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Jake’s brother has a hard life, but is he deserving of so much stress and madness? Doug and Jason take a look.
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Yay! The cat is back! ^.^ Also, yeah, ugh, I really don’t like that family connection. I don’t know how to feel about it most of the time. On one hand, they usually do want to help you and want you to be healthy. But on the other hand, your family usually only knows how to help you using their methods and sometimes forget about happiness as opposed to just your health and safety.
I’ve been waiting for a focus episode for Jermaine for seasons, and it didn’t disappoint. The opening dream sequence foreshadowed the main conflict perfectly. Amidst a world of infinite color and possibility like the land of Ooo, Jermaine’s grief and obligation to his father’s memory makes his entire worldview a dull, grey cube.
Most people I’ve seen are pretty hard on Jake’s dad, but I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt more than others. His “pay evil unto evil” philosophy is pretty harsh, and he is meant to be that kind of stoic, Greatest Generation type that is very set in his ways, but he also raised a family consisting of his biological son, a magic dog implanted in him by an extra-dimensional alien/demon thing, and an adopted human boy. He loved his sons and gave them the best upbringing he knew how; of all the fathers we’ve seen in AT, he’s among the best.
Unfortunately, Jermaine didn’t see it that way. He felt like Jake was always Joshua’s favorite. After he died, he dealt with the grief by trying to take care of his father’s possessions, even if the strain of it kept him in a prison of his own making. It’s probably worth pointing out that it was never stated that Joshua wanted Jermaine to keep his possessions secure; that was a self-imposed duty Jermaine undertook. In the end he has his blowout with Jake, lets it all go, and strikes up a tentative friendship with one of his former captives. Great episode all around.
Not to mention, they were all demons. Judging from Jermaine’s general reaction of “I would’ve just given it to you if you’d been nicer”, we can surmise these demons probably weren’t the worst beings out there, but I’d like to think Joshua and Margaret actually did help out, including when they basically imprisoned such demons, even if that meant that the demons would become angry and want vengeance. I imagine Kee-Oth was probably worse than these guys, but I guess we can’t really know for sure. Regardless, he was shown as a threat to be taken seriously, considering he met with an untimely end.
I also agree that Joshua was a good father and that he inspired goodness in his children too. Jake and Finn sometimes fight various monsters and demons for the joy of battle, but other times they fought because their opponents weren’t nice people and they intended to commit evil. Certainly we’ve seen that demons and monsters can have understandable emotions, yet this changes nothing. Humans can commit awful crimes and still be human. Most humans won’t, and some crimes are so terrible they require a serious pathology to perform, but many horrible crimes are also committed by relatively normal people. These demons probably weren’t the worst of the worst, and some might have even been wrongfully imprisoned (for all that we know, their parents could have made some mistakes), but I think it’s kind of one-dimensional to assume these guys were completely innocent without knowing anything about them. Finn and Jake are adventurers because they basically took up the activities of their parents… Just with less of a film noir mystery thriller type feel. It would seem like neither role appealed to Jermaine. As you noted, he was trying to deal with the grief and live up to his father’s expectations by keeping these demons off the streets, so to speak. Maybe not because he found it appealing, but it seemed like the best way initially, until he found out just how frustrating it could become. For all we know, Joshua and Margaret didn’t keep these guys imprisoned indefinitely anyway… Maybe it was meant as a temporary punishment to give them time for introspection, for the ones who might have that capacity anyway. The one with the poster seemed to change his mind at the end (of course he could also have Stockholm Syndrome, to some extent) so it seems possible it could make them reconsider their more abhorrent behaviors? I mean, truthfully I haven’t done much research on the usefulness of imprisonment, but that’s my theory.
Anyway, there is a point to be made about the “sins of the father” commentary in the video, but I think your thoughts are more accurate overall. 🙂
Eep, sorry for that one monster paragraph! I really wish we had an edit function. 🙁
Also I forgot to add, I agree with all of the other points they made in general. I just don’t think it applies to this exact situation, because I don’t think Joshua was inherently a bad person or doing really bad things.
If that were true, I believe that we would have seen another strong influence on Finn and Jake, besides Margaret (who might not have done exactly the same stuff to these demons, but was implied to be Joshua’s partner in life and on the case.) They’re all vigilantes, but given the way might often makes right in Ooo, this seems pretty valuable.
Eh, I dunno. I’m not trying to say their parents were always right, just not awful. :I
“You’re never gonna taste my carne asada, Bryce” that line always makes me laugh and I don’t know why
It was very good