about pretty extensively in my video about the Hall of egress and unlike that episode The more you mow the more you know is very explicitly about the process of growing up but it's not entirely clear what the actual message of the episode is on the surface well the first half of the episode is filled with sequences that directly talk about adulthood the ending conflict only seems tangentally connected to the theme but when you dive a bit deeper amo's death is perfectly conclusive to bmo's worries about growing up but that he expressed in the first half of the episode the two main robots of this episode face the same problem towards this conclusion being that the most important figure in their life their creator has passed away and both pairs lose their last connection to their childhood meaning that their finally forced to grow up but of course given their programming each pair decides to face this problem differently accepts his condition realizing that while he's going to change when growing up this change doesn't have to be negative and there's no use fighting it emo on the other hand refuses this fate and hurts everybody that tries to help him during this time even when he's telling about how he took over the factory you can see that even during his forced reprogramming demo is genuinely happy to see Amo but Amo is too blinded by the feeling of not being loved to see it as he attempts to take firm control of his life and literally hold on to the past in the form of Moe's memories he refuses to change as a result of most passing and just goes to look for another Mo in the form of Finn and Jake who he lashes out for even insinuating that they still love this context morphs the final struggle between and his brother into a battle of the two different ways to handle the inevitability of growing up accepting it or fighting it the episode's message is not whether or not growing up is bad or whether or not becoming a new person when you become an adult is bad as it simply acknowledges that these things will occur and that even if you change significantly and lose relationships as Bemo feared in his conversation with air that trying to deny or fight these changes is only going to make things worse as seen amo's refusal to accept the changes in his life and the inability to think outside of his programming causing him to Tumble to his Doom while accepts living a life that he can't fully control or understand I'm not grown up or I'm too grown up now I think I just killed someone doesn't grow up by the end of this episode as he still holds on to the memories of Mo at the end despite Moe's wish for them to be launched into space A Wish only fulfilled by during the finale speaking of alley it also shows that is still trying to bring back ammo a thousand years later as he still struggles with trying to completely move on from the past echoing the struggles of a good chunk of the cast with less than Stellar parents but the difference between and Amo is never depicted to be that one is grown up and the other one isn't but that one is accepting of their journey to adulthood and the changes and challenges that will follow while the other one dies believing that they will always be who they were from the start and it's this dichotomy in addition to the beautiful backgrounds and stunning imagination sequences that makes this my favorite episode and one of my favorite series it successfully takes a character who's almost exclusively used for gags in the show and creates a terrific tale about growing up and the importance of accepting changes in your life all while having some really impactful yet funny dialogue and some really creative sequences that I revisit quite frequently so while I love and will continue to make videos about other episodes in Adventure Time there's none that have quite connected with me like the more you mow the mo you know as ever since the episode aired seven years ago I'd be lying if I say I didn't relate to both the most in this episode more than a couple of times but while it's easy to stay as Amo and reject the idea that you'll never be the person that you were yesterday it's important to come to the same conclusion as his brother at the end of the episode as otherwise you'll end up being hurled off a mountain too metaphorically of course anyway that's going to be about it for me thank you so much to anybody who made it all the way through I know this video is a bit chunkier than usual but given this is my favorite episode of this show I knew I had to give it my all if you want to see what I'm working on next my Twitter is somewhere in the description but otherwise this has been Apple Samuel and I'll see you in some unit of time with another video thanks for watching [Music] thank you

Channel: AmpleSamuel

Views: 56,163

Keywords: Ample, Samuel, AmpleSamuel, Ample Samuel, Adventure Time, AT, Review, Moe, BMO, TMYMTMYK, AMO, Burgess Meredith

Id: R75ThG9u_gc

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023