"BMO Noire" is the seventeenth episode in the fourth season of Adventure Time. It's the ninety-fifth episode overall.
Synopsis[]
BMO tries to solve the mystery of Finn's missing sock.
Plot[]
Finn asks Jake where his sock is, but Jake denies taking it. They get into an argument when Finn asks Jake to help him look for it. At this point, the colors change to black and white (like an old movie). BMO decides to find Finn's missing sock. Jake convinces Finn to go out with only one sock and BMO snaps a picture of Finn's foot as he leaves.
BMO notices Ronnie in the picture and grabs him for questioning. BMO spots lipstick on the back of Ronnie's neck and asks him about Lorraine. Ronnie warns BMO to stay away from her, but BMO assures him that they are "dinosaur bones." Ronnie then denies taking the sock, but points out a stain on Finn's other sock in the photo, saying that it looks like a grape juice stain. BMO goes into the pantry to check out the grape juice but it finds it is unopened and realizes Ronnie was lying. Suddenly, someone traps BMO by shutting the door. When the door opens, Officer Davis is standing there waiting for BMO. He tells BMO to stay out of police business and threatens to put BMO behind bars.
BMO, ignoring Officer Davis' advice (and threat), heads over to Lorraine's hoping that she can lead BMO to Ronnie. BMO asks Lorraine where the sock is, but she denies knowing anything about it. When BMO suggests that Ronnie took it, she laughs at the idea, saying that if Ronnie were man enough to take a sock she would not be spending her nights with Bebe. BMO asked if she was saying Bebe is man enough, but she denies it and says that Bebe does not know anything about Finn's sock. BMO catches Lorraine mentioning that the sock is Finn's and points out that she should not know any details of the case. Lorraine confesses that Bebe was the one who stole the sock. As BMO is leaving, Lorraine asks BMO not to tell Ronnie about her and Bebe, but Ronnie is hiding near the rafters.
BMO then heads to Bebe's, a dance club downtown, and immediately starts stepping on Bebe and grilling him about the sock's location. However, Bebe denies knowing anything about socks, so BMO grabs some soot from a furnace and smears it on Bebe telling him that Lorraine sold him out. Bebe denies it and tells BMO that it was Ronnie who took the sock. BMO goes to wash the soot off of its hands, but when BMO gets back to Bebe to clean him up it finds out that he is dead and the police are arriving. BMO runs from the cops, but trips over one of them and falls down the Tree Fort's ladder, hitting its head.
While unconscious, BMO has a strange dream/vision which consists of POV sequences of BMO performing the actions of the 'characters' in the 'play.' BMO wakes up to find Neptr next to it. BMO asks Neptr if he had seen any cops down there. Neptr tells BMO that only they and Ronnie had been down there all day and that "about a sock's worth" of treasure was missing from that room. BMO realizes that Ronnie took the sock to carry the treasure, killed Bebe so he would not tell anyone, and pinned it on BMO.
BMO goes back upstairs to look for Ronnie, but finds a chalk outline of Ronnie with a ketchup stain in it instead. Officer Davis tells BMO that it is off the hook since they know Ronnie killed Bebe and took the treasure. Officer Davis hands BMO the confession Ronnie left and tells BMO to let the case go. BMO then notices that the note was written with lipstick and runs outside.
Lorraine is sitting on top of a barrel, with treasure, and floating in a pond. Lorraine confesses to framing Ronnie and Bebe and then reveals that the sock is in her and BMO's "secret grown-up kissing spot," to which BMO reacts with a giggle. Lorraine bids farewell, floats to the opposite side of the pond and jumps on to land.
The colors change back to normal as Finn and Jake return to the Tree Fort, with the Sea Lard. BMO shows Finn that his sock was in his pillow the whole time. Finn is happy that his sock is found, and he and BMO repeatedly say "Yay BMO!" After a short while, Jake asks "Our chicken's name is Lorraine?" BMO says yes and mentions that she is "red hot like pizza supper," and blushes as the episode ends.
Characters[]
Major characters[]
- BMO
- Ronnie (only appearance)
- Lorraine (debut; only physical appearance)
- Officer Davis (only appearance)
- Bebe (only appearance)
Minor characters[]
- Finn
- Jake
- Neptr
- Officer Meow (only appearance)
- Lieutenant Whiskers (only appearance)
- Sea Lard (debut)
- Snail
Locations[]
Music[]
Trivia[]
- During BMO's dream sequence, its face becomes human-like, resembling the detective's face in the title card.
- This is the first Adventure Time episode that is in black and white, but it is not the first time Adventure Time showed a scene that was black and white. The first time was "Gut Grinder," when Old Soft Person was talking about the events of what happened. The second time was in "Hug Wolf," when BMO used strobe light mode.
- This is the first episode in which BMO is the main character.
- This episode reveals that the Tree Fort has cats and a chicken coop.
- It's strange that the Tree Fort would have cats considering Jake has said many time that he hates them. Although it's possible that they may have been strays that somehow got inside the fort.
- All of the new characters shown in this episode are voiced by Niki Yang, the same voice for BMO and Lady Rainicorn, thus even furthering the fact that BMO is making the story up.
- In the title card Finn and Jake are seen in the background with Jake holding the lipstick.
- BMO can play its own video games.
- When Finn and Jake arrived from their adventure, before Finn drops the Sea Lard he holds, he is shown to have worn two socks, although this sock was shown to be a sock Finn made out of tortillas in "Princess Potluck."
- BMO fights off a villain named, "Master Chen," which is coincidentally the name of a character in LEGO Ninjago. Interestingly, this episode was released before that character made his debut in Ninjago.
Episode connections[]
- In "Princess Potluck," it was revealed that while Finn and Jake were gone, they were attending Princess Bubblegum's potluck, as Finn is shown missing a sock and Jake with eyelashes/a spiral of lipstick on his face and has an arrow on his head.
- Neptr is seen for the first time since "Hot to the Touch".
Cultural references[]
- "BMO Noire" is a reference to the concept of film noir (French for "black film"), a genre of crime movies popular in the 1940s and 50s.
- The episode uses conventional elements of film noir including: black-and-white photography, contrasting light and shadows, the use of voiceover narration, smoking, double cross, wrongly accused people, flashbacks in a knockout sequence, swarthy characters including a femme fatale, and the protagonist of the story being a hardboiled detective.
- When BMO took off its controller plug and stepped on it, there was the sound of a cigarette being extinguished. This is common imagery from generic crime movies and hardboiled detectives.
- When BMO wakes up, it tells Neptr that it feels like it got "hit with a Dracula by King Kong."
- There are frequent references to David Lynch, whom Pendleton Ward cites as an influence.[1] The dream sequence might be a reference to the dream sequences common in Twin Peaks, with a few specifics from Lost Highway, wherein a character's face fades out and reappears as an old man with bright lips. The idea of the remote being mysteriously "murdered" is also similar to the plot of the film.
- In the beginning of the episode, Jake draws a spiral on his face in red lipstick. This is a reference to the film Dark City, which draws heavily on film noir influences.
- The Episode also contains a lot of allusions to the film The Machinist particularly with BMO staring into the mirror during the flashbacks adding to the hints that the plot is a manifestation of BMO's fantasies.
Storyline analysis[]
- It is implied in the end that BMO and Lorraine's "secret grownup kissing spot" is Finn's pillow.
- There are various hints that the episode is but a part of BMO's (and possibly Neptr's) imagination. Some of them are:
- While talking to Ronnie, BMO is moving Ronnie's lips during the times the viewers hear him talk.
- During the flashbacks after BMO's knock-out, the viewers see BMO putting lipstick on Lorraine's mouth.
- Bebe, a character in the episode, is a TV remote controller. In the flashback, BMO is seen manually taking out his batteries.
- When Lorraine leaves, she does not take Finn and Jake's gold with her, even though she is the one that stole it and framed Ronnie for the crime.
- BMO likes role-playing and talking to itself as seen in "Five Short Graybles."
- All of the made up characters are voiced by Niki Yang, the same voice of BMO.
Production notes[]
- The working title for this episode was "B-Mo Noir." So technically, only the spelling changed.
Errors[]
- When BMO punched the mirror, the reflection of the word "BMO" is the same where it should be an inverted "BMO." This also happens when BMO is washing off the soot on its hands.
- The things that are seen around BMO when it is lying on the floor disappear after it gets up.
- Part of treasure moves as BMO and Neptr are talking.
- The things Lorraine stole move from the barrel during the zoom in.
- The spiral Jake drew on his face changes when he turns around and starts yelling at Finn, then he looks in the mirror again and it appears as he drew it. When he leaves the house and comes back at the end of the episode the spiral is not like he first drew it either.
- A fork that was stuck on the table Jake was sitting on disappears when Finn goes to tell Jake to help him find his sock.
- When Finn drops the Sea Lard, he has two socks on instead of one.
Videos[]
Gallery[]
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Background art[]
Screenshots[]
