The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Agent

"Your name?" "Watterson. Gumball Watterson." "Is that all one word or with a hyphen?" "What?" "Like 'Watterson Gumball Watterson' or 'Watterson Gumball hyphen Watterson.'"

Nothing goes together like Gumball and Gumball pretending to be something else entirely. That's not even a joke: some of the series' greatest entries are its genre-swapping episodes, turning a run-of-the-mill day in Elmore into anything from a horror movie to detective noir, fully committing to stylistic mimicry while retaining the heart of the show's comedy. "The Agent" is the latest entry to follow suit (spy pun unintended but welcome), and while it's not one for the books, it's undoubtedly a strong outing.

This time, Gumball and Darwin get to play dress-up in a send-up of James Bond movies from the moment the episode starts, with Gumball's entry framed through the barrel of a toilet paper roll. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest expert on the franchise, with my knowledge pretty much limited to a handful of Mitchell and Webb sketches and old GoldenEye 007 cartridge-tilting videos that I thought were hilarious when I was 14, but it's clear to see that "The Agent" was as much a labor of love as its colleagues: the winning writer threesome of Richard Overall, Mic Graves, and Tony Hull (credit where credit's due) finds a great middle ground between what they're spoofing and the sensibilities of a more traditional episode. The best genre parody episodes, after all, are the ones that can be unequivocally appreciated regardless of your familiarity with the subject matter, and if I'm any indication, "The Agent" really gets the job done, featuring an awesome Thunderball-inspired title sequence and handfuls of excessively circumstantial, Bond-esque witticisms.

Rather than just abandoning the expected beats of an episode in the same way as, say, "The Joy" or "The Detective," though, "The Agent" stays true to the standard narrative format that Gumball's established over the past six seasons, albeit dressed up with a predominant spy theme. Even so, the framing mechanism allows for some fun shenanigans to ensue so that "The Agent" to maintain a creative edge, especially in the casting of Bobert as an ally and William as a villain.

Bobert, usually relegated to roles where he inadvertently attempts to destroy Gumball and Darwin, is always great in the rare instances where he's aligned with the Watterson boys (see: "The Upgrade"), and his casting allows for some fun jokes about spy gadgetry and an awesome climactic sequence towards the end that allows the episode to knock off as many spy-related concepts from its list as possible with a great rush of adrenaline.

William, though, gets the most out of the episode. The poor guy's always gotten unfair representation from the show, having peaked with Season 2's "The Voice" and toiled away for another four seasons in a series of one-off jokes, but casting him as this episode's antagonist is an awesome move. There's a lot of ways that the episode could've gone about with the straightforward mystery of several specific items going missing, but having the suspect be William, who uses said items to construct a suit that allows him to emote, speak, and be generally evil, is inspired, especially given that his untapped potential allows him to be just as ominous and surprising as he was all those seasons ago (even if the episode telegraphs his rise to villainy pretty clearly).

With that being said, "The Agent" does feel somewhat tired in places, not out of a lack of ambition or scope but in how obviously templated it is as a genre swap episode. A lot of that falls chiefly in how much the episode falls back into subversions, with the basic idea of Gumball saying or reacting to something, only to be met with some disappointing outcome, being repeated ad nauseum. The obvious dissonance of having someone like Gumball act like someone as high-status as James Bond sets up those punchlines well enough, and the episode at least took the high road rather than just having him flop around and fail at being a secret agent (which I feared from the start), but the one-dimensionality to the banter throughout the episode isn't the best.

At the end of the day, though, there's still a great time to be had with "The Agent" from start to finish, with enough twists, turns, and silly detours to keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Notes and Quotes:
-"You look like a..." "I know, a secret agent." "Eh, I was gonna say undertaker." (Principal Brown later says Gumball looks like an "Italian waiter.")
-"See! A perfect fit, and they're exactly like your old clothes!... are words that have never been uttered in a lost and found."
-In one of my favorite, most unexpected callbacks in the show's history, Principal Brown is shown drawing a sailboat in his office, in reference to an incredibly stupid one-off joke from "The Skull" wherein he was physically unable to draw anything other than sailboats. That's the sort of esoteric reference that I'm always 100% down for, and I laughed way too hard at it considering how underplayed it is.
-I realize that, as usual, I don't have much to single out about Darwin in this episode, but he pulls off being a Bond girl incredibly well, providing a more restrained balance to Gumball's wise-cracking and ceaseless monologues.

FINAL GRADE: A-. While "The Agent" can sometimes feel fairly monochromatic in its joke-telling, everything else about it is delightful, taking a more low-key approach than usual with its parody that works swimmingly and never polarizes with its references. Bonus points, too, for giving William one final showcase—it's always a blast to see relatively unused characters put back into commission, and his turn as the unexpected antagonist gives the episode a wonderful jolt of energy that sends it barreling to the finish line. Honestly, it's great that, even down to the final stretch of episodes, Gumball's no less fatigued in its pursuit of fresh, original ideas; here's hoping that freshness holds.

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

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