The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Web

"Feel the doom impending / 'Cuz stupidity is #trending."

There's a lot of problems with "The Web" in a lot of different directions. This is the series' long-overdue (though not at all necessary) satirical take on the boomer-millennial/gen-Z gap in understanding technology, and while that does allow the episode to find some interesting beats along the way, there's too many compromises being made for certain jokes to land or have any merit.

Not that, realistically, that's anything new for the past season. As much as I will defend a lot of the show's stranger episodes, there's been a concurrent trend of changing core qualities in its characters, most often their intelligence, to make odder premises work. (Think back to "The Wish" just a few weeks ago.) This time, though, Nicole is the unfortunate victim, getting spun into an archetypal boomer parent with a complete misunderstanding of tech terms, and it's a bad look on her and the show.

While turning Nicole into a technologically-deficient buffoon certainly brings about a handful of inspired gags—she attempts to apply a "parental lock" by shoving a terrifying, medieval torture mask on Gumball's face, and when Gumball finally closes a pop-up for a dog Office assistant from the '90s from her computer, it thanks him and turns into dust—there's a bad aftertaste to the general tone the episode goes with. Every joke is made at the expense of the characters involved, while Gumball and Darwin sit on the sidelines with sincere intentions but whose roles quickly turn into pointing and laughing.

The largest issue is how blatantly Nicole's character gets revised just to meet the criteria necessary for her to operate in the context of the episode. Think back to one of the series' most memorable gags from "The Roots," where Nicole proved to be exceptionally well-versed enough in technology to dig through Darwin's browser history—the fact that her level of prowess has been illustrated in passing, with the joke being made that her know-how isn't to be underestimated, leaves "The Web" in a perpetual state of unbelievability. While I understand the intentions behind those jokes entirely, and would be willing to find some level of truth in them as I, too, have a mother, Nicole's incompetence becomes so absurd that she literally creates a "firewall" around their house, which is pretty much the point of no return. And that's in the first two minutes!

If there's one somewhat bright spot in the episode, it's the centerpiece song, "#trending." It's "The Web" at its most specific, taking in a GIF-loaded, vaporwave aesthetic and feel with monotone lyricism from Gumball and Darwin that brings to mind the otherworldly, deadpanned comedic mentality of, I'd wager, Neil Cicierega of all people (though with a nod to Bill Wurtz). Whatever the specific reference, it mimics the weird cadence and peculiarities of that brand of Internet humor with alarming precision for a show with an otherwise more streamlined approach to its song-writing. I don't really think of the song as setting any new precedents for the series, perhaps because its place in the narrative is so vague (and that the narrative is overdone in the first place), but I'm just struck by how immediately different it feels.

Of course, the musical number is also something of a stand-in for the lack of a solid ending to "The Web," with a quick scene following it showing Gumball and Darwin passing out literal kid's toys to Nicole's even-more-stupid co-workers. That's it, and it sort of hurts the song even more in retrospect, revealing it to be a flashy spectacle meant to mask that this is an episode without an end game, literally ending in a facepalm. That stings.

There's a lot of reasons that "The Web" shouldn't have worked on paper, and unfortunately, most of those translated to the screen, too.

Notes and Quotes:

-"I guess there are two types of people in this world, Darwin: those that need everything spelled out for them." 

-I feel as if "The Web's" satire is somewhat hurt by the fact that Gumball and Darwin, as Gen Zers, aren't written too sharply, either, especially in having Gumball literally say "OMG." Here's a note to comedy writers for the future and present: we don't talk like that, and we have never talked like that.

-Even if a lot of the jokes in the episode were incredibly broad, I truly enjoyed some of the more subtle, under-the-breath lines from Gumball, namely mentioning that Nicole put the flashdrive in his mouth upside-down, and among all of the problems with Nicole's public photograph, it looks like she's got a dude riding her on the back because of the perspective. More of that, please!

-I very much appreciated Ben Bocquelet's cameo here as a shrugging GIF.

-On the topic of Neil Cicierega, his incredibly underrated chose-your-own-adventure video, "Haircut," is worth checking out. It features artwork from his sister and storyboard artist, Emmy, of Gravity Falls and DuckTales fame, let alone being amazingly written. 

FINAL GRADE: C. "The Web" is an episode at its best when it engages in more esoteric joke-telling, like in its musical number or varied references to dancing e-cards, Minion Facebook posts, and dancing babies, but the episode's tendency to instead chase after cheap jokes that degrade the intelligence of its characters ensures that its satire feels unfortunately hackneyed. Even when it makes a strong joke every once and a while, it feels unearned because of how far-removed the characters feel in making all of the jokes that the episode does, and there's a constant, uncomfortable sense of the writers taking an easy route to score some easy digs in their attempts at satire rather than reflecting any legitimate sense of perspective.

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

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