Follow TV Tropes

Following

Recap / Adventure Time S 5 E 4 Up A Tree

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/242px-up_a_tree_title_card_6313.png
When his flying discus gets stuck in a very tall tree, Finn's attempt to recover it by himself turns into an adventure.

Tropes

  • Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag: Jake and Finn pretend to be a normal human and non-sentient dog while playing with the discus at the beginning.
  • Ax-Crazy: The tree animals are quite the insane cult.
  • Bizarre Alien Locomotion: The porcupine climbs the tree by curling up into a ball and rolling around as his spines touch the bark.
  • Cardboard Prison: The bars of the cell are wide enough apart for Finn to just walk through them.
  • Disney Creatures of the Farce: The tree animals are more traditionally cartoonish than most of the series, with big eyes, but they're also an insane cult that wants to assimilate Finn into the tree life.
  • Distinction Without a Difference:
    Finn: So does that mean I'll be a prisoner forever?
    Squirrel: Well, yes and no. Are you a prisoner? Yes. Will you ever be free? No.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Some of the tree animals help Finn up the tree, but only the squirrel is genuinely good.
  • Forgot I Couldn't Swim: The squirrel only tells Finn that his dreams of flight were a fantasy after Finn has kicked him off the tree and jumped after him.
  • Good All Along: The squirrel.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Feeling guilty, the squirrel helps Finn escape.
  • Honor Before Reason: The reason that Finn doesn't have Jake just take the discus down from the tree.
  • Incredible Shrinking Man: Finn gets miniaturized from eating a cursed apple.
  • Karmic Jackpot: The Squirrel abandons his clan to rescue Finn, in return he gets his dreams of flying fulfilled courtesy of Finn's disc.
  • Madness Mantra: The forest animals ominously chant the mantra "In the tree, part of the tree, in the tree, part of the tree..."
  • Misplaced Wildlife: Downplayed. Lenny the beaver fits among the woodland animals in general, except beavers are semi-aquatic animals and don't live in trees.
  • Nonstandard Character Design: The tree animals are much more like traditionally animated cartoons, with big eyes.
  • Ominous Owl: The leader of the tree cult is an owl.
  • Pain-Powered Leap: Parodied; Finn points out to a porcupine that being pricked by its needles does not lead to leaping into the air very high. Sure enough, when the porcupine insists on trying it anyway it just leaves Finn with quills in his butt.
  • Pie-Eyed: The squirrel did this when Finn agreed to escape together.
  • Running Gag: The squirrel answering question with variations on "Yes and no."
  • Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Jake says "Bark! Bark!" while pretending to be a non-sentient dog.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The "In the tree, part of the tree" chant is similar to the cursed "Flying Dutchman" crew's chant of "part of the crew, part of the ship" in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
    • Jake saying the word "Bark!" instead of actually barking is equivalent to a running joke (with "Woof") played by Gaspode the talking dog in the Discworld novels.
  • Talking Animal: Finn encounters a whole tree full of talking animals.
  • This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Finn insists on invoking this when Jake points out he could easily get the disc down from the tree for Finn.
  • Token Good Teammate: The squirrel is not as thrilled as taking Finn into assimilating into the tree cult. Ultimately, he helps Finn escape from the tree.
  • Toothy Bird: The owl has teeth in certain shots.
  • Wacky Cravings: Implied; Jake is seen making a bowl of pickles and ice cream, presumably for Lady Rainicorn.
  • Woodland Creatures: The animals in the tree consist of squirrels, chipmunks, beavers, porcupines and birds, lead by an owl.
  • Writing Around Trademarks: The episode obtrusively avoids referring to Finn's discus as a Frisbee™.

Top