The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Silence

"You know how we can't keep up a conversa..."

"The Silence" is an interesting episode. Seeing the show get meta with its storylines shouldn't come as a complete shock to anyone at this point, but what makes this episode so different is how it funnels that into an episode with so much sincerity. It's a route that Gumball routinely bypasses in favor of wringing laughs out of its generally nihilistic and cynical perspective, and being able to see the show just doing a cute and sweet character study of Gumball and Darwin was legitimately surprising, and that's not a knock against the episode. If anything, it makes "The Silence" feel almost special, like an episode that, if not trying to become the next "The Choices," wants to break up the pace of the show and distribute some warm, fuzzy feelings.

Unfortunately, as a critic, while I felt that "The Silence" wrapped itself up perfectly, it was an episode which, in my opinion, meandered its way to the finish line as a whole. There's a point that it wants to make with its central concept–Gumball and Darwin seem to have run out of things to say to each other and feel that their friendship (brothership?) is quickly expiring–but everything about the episode leading up to its turning point feels indifferent.

Part of the issue is just that the episode makes its point about Gumball and Darwin's alleged disconnect through a series of simple jokes and scenes, all of which are forgettable and fail to meaningfully escalate. The early scene with Harold as a psychoanalyst to dissect their problem, for instance, never takes off, instead taking 30 seconds to fall into a predictable subversion of our expectations (which basically means it fails as subversion). We expect him to do something douchey, so the joke honestly just fulfills its purpose in the same way that the subsequent scene of Mr. Small using alternative medicine on them plays it out by the books and unsurprisingly backfires. (Darwin whispering "alternative medicine" incredibly faintly as to summon Mr. Small made for a solid laugh, though.)

This all segues into what is bound to be the episode's most notable gag, with Gumball and Darwin roleplaying, respectively, as a shy anime girl and Twitter bot. Basically, if you ever wanted Gumball to talk like a coquettish schoolgirl complete with those creepy asterisks, then today's your lucky day, pervert. As far as I'm concerned, the joke was pretty much just the fact that Gumball as a show is game to skewer anything, which is entirely fair and respectable, but it's shallow, tepid, and mildly discomforting to watch, all for the purpose of watching the show flex on its ability to skewer certain things with frightening accuracy.

Once we get to the second act, though, "The Silence" actually picks up and gets really, really good. While the early parts of the episode navigate Gumball and Darwin's disconnect, the episode takes a turn to actually address it as the elephant in the room, and they end up realizing that they need to split up. "The Silence" demonstrates this through a fantastic R&B duet with both characters going their own separate ways, though a duet that quickly falls apart when they get too far from each other to stay in-sync or in-pitch, ultimately ending prematurely with Darwin wandering into the dump and falling into a car. Writing a break-up song is already silly enough, but ripping it apart at its seams kills.

What follows, too, is a highlight, with Gumball, alongside the rest of the family, proving his understanding of how Darwin works to help locate him. On one level, it's just funny how specific each step Gumball takes is to emulate Darwin's journey to the dump, from dancing near an arcade to chasing after intense wordplay, but on the other, as the show breaks down, there's an adorable revelation to it all: Gumball and Darwin just get each other, and the degree of their closeness exceeds words. Even if the ending doesn't really bring us any new information, and the stakes of the episode are realistically extremely low (we know that Gumball and Darwin aren't actually going to separate), it's something that never hurts to be restated.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with an episode with an incredibly strong back-half but fairly limp front-half. While I think that "The Silence" ultimately works itself out by the end, and sticking the landing is one of the most important contributors to an episode's ultimate success, how the whole thing starts out really holds "The Silence" back from being a classic.

Notes and Quotes:
-Darwin believes moths should be called "goth butterflies," which is very apt.
-"This pepperoni is saltier than texting the letter 'K' as a reply."
-"You know, Darwin? As that backstreet doctor was finally draining the excess fluid out of our screaming faces using that grease-coated bicycle pump, I had an eye-opening moment."
-Apparently, Darwin's Twitter (or Tweeter?) username of Sleve Mcdichael is a reference to the ungodly Engrish names from Fighter Baseball on the Super Famicom. That's the sort of referential humor I can get down with, where not realizing it doesn't detract from the joke so much as reward those who get it.
-Though minor, I really liked the scene where Nicole tried to fix Richard's posture. It's nothing too memorable, but it's just some silly slice-of-life comedy that we don't see a ton of on the show.
-"What are the Swiss famous for? Cheese. And Swiss cheese is full of holes. And what else has holes in it? Plots of bad TV shows that use hack writing to resolve an important bit of action. And where do these shows belong? The dump!"

FINAL GRADE: B. An episode with a weak start but a strong ending levels out to a B. "The Silence" certainly has its merit, and its resolution may be one of the most wholehearted things that the show's done in quite a while, but getting to that point was fairly tiresome, with the show never stepping it up until there was an established end-goal to shoot for.

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

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