The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Ghouls

"Dude, it's so sad! We need to help them get their scare back." "He's right, we'll do anything. Is there a page we can like or a wristband we can wear or something?"

Sorry this post is a bit late, but I've had a busy and exciting weekend which I will be sure to write about! And also college. So if you're not cool about this coming out late, then... sucks to be you, man, I guess you have to find someone else to read. Good luck with that!

Watching "The Ghouls" helped me realize that modern Gumball episodes are at their most successful when they succeed in two regards: one, they have an interesting structure bound around a strong concept, and two, that they're just downright fun (see: "The Founder," "The Vegging," "The Candidate"). Unfortunately, the past season has been filled with a frustratingly disproportionate amount of episodes that only really succeed in one of those regards (usually the former). "The Ghouls," then, is an episode that is fun... but it's difficult to properly evaluate on the level of how it's put together considering the weakness of a lot of every aspect of it otherwise.

I know that sounds harsh, but this is an episode that wants to have as much fun with its Halloween motif as possible, but at the cost of being utterly formless, coming across as some awkward in-between of a vignette-based and narrative episode. I'm fine with the show committing to sketch-based episodes, and I'm generally a pretty big fan of them, but "The Ghouls" seemed to just become one because it didn't know what other approach to take, all while trying to maintain some heavier central concept, and the inability of either of those facets to fall at the others' wayside made for cute but unpolished filler.

The basic premise is fairly interesting: Carrie dislikes Halloween because of how un-scary it's become, and she takes Gumball and Darwin along to show them how the holiday has weakened with time in the form of short, varied scenes with different residents across Elmore. (It seems like even "The Ghouls" forgets its own premise halfway through, though, because all three of them completely vanish from the episode for three minutes in the middle.) To reiterate what I said at the beginning, though, in case all of this feels too critical, though, this is a fun episode, and however much that seems to be dismissed by my complaints, as a whole, the episode is undyingly charismatic.

While not related to the rest of the episode (besides thematically), the musical introduction to "The Ghouls" is a joyous few minutes, bringing out the cast in assorted Halloween garb (featuring, among other things, Banana Joe as Pikachu and Mr. Small cross-dressing as Sailor Moon, because fanart) to sing about the customs and expectations of the holiday and the means through which it's commercialized. It's well-written, catchy, and finds a fun way to use the show's rotating cast of characters—what's not to love about that?

Likewise, a lot of the vignettes throughout the episode get a fun angle, too, by framing horror scenarios around certain Elmore residents, perhaps most successfully Sarah, who successfully out-freaks a Scream-esque villain with her extensive knowledge of horror cinema. Another vignette skewers a Freddy Krueger type trying to haunt somebody's nightmares, but his fears only really extend to being late to work, his mortgage, and that his talent won't live up to his expectations.

Every segment works in some capacity, or if not particularly memorable at least offers up something somewhat clever and inventive in terms of skewering horror tropes. The issue is just that the episode's inability to really focus on that above all else makes things problematic, with the central conflict of Carrie being down on the Halloween spirit feeling shoehorned. That issue is no more evident than in the ending, with Carrie saying that there's an evil spell that'll reignite fear in the world, which Gumball boredly agrees to unleash. The moment that happens is when the show theoretically elevates itself and would otherwise find its groove, but placing that revelation at the end deprives it from being explored any further, which just serves to make the rest of the episode look worse in retrospect. While it raises something exciting which could be explored in a fun way, it just the butt of a status quo joke, and it prevents the show from sticking the landing that it never really coordinated.

For however hard I am on the episode, though, and this is going to sound entirely in opposition to everything I just typed... "The Ghouls" had a vitality to it that I missed in recent episodes. It's not art, and it's far from a case study, but it's the sort of episode that's just nice to see. The season has been in a bit of a gray area in terms of episode quality, but with "The Ghouls" riding by on sheer enthusiasm, here's hoping that it's a sign that the show is back on the rise, ready to go out with a bang.

Notes and Quotes:
-"Did you tell him all that with your mind?" "No." "Then what did you tell him?" "Yeah, it's not appropriate to say out loud."
-"Wait, what are you doing?" "Aren't you gonna take us by the hand and fly us to see the Halloweens that have been and the Halloweens that are yet to come?" "No, we're going across the street, and if you can't cross the street without holding someone's hand, then maybe you shouldn't be out this late."
-"Ooooo, house repayments. Uh, foreclosure."
-I liked Leslie and Alan's consensus that a VHS tape was "a yo-yo from before they discovered gravity." Haunted Blu-rays just aren't as scary, y'know?
-Sarah's list of horror movie types is as follows: vampire, zombie, werewolf, zombie werewolf, werewolf zombie, werewolf vampire, zombie werewolf vampire, haunted house, grindhouse, ESP horror, crime and giallo, Lovecraftian, mummies and golems, Cthulhu mythos, jiangshi fiction, mumblegore, Gothic, Southern Gothic, Southern Ontario Gothic, Urban Gothic, Suburban Gothic, and Tasmanian Gothic... all of which are real. Good researching, guys.
-While I thought the runner with Rocky was fun, the resolution feels a bit odd to me. Did Rocky just know what the pursuer wanted? Why does he suddenly stop walking through objects the second he gets on the treadmill? As far as the theme goes of removing the fear from tropes, this one just falls kind of flat because it deprives the creature of its power without making it satisfyingly pathetic.

FINAL GRADE: B+. Again, I don't think "The Ghouls" is a great episode, and I don't really feel like repeating all of my admittedly cruel assessments of its structure, but it just feels like an episode that everyone was really excited about creating, finding a fun way to key into the essence of Halloween while remaining dedicated to the spirit of the show. Is a B+ high in terms of the ratio of praise and complaints? Maybe, but I had fun with it, and that's what matters most at the end of the day. (Also, we really have to break up the monotony of B and B- grades.)

Ultimately, this comes down to a basic question—did I enjoy "The Ghouls" more than a lot of the show's other recent entries?—and the answer is yes.

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