A Definitive Ranking of Every Episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, Part VI: 99-75

This is Part VI of my definitive ranking of every episode of The Amazing World of Gumball. For Part V, CLICK HERE.

99. S06E39 - “The Mess” (6/10/19) 

What Happens?: Penny asks Gumball and Darwin to babysit Polly, but after a night of watching videos, their task becomes a sleep-deprived mess of events.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Mess” isn’t perfect, but it’s one of those episodes that just wins you over with how ridiculously fun it is. Making Gumball and Darwin sleep-deprived is always a surefire way to find success, and sharpening those comedic instincts into a plot as conceptually-exciting as “The Mess’,” becoming a series of events that drastically change every time Gumball and Darwin fade out of consciousness, allows for legitimate unpredictability to everything being stitched together on-screen.

Some complications arise out of the second half, structured around having Polly recall how all the events that the first half fades in and out of. While it’s an inspired means of connecting the dots (all with Gumball and Darwin being even more out of it than before), it creates some pacing issues. The first half of “The Mess” is full steam ahead, and the second half is a deliberately methodical means of retracing those steps, and although I really like the idea—it gives Polly a chance to play a more active role in the episode, as well as preventing the narrative from feeling completely random—the execution feels a bit too long-winded to really bring everything home. Even if it’s just short of excellence, though, “The Mess” is unbridled fun, and that’s never a bad route to take.

Best Moment: Nicolas Cantu’s voice performance as an incredibly out-of-it Gumball is the best work he did for the show, running the entire gamut of the character's emotions flawlessly and elevating every line with his delivery. That’s a good voice actor.

98. S01E10 - “The Painting” (6/13/11)

What Happens?: Principal Brown tries to fix the Wattersons after he sees a drawing Anais made of them.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Painting” is a very cut-and-dry Season 1 episode, but not to a fault. Even if it reflects the immaturity of its cast at that point in time, it’s an admirable effort in its examination of how the Wattersons operate as a family. From the outside, they’re incredibly dysfunctional—Nicole is overworked, Richard doesn’t pull any weight, and Gumball and Darwin are needlessly destructive—but there’s a strange sort of harmony with this iteration of the family nevertheless, though Principal Brown can’t seem to wrap his head around it. Unsurprisingly, his efforts to reform the family end up backfiring entirely, forcing each character out of their comfort zone and leading to worse results; perhaps most enjoyably, Nicole becomes an obsessive, destructive house-cleaner, and Gumball and Darwin visit Mr. Small to go through a number of lessons on self-expression. 

Every attempt to fix the Wattersons just becomes more kindling into the fire, and even if that’s sort of an expectable outcome, it allows “The Painting” to make a surprisingly bold statement that the series would maintain until the very end: the Wattersons aren’t perfect, but there’s no such thing as a perfect family. They simply are who they are, and that’s one of the things that makes Gumball such a great show.

Best Moment: Mr. Small leads Gumball and Darwin through interpretive dance. The jokes are easy, but they land perfectly, especially Gumball trying to pantomime different colors.

97. S05E07 - “The Test” (11/03/16) 

What Happens?: When Gumball tries to clean up his act to become more liked, Tobias ends up taking his coveted place as “loser” at school and hijacks Gumball’s life.

Why Is It on the List Here?: A while back last year, me and my good friend and fellow Gumball overanalyzer, Guy, switched roles, writing articles that went against each other’s opinions and hammering in one another’s points hard, even when at the expense of our own thoughts. He, ultimately, came up with a long article about the problems “The Test” has, as my incredibly early and not-great review of the episode was pretty salty, but the funny thing is… I’ve turned around quite a bit on it. (Meanwhile, in spite of writing his article on Sussie, I’m still none the more enthused by “The Weirdo,” even if I like the character just a little more.)

I think most of that comes from how aggressively Gumball exercises poor sitcom traits when Tobias takes over Gumball’s life. Sure, the cliches pile up to a point of excessiveness, but it’s just a greatest hits sort of episode that wants to prove its vocabulary in the world of tropes. Tobias straight-up Urkels Gumball’s life, and everything he says seeps with the cheesiness of those shows that Gumball challenges, culminating in a Christmas special where he introduces a new robotic member of the family who I won’t name because, at this point, we’re inundated by him. All the while, Sarah gets some great screentime and has a more finely ironed-out dynamic with the Watterson boys than ever, her quirks enhancing their chemistry rather than driving a stake between it.

I haven't changed in thinking, though, that the one thing holding “The Test” back from being a knock-out hit is its ending. A lot of later season episodes have trouble with their endings because they embrace cop-outs in a meta way, but that still makes it a cop-out, and here, having everything turn out to be a dream is the sort of cheap pop that Gumball doesn’t prove itself to be above; you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Still, everything else about “The Test” is pretty darn delightful, so let’s just celebrate “The Test” for everything it does right.

Best Moment: “Mom? Have you been buying food at the gross-ery store again? ‘Cuz this mashed potato should be called smashed potato!” 

96. S06E18 - “The Schooling” (6/18/18) 

What Happens?: When Larry feels that Gumball and Darwin are ignorant of how much work he does everyday, he lets them cover five minutes of his shift.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Larry is one of the show’s few constants, a character who hasn't changed even a smidge since his introduction in the first episode of the series, and there’s a reason for that: he’s fantastic. His singular duty is to hold down literally every single blue-collar job in town without exceptions, and while that’s funny in and of itself, the existential woes that occasionally escape his mind add a hilariously pointed angle to his tragicomedy of a life. While he’s gotten plenty of amazing moments across the series, “The Schooling” helps Gumball and Darwin realize the significance of his existence in a way somehow more brutal than thrusting society in post-apocalypse: he makes them do his work. Only five minutes? That’s pretty easy, right?

Wrong. “The Schooling” takes it as an opportunity to throw Gumball and Darwin from scenario to scenario through every corner of customer service. That premise allows the episode to cover a lot of bases with its comedy and squeeze as many hilarious vignettes out of it as they possibly can. Sure, not all of them land, but everything moves so quickly that a misstep never feels like too much of a loss, and the scenes that work land hard, whether it’s something as simple as Felicity’s insistence that she be moved closer to the window at a restaurant or Gumball and Darwin pulling off a bank heist in reverse. Hilariously, too, at the end of the most nightmarish five minutes of their life, Gumball and Darwin cheerfully reiterate the deeply depressing life lesson Larry taught them, with their explicit acknowledgement of how tragic his life is only plunging Larry further into existential disappointment. Back to work, bud. 

Best Moment: Gumball and Darwin pulling off a bank heist is “The Schooling’s” most pointed bit of satire, with the revelation striking that they, the tellers, are robbing their poor customer. It’s hilariously intense, with Gumball becoming a soulless aggressor shaking every spare bit of money (and decency) out of his poor victim.

95. S04E32 - “The Misunderstandings” (6/23/16)

What Happens?: Nobody in Elmore can understand anything Gumball is saying en route to his date with Penny.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Misunderstandings” is, hilariously enough, built around misunderstandings arising out of even more misunderstandings. It’s the sort of premise that’ll work no matter what, with the show deconstructing its logic as much as possible to Gumball’s detriment, but to the episode’s credit, it does a fine job at that, giving Gumball an array of fun (and often underrated) characters to bounce off of and get frustrated at. 

There are so many ways that it could’ve fallen into the cliches of its predecessors—the premise is nothing new, really—but the cleverness with which everything gets stitched together and elevates proves how much life Gumball can breathe into even the most overdone set-ups. Banana Joe, for instance, has a great little spotlight here, being unable to take Gumball’s words as anything but literal by doing things like following him without moving a muscle (shown by having his character model slide across the screen); the construction men, too, get some of the episode’s biggest laughs as a couple of cat-calling idiots whose attempts at sincerity become more and more perverted.

Perhaps “The Misunderstandings’” greatest innovation, though, is that all of his words and interactions come back to haunt him at once, with everyone he previously encountered arriving at his date with Penny at the exact same time, requiring him to micromanage everyone and get them out of his way. It’s an awesome way to address the consequences of his actions, but enable him to triumph in the end. Add the joke of him misinterpreting Penny at the end, and you’ve got the cherry on top of a cute episode—nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s hard to hate.

Best Moment: The construction men’s suggestion that they try to make new friends by going to a school.

94. S06E37 - “The Agent” (5/27/19) 

What Happens?: Gumball does James Bond when Principal Brown enlists Gumball and Darwin to find the root of several objects disappearing in Elmore Junior High.

Why Is It on the List Here?: To any Gumball fans who frequent Twitter, it’s very obvious that the series’ voice director and occasional writer, Richard Overall, is a massive James Bond fan. It should be a surprise to nobody, then, that he’s fought for Gumball to do a spy movie genre parody for quite a while, and when he finally got the yes, he and two other writers—Mic Graves and Tony Hull—assembled one of the series’ most clear labors of love, with attention to detail and enthusiasm emanating from every corner that takes “The Agent” a long way.

While some of the series’ more celebrated genre parody episodes fight to modify the means through which their narrative is conducted by mimicking the stylistic quirks of their source material, “The Agent” exists in a satisfying middle ground, feeling more like classic Gumball, but with some spy movie-esque twists. There’s certainly great, deliberate moments of homage, like parodying the Thunderball opening credits sequence or Gumball doing Bond’s classic walk through the barrel of a gun, but for the most part, it indulges in a more grounded means of crossing over, with Gumball’s outfit change (he has to wear a suit he retrieves from the lost and found) helping him channel, to unsurprisingly hilarious effect, his inner James Bond. He still feels like Gumball, though, with all of his poor attempts at suaveness and obnoxiously specific wisecracks, and I like that.

That’s where “The Agent” generally succeeds: it doesn’t radically transform the show so much as allow characters to seamlessly slip into archetypal spy movie roles. Darwin becomes Gumball’s Bond girl, offering a nice sort of restraint as Gumball’s foil; Bobert gets some nice screentime as the gadget guy, too, as well as coming back into play to great effect in the climax. The character who really gets to shine here, though, is William, who’s been seriously underutilized since his last major appearance in “The Voice” from Season 2. He makes for a great, inspired villain, turning every stolen item into a suit that grants him the ability to properly communicate his rage and frustrations, and it almost makes you wish that the writers were able to get more of a handle on the guy sooner.

This is just an episode that wins you over because of how much it cares about what it’s doing, and about being as good as it can manage—you can never have too much of that.

Best Moment: The incredibly minor callback to “The Skull,” showing Principal Brown’s inability to draw anything besides sailboats, is the sort of incredibly subtle, esoteric in-joke I’m always in love with discovering.

93. S03E30 - “The Friend” (1/22/15)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin help Anais make up an imaginary friend who turns out to be a criminal on the run.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Anais’ lack of friends has always been something of a secondary concept in Gumball and a sad truth firmly rooted in the kind of character she is; she’s someone intelligent far beyond her age, and while she’s great when it comes to sitting at the sidelines and watching others burn doing idiotic things, that’s not particularly conducive to having a social life. “The Friend,” though, is the show’s first earnest attempt to really explore her loneliness and search for camaraderie through the introduction of a new character altogether: the Chimera, a creature made up entirely of different toy pieces with a shark head who they (incorrectly) surmise to be the joint creation of their varied imaginations. Him and Anais prove to have a strange but strong chemistry, and it seems like everything is going great… until Nicole and Richard put one and two together and discover him to be a criminal being reported on in the news.

From there, “The Friend” starts to try some different stuff, taking the shift from character work to visual comedy as Gumball and co. Home Alone their house to protect themselves from the police, but wisely, the show ultimately chooses to end itself more poignantly, with the Chimera sacrificing himself to save Anais. It’s a sad but bold move to make, though it’s later revealed that he survived, giving Anais one final farewell before leaving to continue his search for safety. It’s a shame that he hasn’t made an appearance since, but “The Friend,” as a whole, is wonderful. 

Best Moment: Although the rest of “The Friend” goes in another direction altogether, I was a big fan of the war movie parodying that kickstarted the episode, with Gumball and Darwin attempting to outsmart their sister in order to get access to the cupcakes at her party.

92. S06E06 - “The Father” (1/26/18) 

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and Anais try to help Richard and Frankie reconnect.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Father” has got to go down as critically underrated. It’s one of Season 6’s biggest successes as far as emotionally-driven episodes go, being Frankie Watterson’s big send-off, and while there’s a few bumps along the way, the combination of excellent joke-telling and legitimate compassion guides it along rather enjoyably.

For the most part, while Frankie is always floating overhead, he’s not the center as much as his tenuous relationship with Richard is. While Frankie does his fair share of heavy-lifting later, the majority of “The Father” is devoted to the kids trying to cheer Richard up and allow him to vent the anxieties he has about his father. When it’s not outright sweet, it’s ingeniously funny, finding creative ways to illustrate his woes scene-by-scene such as emotionally-draining cloud-watching or a fast food pun-laden bit of exposition. “The Father” isn’t looking to be the next “The Choices,” by any means, and wisely, it chooses to lean more into comedy and general pleasantness than a desire to emotionally-devastate you.

That’s where some people have cited issues in its climax, with Richard and Frankie’s attempt to reconnect having every cliche (playing ball, teaching Richard how to drive/shave, etc.) being subverted into dipping Richard’s toes into criminality. Sure, it’s all played for laughs, but once Richard decides he’s had enough, Frankie’s stirring speech really helps everything land: that’s just who Frankie is, and even if he’s doing a bad job, he’s making a sincere attempt to right his wrongs. While Season 6’s other emotionally-charged entry, “The Parents,” struggles in how frustratingly it downplays its sentimentality with smug humor, there’s never a sense that “The Father” is actively working to foil itself, and it mines its humor from a sense of truth. Even if the last joke is a stolen wallet, it understands the power of emotions, and that authenticity allows “The Father” to really succeed.

Best Moment: “Knock, knock!” “Dad?!” “What? No!” [Profuse crying]

91. S05E36 - “The Nuisance” (10/13/17) 

What Happens?: The Wattersons try to improve their likeability when the Mayor of Elmore attempts to make them move to Ohio.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Nuisance” is excellent, but marred by some questionable creative decisions. The largest one is the decision to make the Mayor of Elmore resemble Donald Trump, which shoved the episode into a media frenzy of false advertisement that framed the wrong sort of issues around “The Nuisance” as a whole. As a result, this will forever be the “deportation episode” despite that concept barely having any stake in what happens, leading to an insufferable cycle of people ogling at the show for doing something it barely did.

On the other hand, everything else about “The Nuisance” is fantastic. Its sole purpose is just to hammer in that the Wattersons are, for better or worse, the Wattersons, and they’re not going anywhere. While they spend the first half working their butts off for approval, ending with them being horrifically transformed into a model family from the 1960s, the best part is the aftermath: after discovering the Mayor had ulterior, super evil rich person motives, they decide to wreak havoc in Elmore like never before. It’s the king of montages in a montage-centric episode, a glorious two minutes of mass destruction, and while they might’ve foiled the Mayor, they’re back at the bottom of the pecking order for destroying Elmore in the first place.

As much as I love everything about “The Nuisance” content-wise, that one design choice will always rub me the wrong way. Luckily, the series stopped doing as many stunts shortly afterwards, but it’s an unnecessary bit of resentment that just leaves things feeling frustratingly misguided.

Best Moment: While I’d otherwise put the model family transformation sequence in all its horrific beauty, I also want to take a moment to shout-out the show’s composer, Ben Locket, who gets to unleash some awesome new background music; the track during the Wattersons’ rampage across Elmore is a personal favorite.

90. S02E32 - “The Promise” (9/17/13) 

What Happens?: Darwin is torn between playing video games with Gumball and fixing the bad blood the pair have with Banana Joe.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s a lot of people who hate “The Promise” for very obvious reasons: Gumball is an uncompromising asshole here, and Darwin, the one speck of hope that justice will be served, ultimately sides with him, leaving Banana Joe to get crushed to near-death by fitness equipment. But that’s the point: this is Gumball messing with its audience. It doesn’t care what you think, nor does it care how things should go. It’s a show that does what it wants, and you have to just accept that. 

The amount that it misleads you is practically a meta-commentary on sitcom narratives. The entire time, you’re rooting for Banana Joe; the poor guy isn’t having any luck lately, and as Gumball vividly describes, the pair haven’t exactly been the best to him in the past. In the end, though, he’s a cruel red herring, taking a ton of damage in the face of Gumball and Darwin’s brotherhood, and “The Promise” basically becomes the equivalent of watching a chandelier shatter in slow motion whenever Banana Joe’s on-screen. What I love about “The Promise”—and I do sincerely love it—is its raw defiance to audience expectations.

In other words, Internet, this is the Gumball episode that pulls into McDonald’s and asks for one black coffee.

89. S06E32 - “The Master” (4/22/19)

What Happens?: The family hashes out their problems with a game of D&D, with Richard as the Dungeon Master. 

Why Is It on the List Here?: To perhaps nobody’s surprise at all, Gumball’s long-awaited take on D&D is really, really good. Watching the Wattersons get into a heated argument is a pretty reliable formula for the series to use from time to time, but the change of context, transporting them into the realm of fantasy, allows for some legitimate inspiration to break up the formula. Suddenly, there’s a new layer of jokes that the writers are able to tell, and new conditions it can mess around with in the narrative, and Gumball pursues them with unbridled excitement, taking an infallible premise and actually working to push it even higher.

There is something of a ceiling, unfortunately, but it’s not a new one: at a certain point, watching Gumball, Darwin, Anais, and Nicole fight starts to feel sort of tiresome. “The Master” is able to circumvent a lot of those issues, though, by putting Richard in the role of Dungeon Master, with his position helping to keep things moving forward whenever everyone else’s petty squabbling threatens to write the episode into a hole. All of this, too, culminates in a legitimately epic final boss fight, with the family uniting and using their self-destructive game habits against their foe to great effect. Everyone gets to shine here, and perhaps most impressively of all, Darwin steals the show, with his flute-playing elf, Frumpet, seducing and subsequently breaking the creature’s heart.

At the end of the day, though, this is an episode with Richard at the center of it. In his last season, he really came to embody the beating heart and soul of the show, and here, he allows for “The Master” to stick the landing with a legitimately sweet ending: inside the chest that the Wattersons spent their entire night angrily pursuing was a note, reading that the greatest treasure on earth is the time you spend together. I don’t think anyone’s ever earned the right to a “Boom, mega happy ending” more than Richard; at the very least, he earned the right to it more than Gumball did to saying “lol” unironically.

Best Moment: Darwin’s seduction.

88. S02E07 - “The Phone” (9/18/12)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get a new “cell phone,” and Darwin quickly becomes dangerously addicted to it.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s nothing overly-complex about “The Phone,” but it’s an exciting bit of character work that demonstrates the best qualities of Gumball as it was starting to hit its stride. A lot of that is indebted to Gumball and Darwin’s chemistry, which gets excitingly inverted part of the way through; while writing an episode about Gumball being sucked into cell phone addiction seems pretty obvious, it’s hilarious to see Darwin succumb to it, forcing his brother into an authoritative role. It’s a type of presence Gumball rarely gets to have in Season 2, but “The Phone” almost makes you wish there were more of it, enabling him to be even more snarky than usual while vesting that cynicism through a level of explicit superiority.

The episode’s greatest contribution, though, was the reintroduction of Ocho into the series, redefined as a character who fails to recognize the intensity and hotheadedness of his behavior. The climax weaponizes that in the greatest way possible: a Space Invader-esque fight between him and the Watterson brothers after Gumball, in an effort to separate Darwin from his phone, drives a stake through their friendship. Not only does it make for a fun, surprising callback to the episode’s earlier events, but it allows Gumball to show off the diversity of its supporting cast with the sort of glorious, high-stakes action that we’d come to know and love over the next six and a half years. Ocho may have receded back into the shadows for the next several seasons, playing bit roles until making a comeback with “The Uncle,” but as far as first impressions go, “The Phone” makes for an excellent debut.

Best Moment: Gumball and Darwin’s climactic fight with Ocho, complete with a combo breaker. I’d also like to give a quick shout-out to Gumball’s incredibly dumb James Brown-esque refrain of “Who’s got a phone?”

87. S06E30 - “The Buddy” (11/09/18) 

What Happens?: Principal Brown accuses both Anais and Jamie of contaminating the school computers with a virus, and the two join forces to discover the true culprit.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While Anais almost always got the short end of the stick throughout her run on the show, the enduring story arc surrounding her quest to find friends led to a surprisingly sweet conclusion with “The Buddy.” A lot of what makes it so successful is the unlikely pairing of her with the school bully, Jamie, and despite them being entirely diametric in their characterizations, they possess a striking amount of chemistry. Anais is smart but socially-inadept and overly-smug; Jamie’s idiotic, but brawny enough to make the whole school cower before her. Together, their best and worst personality traits keep each other on their toes, forming a fantastic and shockingly effective double act.

The narrative isn’t too shabby, either. It’s a lot more involved and detailed than most other episodes, and while chalked full of some great gags, there’s a sense of progression that helps retain the air of mystery that “The Buddy” is aiming for. Anais helps prod everything along, going from one lead to the next, but Jamie, more than less, is responsible for actually making things happen, whether that means literally threatening security camera footage into revealing deleted recordings or successfully framing the culprit as the School Librarian, who fears her job is becoming redundant. Anais and Jamie truly combine forces, too, in the climactic book fight, wielding the powers of the classic of literature in an epic brawl.

“The Buddy” might not be flashy enough to warrant a lot of attention, but it’s a great bit of character work that finds a sweet, fulfilling ending for Anais: it might’ve taken six seasons and three botched attempts at making friends, but it was a journey well worth the wait.

Best Moment: Gumball’s writers continues to prove their understanding of the people who watch it with a brilliant little gag at the expense of people who pirate the show. Runner-up for moment of the episode: "An English dictionary! This can only mean one thing: this book must belong to either someone who speaks English or someone who doesn't, and wants to learn!"

86. S02E06 - “The Banana” (9/11/12)

What Happens?: Gumball tries to teach Darwin a lesson about respect after Banana Joe chews Darwin’s pen.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s a lot of stuff I love about “The Banana,” yet another one of those early Season 2 episodes that doesn’t really get the credit that it deserves. For starters, it’s great for every character involved. Banana Joe, throughout Season 1, was an immature pushover who existed to make fart jokes and crap on Gumball and Darwin, whereas here, even if he’s a bit of a jokester, he has a lot of humility; he feels really sincere, making for a nice character for Gumball and Darwin to work off of. They, too, get to demonstrate their dynamic in the episode fantastically, with Gumball’s lesson on respect effectively being the complete opposite of the term, instead setting out to exact revenge. Darwin doesn’t play into it at all until a series of unfortunate events occur which cause him to snap and unleash the darkest corners of his mind, chewing through all of Banana Joe’s belongings, chief among them his family heirloom pen. 

Gumball always struggles to give Darwin a sense of autonomy—he more often than not comes across as Gumball’s sidekick and mental check—but “The Banana” is one of his best outings from over the course of the entire series because of it, and the culmination, through which they stage a fight so that an unconscious Banana Joe would feel like he got a taste of revenge after the whole catastrophe, makes for a cute moment of self-recognition… even if Gumball turns out to have been the person who chewed the pen, setting the scene for a confrontation that never even had to happen.

Best Moment: Banana Joe’s Kill Bill whistle is a particularly chilling and awesome moment for the show. Even if there’s not really a joke, it makes for a fantastic dramatic moment.

85. S06E02 - “The Lady” (1/05/18) 

What Happens?: When Gumball and Darwin discover Richard cross-dresses, they believe his alter ego to be another woman he’s cheating on Nicole with.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s a lot of ways for drag-based humor to go wrong, but one of the biggest recurring problems is just that it isn’t particularly funny, with the jokes more often than not beginning and ending with dudes being in dresses acting like females. Kudos to “The Lady,” then, in being able to elevate the episode far beyond what it premise initially suggested, because the end result is a fantastic change of pace.

Part of what makes “The Lady” work so well is that it devotes itself to astute genre parody without divorcing from the traditional conventions of a Gumball episode. It leans hard into its references to The Golden Girls, but they always land because the context with which the jokes are told is ridiculous, and that the fake sitcom writing is so dead-on: instead of poking fun at various tropes in the source material, “The Lady” becomes its source material to the point where the clearly parodic lines are golden (no pun intended) in their own right. I know that sounds like a small thing, but comparing “The Lady” to how “The Test” punches down on sitcom tropes makes it clear that this episode beats it by a pretty decent margin.

Meanwhile, everything great about Gumball gets retained. There’s emphasis placed on misinterpretation in the episode’s conflict, and while the idea of kids believing that one of their parents is cheating on them is also a well-worn trope, the paper trail Richard leaves behind as Samantha is so hilariously specific and ill-timed that every joke about their miscommunication lands perfectly. That when Gumball and Darwin realize Richard was Samantha the whole time, too, they don’t shame their father and instead set out to right their wrongs and stop him from revealing his true identity to the other old ladies (two of which, in a great reveal, turn out to be equally lonely men), is a minor but surprisingly sweet touch.

Best Moment: “Well, I guess the clue was in the name: SaMANtha. Also, guess what you get if you switch the letters of her name around? ‘THAS A MAN.’” Whether or not that line was the basis for the whole episode, whatever writer’s responsible for that line should step forward, because they’re a genius.

84. S01E23 - “The Sock” (10/03/11)

What Happens?: After Miss Simian thinks that Gumball and Darwin lie to her about their missing homework, she makes them visit Mr. Small, who gives them a series of confusing lessons about honesty.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While Season 1 usually hangs itself up on the stupidity of its main characters, “The Sock” actually takes a step back. Rather than having Gumball and Darwin be the direct source of their own dilemmas, they make poor decisions indebted to a series of convoluted lessons from school guidance counselor Mr. Small, whose well-meaning lessons on honesty grow increasingly restrictive until he basically tells both kids to just shut up entirely. It’s a hilarious build-up, and it works all the better once the stakes go through the roof, with their newfound lessons being nothing but an impediment to resolving the episode’s climax, where Mr. Small gets stuck in a filing cabinet immediately after their lesson from the “Silence Snake.”

It’s exciting because it’s such a straightforward premise for the show, and instead of just coasting along due to how easily the episode could theoretically write itself (see: “The Robot,” “The Secret”), “The Sock” keeps delving deeper and deeper into its idea into a bed of comedic gold. It also acts as a sort of first step into the type of episodes that Season 2 onwards would elaborate upon, with the Wattersons interacting with its supporting cast more, and those closer looks at the show’s side characters are always something to celebrate.

Best Moment: Mr. Brown and Ms. Simian both interpret Gumball and Darwin’s wordless pantomime to mean that Ms. Simian is trapped in a well, and both jump out a window to save her/fulfill that prophecy. Meanwhile, when they do the same to Rocky, he understands what they mean immediately, but afterwards proceeds to jump out a window for no reason. This joke is literally brilliant.

83. S04E14 - “The Romantic” (10/08/15)

What Happens?: Gumball sends Penny out on a scavenger hunt as a romantic gesture.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Romantic” is a pretty fantastic episode, but something about it has always bothered me: this is a Penny episode, and the first to really use her independent of Gumball, but at the same time, she’s still dedicated to serving him as a character. For however great of a showcase “The Romantic” is of Gumball’s acute sense of humor, it’s also a frustrating demonstration of how limited Penny’s role in the grand scheme of things is: she’s an accessory to Gumball’s life with the singular goal in the show of being his girlfriend, and everything that happens here does little to dissuade that idea.

Again, though, does that take away from the quality of “The Romantic” itself? Not much. It’s funny to think of the drastic measures Gumball would take if he felt that his love for Penny was, in some way, compromised, and watching a simple, romantic stroll down memory lame quickly transform into a hellish trial (at one point, he sends Penny to the middle of the desert because he misspelled “dessert,” which he clarifies by spelling it out with bones instead of simply rewriting the earlier clue) makes for a fun premise where so much can go wrong. Even if Gumball does some seriously stupid things to endanger Penny, there’s still enough sincerity in all of his actions to redeem him in the end, and his sweetness keeps the entire journey afloat when it threatens to become too mean-spirited.

There’s just a lot to think about here in terms of context; if that doesn’t matter to you, though, “The Romantic” is well-crafted as ever.

Best Moment: The fireworks gag at the end.

82. S01E35 - “The Helmet” (3/06/12)

What Happens?: Gumball, Nicole, and Richard fight over a lucky tin-foil hat that can make their dreams come true.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Whereas a surprisingly large amount of Season 1 episodes are built around the consequences of bad luck, “The Helmet” goes in the opposite direction, finding Gumball, Nicole, and Richard hungry for the power that good luck provides, and it pays off spectacularly. There’s a delightfully cynical edge to everything that happens, with the Wattersons all turning on one another due to the prospects of being able to chase after their desires, no matter how practical or ridiculous those desires may be (Nicole wants to do well on a job interview while Richard wants to get on a game show), and that taste of the good life tears the family apart mercilessly. 

At a certain point, Darwin and Anais intervene to dispose of the helmet once and for all, transforming “The Helmet” into a Lord of the Rings-esque adventure. Everything about it is gorgeous and lovingly dramatic, culminating in a pretty great fight sequence and, at the end of the day, a nice lesson in what it means to be somebody. Above all else, though, “The Helmet” was a demonstration that the show knew what it was doing, with the writers reaching a level of comfort with their main cast that allowed them to indulge in some more risky story-telling.

Best Moment: The cut to Darwin, having worn the helmet for most of his walk through the dump, decked out in bling he found due to its powers.

81. S04E27 - “The Awkwardness” (5/19/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Hot Dog Guy unwillingly spend a day together.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While arguably a more exciting continuation of the Hot Dog Guy saga then the episode that started it all—“The Hug”—I’d knock it back a bit if not just because, as a sequel, it’s pretty by the books. As far as a further exploration of Hot Dog Guy and Gumball’s uncomfortable relationship goes, though, “The Awkwardness” is perfect.

There’s only really one joke here, but it’s a good one, with the two accidentally running into each other and getting trapped together repeatedly during a trip to the mall. It’s a premise that allows “The Awkwardness” to do as much terrible things as possible to its characters, all to delightful effect. Instead of just trapping them in an endless cycle of hugs like its predecessor, putting Gumball and Hot Dog Guy together in confined spaces forces them to actually interact, and the interplay between them, especially once the climax kicks in, is phenomenal. They’re two people who really don’t like being in each other’s company, but they can’t do anything beyond enduring it and attempting to make the situations less awkward, all while cranking up that awkwardness tenfold in the process. 

That’s really what I love about “The Awkwardness”: it’s so tightly-written that it just works, relishing in its cringeworthy nature without being too excessive and self-indulgent (see: “The Cringe”). Season 4 was so great because of how it re-examined the series’ ongoing character arcs and found exciting ways to elevate them, and this is a wonderful example of that.

Best Moment: Gumball’s ketchup rap, paralleling “Alphabet Aerobics.” It’s no small mystery why Tyler the Creator was such a massive fan of the show.

80. S03E09 - “The Gripes” (7/24/14)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin accidentally convince everyone in town that their family is poor.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Social commentary has always been something that the show’s either nailed or bombed, but “The Gripes,” the show’s first legitimate attempt to do a bit of critique, is also one of its most fun. I think one of the key distinctions is that it never lets its commentary override the episode’s core narrative, nor does what it attempts to convey go against the characters that the satire is placed upon. In this case, the idea that Gumball and Darwin can be entitled brats who complain about everything without realizing how much worse their lives could be just makes sense; they’re two kids in the lower middle-class, and their minds take every slight annoyance as some sort of battle with adversity, whether it’s the alarm clock music being too catchy or Darwin’s shoes too clean. 

All of this, naturally, falls apart the moment someone else sees their complaints and believes them to be legitimate problems, and before you know it, there’s a charity rally surrounding them. It’s a perfect way to one-up Gumball and Darwin in the most hilariously awkward way possible, as well as granting the writers a way to get back into the show’s routine silliness instead of getting too invested in its satirical takes (see: “The Worst”), and having Gumball and Darwin make the decision to wreck their house at a point of no return to maintain their lack of dignity was great.

Anais and Richard, too, get some interesting material. It’s kind of sad how little the two get put together—the only other time I can really think of is “The Pony” for a few seconds—but their dynamic is really strong. On one hand, you have the smart and reserved Anais, and on the other, you have Richard, a well-intentioned buffoon, and in “The Gripes,” their interplay takes the form of Anais struggling to explain sarcasm to Richard as the two shop for something to get the Watterson boys to lighten them up (a scenario that only arose through Richard’s misunderstanding of her sarcasm, no less). Richard does, to his credit, stick the landing with a sarcastic remark towards the tail-end of the episode, though it hilariously backfires.

All in all, “The Gripes” is an episode that manages to find some fun interplay between its characters as well as taking a more satirical outlook, all without being a detriment to the show or its characters’ identity.

Best Moment: Again, the parts with Richard and Anais were particularly enjoyable, especially with the muffled “High five!” voice from every time Anais face-palms wearing the foam hand thing. I’d buy one of those. So many merch opportunities, CN...

79. S04E25 - “The Parasite” (5/05/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin fear that Anais’ new friend may be a social parasite.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Continuing off of “The Friend,” “The Parasite” picks up on Anais’ ongoing search for friends with a fun, new angle: Gumball and Darwin work together to single out one of her new buddies, Jodie, as a social parasite taking advantage of her generosity. All of that goes out the window, though, when she and Jodie end up fusing together, transforming the episode into something of a thriller, before turning everything on its head for a third time with the revelation that Anais was, in fact, the true parasite. 

Suddenly, even though Jodie is something of a throwaway character (she’s never seen again after “The Parasite,” and she doesn’t really have to be), there’s important character development here for Anais, a character who often hides her loneliness and antisocial behavior behind layers of mockery and condescension. Sure, she doesn’t learn anything at the end of the day, ultimately chasing after Jodie yet again to close out the episode, but Anais’ recognition of her current condition lends some more intricacy to one of the series’ more interesting character arcs.

Plus, “The Parasite” is just a really funny episode. Individual scenes like Gumball and Darwin reading Anais’ diary in her voice, transforming into a zombie from The Last of Us for demonstrative purposes, and attempting to poison Jodie’s lunch keep the episode exciting and showcase Gumball at its best and most inspired. Combine so many great moments with some deeper character development, and you’ve got a solid outing from the series in its prime.

Best Moment: Gumball and Darwin’s list of pros and cons for reading Anais’ diary.

78. S06E22 - “The Transformation” (7/16/18)

What Happens?: Penny invites Gumball to her house to help settle an argument with her parents over her decision to break her shell.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Transformation” is certainly a good episode in a lot of ways, but it’s also one that exemplifies how much of a blind eye the show casts over Penny as a character. While she had a pretty decent stretch following “The Shell” leading up to “The Romantic,” she suddenly vanished as the series shifted its priorities around. However disheartening that may be, I can easily respect “The Transformation” as a sincere attempt to reexamine Penny in an interesting way, even if it feels a few years late.

The idea that Penny’s parents would disapprove of her breaking out of her shell was evident in “The Shell” but never really surfaced anywhere else until this point, and it’s a good, fairly simple idea to knock off. Cleverly, the writers decided to tackle it in the vein of a bottle episode, taking place almost entirely at the Fitzgerald’s household over the course of one night in (more than less) in real time, and I like how much that gets emphasized. Instead of being like other episodes that seem to occupy a longer period of time, occasionally days, Gumball is trapped in an interminably tense evening of attempting to mediate between two aggressive forces—Penny and her parents (mainly Patrick)—while being too afraid for his life to really pick a side. 

You could say that’s something of a cop-out, but I don’t mind the small role that Gumball plays all the way to the end. There’s a fear inherent to an episode like this that he’ll just dominate everything, but I like how “The Transformation” tries to sideline him and put everyone else at the forefront, even allowing the Fitzgeralds to bury the hatchet almost entirely on their own, albeit indebted to Gumball’s long string of stories (animated beautifully and surreally by Julian Glander). It’s not the greatest ending, lingering for a bit too long, but it lands its point in an interesting enough way while feeling like it rings true emotionally. 

More than just being a satirical take on family traditions in the face of the modern era, “The Transformation” is a thoughtful mediation on its characters, even if there’s a sense of “too little, too late” in the back of my mind. When it comes to Penny, though, I take what I can get.

Best Moment: Against all odds, my absolute favorite part of the episode is Polly’s role. She’s a child so far removed from the issues the entire family is fighting over that she instead takes the opportunity to showcase her drawings of “croco-ducks” and tell meaningless stories: "I have a story. Once upon a time there was a little peanut who found a magical that which was also a puppy who could play the flute the end." Teresa Gallagher’s delivery of the line, complete with hilariously abrupt ending, is perfect.

77. S04E23 - “The Advice” (4/21/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin let Mr. Small inspire them.

Why Is It on the List Here?: As a follow-up to Season 1’s “The Sock,” “The Advice” makes it its duty to up the ante in every way, putting Mr. Small into an existential crisis that Gumball and Darwin attempt to solve by allowing him to try out his best advice in hopes of positively affecting their lives. It’s an exciting opportunity to revisit one of that season’s best ideas with a new coat of paint and more complexity for every character involved, most importantly introducing Darwin’s sincerity and empathy in opposition to Gumball’s skepticism and general apathy. 

It’s a delightfully lethal combination, throwing both through a series of ridiculous scenarios where they get to bounce off of one another while doing things that range from attempting to recreate one of Darwin’s surreal dreams to dressing as clowns in hopes of cheering up the classmates that their shenanigans put in the infirmary. Every single thing they do has an adverse reaction that ends in complete overkill, but that’s where all the fun of “The Advice” comes: Mr. Small’s advice isn’t terrible, but it’s terribly generic, and Gumball and Darwin’s attempts at spinning it with their own interpretations results in complete chaos.

It all culminates, too, in a delightful little musical number from Mr. Small, “Take My Advice,” where he sings about the virtues of his destructive lessons while Gumball and Darwin rush to clean up the mess his ideas created. It’s the perfect sort of closer for Gumball that brings everything full circle, and it just gets the job done. Mr. Small is happier than ever, at the very least—even if the entire student body’s been heavily mutilated, and the school is partially flooded—and it’s the sort of half-victory that lets the show’s darkly comedic edge shine through. 

Best Moment: Gumball, as a clown, pretending to steal Rocky’s nose.

76. S06E12 - “The Candidate” (3/02/18) 

What Happens?: When all the kids at Elmore Junior High get locked up in a room during a parent fundraiser, Gumball and Anais compete for a leadership position when tension (and temperature) gets heated.

Why Is It on the List Here?: It’s a political satire extravaganza in Elmore, and oh boy, this was a divisive one! That’s something inherent to an episode of any show that’s as direct in its political satire as “The Candidate” was, but I feel like it’s a pretty solid entry that doesn’t really deserve most of the flak it gets, and while it threatens becoming cringeworthy at points, it’s largely able to avoid that path by demonstrating a lot of cleverness and attention to detail with what it’s doing.

Starting off in media res is a perfect way to encapsulate everything about “The Candidate”: this is a ticking time bomb, and as it progresses, everything just gets progressively crazier, while always sticking close to its satirical guns. A lot of people jumped at the opportunity to serenade or disparage the episode in equal parts for mocking the Hillary-Trump debates from around the time of its writing, and while I acknowledge that they certainly played some factor into the writing, there’s timelessness in the tropes that Anais and Gumball, as political opponents, embody. Anais is the only one who knows what she’s talking about, yet she’s so alienating that it barely matters; Gumball, on the other hand, is a bumbling idiot and complete outsider who feeds off of the tension in the room with enough charisma to rally everyone onto his side without a second thought. Not only is the satire direct, but it works because of how much those archetypes work with their respective characters.

The same, for the most part, applies to the rest of the cast. “The Candidate” is an episode where everyone gets involved to some capacity, meaning that most of the classmates are given some specific political affiliation or angle to contribute to the joke-telling. Sure, that means that you get Clare as an exhaustingly-whiny Gen Zer who complains about wokeness and sighs a lot, but you also get the unexpected delight of Banana Joe being a conspiracy theory nutjob who yells at things he refuses to understand. Even Darwin gets in on the fun, being perpetually-sidelined as the only person who cares about the rising thermostat temperatures, making on-the-nose jokes about climate change that are met with the expectedly unified ignorance of everyone else.

“The Candidate” thrives in its specificity, and that’s why it succeeds: it knows exactly what it’s trying to accomplish satirically, and accomplishes it with aplomb.

Best Moment: While boomer jokes can get tiresome and, as “The Web” would later prove, be miserable, “The Candidate” lands some great lines at their expense. From Richard: “Do you think we had it easy? When I finished high school, all I had was three dollars in my pocket! So what did I do? I bought a house, a car, and started a family! And the other two dollars went into my savings.”

75. S03E11 - “The Fraud” (8/07/14)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin discover that Principal Brown has never gotten a diploma.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Principal Brown is a seriously underrated character. Even in some of the most lackluster entries of the show, he wrings a ton of laughs out of left-field, whether that means demonstrating his lack of drawing skills (“The Skull”) or suggesting he’s secretly a furry (“The Grades”). “The Fraud,” though, does all of those episodes one better by putting him front-and-center, and he’s fantastic.

I think the most appealing thing about Principal Brown is just that he’s so lovably pathetic. He tries to put up a front of dignity, but he’s amazingly incompetent, and at the notion that his credibility is challenged, he takes every single approach he can think of to, if not prove his innocence, bribe his way out of accusations that Gumball and Darwin aren’t even making. 

Whether that means dressing in shutter-shades and doing his best “fellow kids” impression, or going to a sleepover at the Watterson’s to exchange gossip, or trying to blackmail them with horrific photos of their past search for identity (Gumball was a goth and Darwin was a rasta, shockingly)... everything he does just makes you love him more. He’s like a punching bag whose greatest foe is his own mental anguish. All of that then spirals into Brown going crazy and attempting to blow up the school, which is such a perfect, insane move for the character: this is what he considers his last stand, and if he’s going down, so is Elmore Junior High. 

Long story short, “The Fraud” is Principal Brown’s tour de force, an episode revealing him to be one of the show’s most intriguing, reliable, and lovable characters. There’s only one Nigel Brown, after all, and there will only ever be one Nigel Brown. God bless him.

Best Moment: I liked the reveal that Principal Brown wears high heels under his dense fur coat. There are so many anatomical questions about what he even is, and I love how the show plays around with every ambiguous aspect of his physicality.

For the last part of this list, from 124-100, CLICK HERE.

For more in-depth reviews of episodes starting with Season 5, you can read all of my previous reviews HERE.

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