The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Cringe

"We have to air out the awkwardness. Let it all hang out. Free and loose, flopping in the wind like a panting dog's tongue!" "That sounds awkward enough already." "And then we'll roll in our awkwardness, slather ourselves in it like a couple of oiled-up prize hogs, until the bitter shame finally tastes sweet!" "I feel like I need a shower." "Funny you should say that."

One of the fun aspects of Season 6 being the final season is that it means the show's closing up shop, and this is the last call to get as much out of its supporting cast and their story arcs as possible. Last week, for instance, we saw Richard and Frankie make amends, and the week before, we saw Tobias finally discover what friendship actually is; in a few weeks, too, we have what's looking to be the last great huzzah for Alan's story arc.

"The Cringe," unsurprisingly, decides to finish off the trilogy of Hot Dog Guy episodes by tackling the duo's awkwardness head-on. First, the episode asks the expected question of how can they get it to stop, but more interestingly, when all else fails, "The Cringe" posits a question to stifle the whole story arc: why are they so awkward? At once, the episode tackles both concepts with an exciting bit of daring and gameness, yet they never fully pay off.

The former half struggles because it flounders around with a few too many ideas without enough consistency in the material. At best, Hot Dog Guy's interactions are delightfully awkward, but at worst, they're drawn out and exhausting.

It's telling, for instance, that the show was most successful in its opening sequence, finding Hot Dog Guy and Gumball caught in the classic one-two of trying to avoid each other, but pitting them against their own bladders. While this is initially a game of trying to get into the bathroom with privacy, causing them to repeatedly fake each other out, it climaxes by torturing the two with a broad array of stimuli that equates to torture, and it's hilarious. (Miss Simian droning on especially was a hilariously unsubtle highlight: "And then all the water goes off the edge. More water than you could ever imagine, so much water gushing. A torrent of water. Then it floods into another river.")

The success of the jokes after that, though, vary in their effectiveness. Cringe comedy is an incredibly difficult thing to pull off, as evidenced by someone I was talking to being so put off that he refused to even formulate an opinion in the slightest, but "The Cringe" never finds another sweet spot to make you squirm with giddiness. Instead, it just sort of makes you squirm and detached. The "Elmore's Got Talent" bit, especially, struggled with this; it succeeds at first, but it keeps going, becoming more and more painful, but instead of making us feel awkward, it just makes us hate watching it, which is sort of an err in judgement if you're trying to make something entertaining.

The closest "The Cringe" got to really getting the ball rolling again was the segment where Gumball subs in as Hot Dog Guy's father, and it's legitimately unnerving in all of the best ways, leaving you laughing (or teetering, if you're weak) at the sheer, baffling nature of the entire situation. But, like a lot of the episode, a lack of cohesion and consistency in what the episode is trying to execute weighs things down. Great in isolation, I'd argue, but they don't add up to a greater whole. With that being said, the scene really was a highlight in its own right, especially as it detoured into ruining Gumball's future in his inability to repress it.

But, to digress the digression, jokes have to feed into jokes to be effective, and "The Cringe," through this section, feels like less of a team effort and more like individual scenes duking it out for the spotlight.

The second part, though—with Hot Dog Guy and Gumball trying to re-discover the root of their akwardness—finds the show actively trying to get somewhere, and it's a fun twist. After Gumball builds an imaginative time machine, he and Hot Dog Guy jointly revisit memories of their past, pushing all the way back to that which they've repressed from their minds. Suddenly, "The Cringe" shifts into this breathtakingly crafty aesthetic as it rewinds further and further back, exploring both characters' interactions at increasingly younger ages.

But here's the thing: as technically impressive as it is, and as much as I hate to say it, the sequence isn't the greatest, and for as well-developed as the stylization was, the writing was disappointingly wobbly. It's not a deal-breaker, but it leaves the sequence with a lot to be desired, especially considering the fact that the issues lay most chiefly in the resolutions. The scenes just don't escalate properly, neither in their comedic value nor cringe factor, and eventually it just turns into fart jokes and something about chickenpox, the former suffering from laziness and the latter sticking out like a sore thumb.

Their ultimate solution, though, is a nice return to heightened absurdity, with Gumball deciding that the best way to fix their situation is to fight trauma with trauma, and they proceed to wreck their little dioramas. As a resolution, it's joyfully destructive and legitimately unexpected, and against all odds, it really works! Or at least until the ultimate ending finds present-day Hot Dog Guy and Gumball getting traumatized by each other, rendering everything painfully redundant.

It's just like the rest of the episode: conceptually-admirable, but never quite meshing nor truly paying off beyond that which we'd expect.

Notes and Quotes:
-"The Cringe," in all of its awkward grotesqueries, actually had a lot of slyly delightful dialogue. So here:
-"It's been so long since I've had a bathroom break I can't laugh without gargling." "Okay, first of all: ew."
-"That's like showing up for a costume party when everyone else is dressed for a black tie event!" "More like turned up to a black tie event wearing only a black tie."
-"It's like a hot air balloon trying to take off. It's never gonna happen if one of the guys is still wearing his pants." "...Wait, what?"
-"Welcome to Elmore's Got Talent! Watch as the anglerfish of fame lures small fry into its jaws using the blinding power of starlight. Laugh at their crushed dreams! Applaud as we create the idols of today so you can burn them tomorrow!"
-I didn't get Banana Joe's "moon landing" bit. I assume it has something to do with touching butts? Help me out, somebody.
-Hot Dog Guy and Gumball going into a coma and emerging feeling less awkward, only to do and awkward high-five-fist-bump combo was nicely melodramatic. I don't know if the faces really added much there, though.
-Looking at "The One" and how it managed to end on a silly note without rendering the rest of the episode redundant, I don't know why "The Cringe" couldn't have done the same instead of the whole "back to square one" approach.
-Oh, hi Penny! Aaand bye, Penny.

FINAL GRADE: B-. "The Cringe" isn't a bad episode, and it's actually pretty darn delightful, but it's also marred with a lot of issues that drag down the final product. As a resolution to the Hot Dog Guy arc, it works, but at the same time, it feels like a step down in the humor department. The end result, subsequently, (the more you think about it,) is competent but leaving a decent amount to be desired. Either way, Season 6 remains delightfully solid and fresh.

For the last Gumball review of "The Father," CLICK HERE.