A Definitive Ranking of Every Episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, Part X: 15-1

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

15. S02E36 - “The Sweaters” (11/05/13) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get drawn into a tennis match with two students from Richwood High who want to challenge their hardcoreness.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There was a point where I considered “The Sweaters” my second favorite episode of the show, and while I’m willing to bring that assessment down a little bit, I still think that it’s one of the most consecutively funny and rewatchable episodes that the show’s ever been able to churn out. It’s the perfect mix of absurdist humor, meta-awareness, and visual panache, and even if “The Sweaters” never gets too ballsy in its experimentation, it’s rock-solid.

Seriously, “The Sweaters” reaches almost ingenious episodes of idiocy, rendering Gumball and Darwin more nihilistic and careless than ever, all while having the world try to convince them of the opposite reaction being an order. It’s already dumb enough to have two random kids from a rival school, Carlton and Troy, appear out of nowhere and declare them poseurs, but to have the entire world act as if the two pose a threat (both Mr. Small and Principal Brown endorse the fight, with the latter dishing out nifty fighting tips) makes things even more delightfully insane. Then, to have them threaten to, in a perfect ‘80s rich kid move, bulldoze Elmore Junior High to build a golf course for Carlton’s dad, raises the stakes to a point of cartoonish urgency… though Gumball and Darwin still aren’t biting. 

They’ve done all of this before. As cartoon characters, “The Sweaters” acts as if Gumball and Darwin are wise beyond their ages, two guys well aware of how things are going to work out in the end regardless of how many turns their ongoing narrative takes. That Gumball succinctly forecasts the outcome of the episode—in the climatic tennis match, they deliberately try to lose, yet simultaneously win through the power of their hearts, ending in a freeze-frame of “some kind of high-five mega happy ending cheese pose”—brings everything full circle. This is Gumball, as a show, saying, “Yeah, here’s everything that’s gonna happen, but we’re still gonna make it hilarious,” and they do. Even with their bag of tricks on full display, the show’s unstoppable.

Also, as one final addendum to all of that conceptual jargon, “The Sweaters” is visually awesome. Richwood High is depicted as some little world where everything is hand-drawn like a discount G.I. Joe cartoon from the ‘80s, and Gumball has a field day pointing out the awkward animation that choice entails; Carlton and Troy’s movements are super stilted, for instance, and when the tennis arena’s crowd applauds, it’s visually impossible to tell. “The Sweaters,” in that sense, represents a perfect melding of the power of the show’s aesthetic decisions and the role those decisions play in telling a more exciting narrative.

Best Moment: Mr. Kreese, the principal of Richwood High, is just as much of a radical blowhard as Carlton and Troy, making weird, condescending noises throughout half of his airtime.

14. S04E26 - “The Love” (5/12/16)

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and the citizens of Elmore teach Bobert a thing or two about love.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Love” is arguably one of the simplest episodes of Gumball, but it’s so well done. It’s another vignette episode, this time taking the form of a series of lessons as told by the cast of the show (and then some) in hopes of helping Bobert understand what love is, but whereas other episodes succeed by being clever or humorous, there’s an extra touch here that really pulls “The Love” ahead of a lot of other similarly-minded episodes: a sense of authenticity.

Sure, there are some vignettes that exist to deliver the sort of straightforward laughs you’d expect from the simple premise, but a large portion have an underlying sweetness that really lands because of how true it feels to the characters involved and their understanding of what love means. Perhaps no scene embodies that better than the one where Nicole tries to think of things to say about Richard, but repeatedly fails to think of anything, only for the two to end up hugging it out; there’s not really a massive joke at the end so much as fantastically minimalistic character work, and it, well, works. (“Love is inexplicable,” the episode says.) Richard also gets his own excellent sequence where he finds himself in increasingly greater trouble due to innocent hugs, but the bit ends sweetly enough that the cynical nature of it is undercut entirely in a legitimately surprising, yet honest way. Hell, even the vignette showing the Robinsons’ romance, for all its silly satirical elements (mocking Up and the inescapable death coughs) feels sweet in its weirdness.

Because of all of that, there’s a specialness that pervades “The Love.” It’s a low-key, low-risk affair, but it’s emotionally fine-tuned, revealing a side of the show that often only comes from the series’ most passionate entries. Even if you’re not into that, though, we’ll always have Sussie’s parents struggling to feed each other, so you really can’t lose.

Best Moment: Richard and Nicole’s hug.

13. S06E31 - “The Possession” (4/15/19) 

What Happens?: Nicole tries to get Richard to dispose of the family refrigerator, but there’s a few complications.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While it’s probably a very close toss-up for most people regarding whether or not “The Faith” or “The Possession” is the better Season 6 entry, I feel like this was the episode that finally proved to me that Richard, in all of his lovable stupidity, could be emotionally-complex, and profoundly so. He’s a character who’s had a lot of ups and downs, but with “The Possession” being one of his last episodes⁠—paired with the similarly enjoyable “The Master” as something of a redemptive twofer⁠—he got the series’ best send-off, an imaginative and heartfelt commentary on sentimentality.

A lot of that success, initially, comes from how funny the episode is. Before anything too serious manifests itself, the premise simply involves Richard, alongside the kids, driving from one destination to the next in hopes of disposing of their fridge. It’s a simple idea that allows for an onslaught of weird but great gags, the culmination of which is the episode going straight Mad Max when a recycling center turns out to be an underground appliance fight club. What really solidifies the episode’s placement on my list, though, is what follows, with the fridge being revealed to be a magical item from the Awesome Store: more than storing food, it’s storage for emotions.

It’s a revelation that Nicole and Granny Jojo make on their journey to get a refund, and a revelation that brings them together. They return to find their house under a thick layer of frost, and upon walking into the fridge, discover a world of ice that Richard refuses to leave; if the fridge goes, he fears, so will all of his memories. It’s a gorgeous sequence where Gumball combines its finest cinematography and finest emotions, with Richard being so attached that he almost becomes permanently entombed as his body slowly freezes over. Luckily, Gumball has the perfect solution: for the first (and probably last) time, in the midst of trying to save Richard, Granny Jojo and Nicole realize they want the same thing.

It’s subtle, but a two-birds-with-one-stone sort of situation: “The Possession” not only gives Richard a sense of finality, but the life-long feud between Nicole and her mother-in-law as well. For however grand of an episode it might be, its resolution works in its utter simplicity. Sometimes that’s all you need, and all it took was three writers—Mic Graves, Tony Hull, and Joe Markham—to prove that.

Best Moment: Richard in the ice cave, surrounded by his memories, is one of those shots that’s etched into the back of my mind.

12. S03E28 - “The Question” (1/08/15)

What Happens?: After a cereal-fueled sugar rush, Gumball and Darwin ponder the meaning of life.

Why Is It on the List Here?: What’s the meaning of life? It’s something humans have spent thousands of years attempting to find an answer to—a question that seemingly has no definitive answer—and it’s become prime sitcom fodder in the process. Rather than taking an easier route with the concept, though, Gumball embraces it as an opportunity to deconstruct the show’s cast in one of the deepest ways: by taking a glimpse at their personal mantras and philosophies.

What works best about everything that ensues in “The Question” is its open-endedness. It uses its prompt not as a question to properly answer, but as a means of going through as many characters as possible and seeing how their minds operate. Larry, for instance, is such a workaholic that the self-awareness of how repetitive his life is sends him into a mental spiral so deep that he ends up walking into the ocean. (It’s a sentiment that, as the writer of this list, I feel I can truly understand.) All of the Wattersons, too, have different ideas of how life should be lived: Nicole is torn between Conan-esque fantasies of crushing her enemies and raising a family, Richard is all about indulging in life’s pleasures (gnawing a sandwich with a full bar of butter on it), and Anais, who attempts to provide an incredibly-informed explanation of the question at hand, ultimately gives way to blissful ignorance as soon as Gumball and Darwin begin to test her patience.

Perhaps “The Question’s” greatest moments, though, come from the most unexpected places. Without a doubt, its greatest highlight is one of the two fantastic musical numbers, “Your Life Doesn’t Count,” wherein the planets of the solar system sing a cheerful little ditty about how everything you do will ultimately amount to nothing because of how miniscule you are in the grand scheme of things. It’s the peak of Gumball’s cynicism, all set to the jauntiest music you could possibly imagine, and it’s phenomenal… even if Gumball and Darwin are incapable of receiving the message because of how far away the planets are. The fact, too, that the episode ends with Sussie, of all characters, dropping the biggest truth bomb by unfolding her entire character’s surprisingly-deep personal philosophy gives the episode a sense of closure in the most unexpected of places: pigeon mayo. History will treat this episode very kindly.

Best Moment: “The Question” taking a hard turn with “Your Life Doesn’t Count.”

11. S05E12 - “The Copycats” (2/06/17) 

What Happens?: The Wattersons discover a family that has been ripping off their life for years and seeks to put an end to their mimicry.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I can’t think of a single other episode that really solidified the late growth of the show’s popularity as much as “The Copycats.” It came at the right time: everyone on the Internet had heard of “The Fury,” and the hype gathered around this one, only half a year later, was proof to them and everyone else that Gumball wasn’t a one-trick pony—this is how shit plays out on the reggy. I will now spend the rest of this entry trying to win back your respect for saying that.

But really, that’s the point that “The Copycats” proves: Gumball is a show that can take the most creative ideas imaginable and make them seem effortless. The fact that said idea is one of the most brilliantly meta premises the show’s fiddled with certainly doesn’t hurt, with the episode being centered around a very real Gumball rip-off from China, Miracle Star, used to sell goat milk products. The writers conceptualize this in the form of having the two groups directly encounter one another, with knock-off Chi Chi’s family clearly stealing from the Wattersons’ life and forcing the Wattersons to find ways to get them out of their lives. The interplay between them is perhaps the episode’s funniest set of gags, whether in demonstrating the equalized powers each member has against one another in an all-out brawl, or the incredibly drawn-out gag of having Richard remove a kidney, which is then transplanted to his rip-off to have removed. 

Perhaps most importantly, though, and what really allows “The Copycats” to flourish regardless of its creativity, is that it’s an episode that places emphasis on Anais, the most constantly unassuming member of the Watterson family. The revelation that Chi Chi’s family doesn’t have a copycat version of her is an impressively dark joke in its own right, but the fact that it places Anais in a position unscathed from the dramatics allows her to sneak into becoming the episode’s hero. The set-up to her saving the day is choreographed flawlessly, and it proves the point further that every Watterson is important in their own right, no matter how much their roles may vary across episodes. 

Lastly, this episode is Jacob Hopkins’ and Terrell Ransom’s last. While it’s not as dramatic of a baton-passing episode as the one preceding it, the glitch resetting their voice to that of Nicolas Cantu’s and Donielle Hansley’s is the icing on the cake: “The Copycats” is Season 5’s greatest comedic triumph.

Best Moment: The kidney transfer.

10. S04E35 - “The Slap” (8/17/16)

What Happens?: Gumball goes to the ends of the earth to get an ass-slap out of Tobias.

Why Is It on the List Here?: As I’ve written most of these far in advance to publication, I can only imagine the amount of outrage I’ll get for putting “The Slap” in the coveted Top 10, well above some of the series’ most revered episodes. This is better than “The Void,” “The Fury,” and “The freaking Shell?” Yes. Let me explain myself.

There are so many ways that “The Slap” could’ve gone terribly, terribly wrong. This is about Gumball having an unquenched desire to get his butt slapped by Tobias, and the entire episode is him finding increasingly desperate, extreme ways of achieving that. Nothing about the episode should work—it sounds like a complete joke of an idea that even Season 1 would pass on (and thank God it did)—but Gumball charges into it with so much determination that it manages to transcend badness and become, in my opinion, one of Gumball’s greatest accomplishments.

“The Slap” just has a real sense of stakes. What Gumball wants is so blatantly stupid, but he commits to it so ridiculously hard, all the way to the point of belting out a melodramatic song about his butt’s dismay. It’s a hilariously evocative moment, and Hopkins channels his singing through legitimate emotion from the bottom of his heart. I feel as if that epitomizes why the episode works so well: the writers aren’t trying to get by based on the premise alone, and there’s not a second where “The Slap” is doing anything lazily, ramping up the intensity until Gumball tricks Tobias into trapping them both on the school roof (under the pretense, of all things, of getting fingered by Masami) for several days.

Above all else, this is a dumb episode, but it’s perfectly dumb. That’s the rarest form of dumbness, and “The Slap” owns everything that it does, creating a flawlessly juvenile experience. I can get why people hate it—it’s all about Gumball’s compulsive need for Tobias to slap his butt, no matter what it takes—but the way I see, it’s Gumball at its unironic finest.

Best Moment: Jacob Hopkins murdering that high note in “My Lonely Backside and I.” I’ll always consider that his peak.

9. S04E36 - “The Detective” (8/18/16)

What Happens?: Anais tries to uncover the whereabouts of her missing stuffed animal, Daisy the Donkey.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Detective” and “The Slap,” paired together for airing, comprise the strongest two episodes put together in the entire series. While I’ve certainly already talked about “The Slap,” they embody the greatest qualities of the show: its ability to turn anything into gold (as evidenced by “The Slap”) and a willingness to make bold decisions that go against the framework of what we understand Gumball, as a show, to be. That’s exactly what the vastly-underrated “The Detective” does, creating a legitimate caper that Anais unfolds, True Detective-style, with fantastic twists and turns, creating one of the series’ most impressively compact, fulfilling narratives.

Quite frankly, this is the best use the show got out of Anais. She’s intelligent far beyond her age, and that clash creates an insightful eleven minutes of fantastic storytelling that never lets us forget that she’s still, at the end of the day, a kid. While her juvenility drenches many corners of the episode (it’s about a stuffed animal), her voice is strong, and Anais’ introspection is the perfect guiding force that keeps “The Detective” engaging and methodical. This is the sort of thing that only Anais would be able to pull off, and it shows.

There’s also the fact that, in parodying True Detective and other crime shows, “The Detective” is gorgeous. Instead of just acting like any old cartoon and presenting the scene to us as the all-seeing eye, the camera conducts itself in line with the tension of the episode’s critical moments. Likewise, the moments of hypnotic, surreal imagery are mesmerizing, such as the visuals that flash through Anais’ mind as she races towards the garbage truck towards the episode’s end or her imagining of Gumball and Darwin getting high on cereal at the start. They’re small touches that create a massive difference, giving “The Detective” a distinctive, visual panache that makes it stand out in my mind and always excited to watch again.

I realize that people may be skeptical of “The Detective” because of its niche specificity and slow narrative, but it’s an episode that’s worth giving a shot, taking inventive chances on new ideas and blending them perfectly into the identity of the show. Gumball is a one-of-a-kind series, and “The Detective,” even by the show’s insane standards, is a one-of-a-kind episode.

Best Moment: Richard gets some fantastic laughs throughout as the barkeep that keeps Anais supplied with a steady stream of milk and as Gumball and Darwin’s concerned father: “What are you gonna do!? Don't hurt my boys! Them's my boys, y'hear!? My boys!”

8. S03E01 - “The Kids” (6/05/14)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin’s voices start a-crackin’.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Kids” is both a conceptual delight and a sweet goodbye to the show’s first voice actors for Gumball and Darwin, Logan Grove and Kwesi Boakye. Gumball had acknowledged its aging cast a couple times prior, and by “The Kids,” it’s clear that both actors had outgrown their parts, but instead of just hiring new voice actors and scooting Grove and Boakye under the rug as a lot of other shows would do, “The Kids” is like a medal of honor for the OGs. They made the show, and for that, they get one of the most badass cast transfers of all time, all built around the premise of their characters going through puberty.

It’s such a novel, perfect idea: cartoons are almost always built around characters who never age, but what happens when the people voicing them do? Well, it leaks into the character, too, and Gumball has a lot of fun messing around with that fact by turning their voice cracks and general pitch deepening into uncontrollable shouts, all coming up at the worst possible times and ruining their ability to live each other’s lives. They still grasp at the fact that they’re still kids, but “The Kids” keeps suggesting otherwise.

All of this culminates in perhaps the show’s greatest song, “Make the Most of It,” with Gumball and Darwin rapping about how they’re gonna be kids forever no matter what. It’s silly, it’s flashy (the animation, courtesy of the CRCR art collective, is phenomenal), and it’s surprisingly poignant, a recollection of all the best parts of being a kid told by two characters who refuse to accept that they’re out of time. It’s rare to see songs that are a direct part of an episode’s narrative, but “Make the Most of It” is a masterful little examination of how Gumball and Darwin are handling that moment in time, encapsulating their naivete in the face of a changing world.

...or somewhat changing, I suppose. As the end reveals, the world suddenly glitches out a bit and their voices change to those of their voice acting successors, Jacob Hopkins and Terrell Ransom, Jr. With that, both characters celebrate the fact that they’ll never age, though that excitement quickly gives way to a wary, pitiful acceptance. We can all fight about who the best Gumball and Darwin voice actors are, but at the end of the day, “The Kids” is a beautiful little send-off and a sweet examination of adolescence, even if our two protagonists are spared the chance for a shot at the next chapter in life. 

Oh yeah, also: massive respect to Logan Grove, who’s out there serving the US as a naval officer! It’s fun to think that Gumball Watterson has more balls than I ever will.

Best Moment: “Make the Most of It,” of course, is perfect, but I also really liked Patrick’s Inception gags, talking to Gumball over-the-phone with Liam Neeson-drenched malice with his portion of the screen growing so much that it starts to literally crush Gumball against each side of the screen.

7. S04E40 - "The Disaster" (9/05/16)

6. S05E01 - “The Rerun” (09/05/16)

What Happens?: Rob takes it to the next level in his grandest effort to ruin Gumball’s life yet, with the help of a remote control that manipulates the universe of the show.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I will admit that my opinion on “The Disaster” and “The Rerun,” Season 4 and 5’s furious two-parter, is a little… jaded, for lack of a better term, compared to most other people’s. They’re episodes that I rarely revisit considering that my interest in Gumball rests far more in its comedic chops, and these two episodes are the peak of the series’ melodrama. Even so, to deny how monumental they are, and how well-deserving they are of all the praise slathered onto them, would be stupid: “The Disaster” and “The Rerun” are breathtaking.

They’re the culmination of Season 3 and 4’s efforts to slowly turn Rob into a formidable foe to Gumball and Darwin, most importantly. His character arc has found him becoming slowly more refined, with each passing episode establishing him as a greater menace, and by the time we get to “The Disaster,” he’s a true supervillain; with the assistance of a magical remote control from the Awesome Store, too, he’s got Gumball’s entire world, literally, in the palm of his hand. 

It’s perhaps one of the series’ most inspired meta set-ups, with each button on the remote creating real-world consequences that allow Rob to play dirty in very specific but always devastating ways. (He uses subtitles, for instance, to create an imaginary subtext to Gumball’s words that hurt Darwin’s feelings, and later uses changes in the aspect ratio to repeatedly smash Gumball’s head, among countless other inspired and always surprising gags.) By the end of “The Disaster,” he’s completely ruined Gumball’s life, turning his family against him and destroying his relationship with Penny before coaxing him into the Void.

And then it happens all over again. If “The Disaster” pokes at the fourth wall, “The Rerun” is a full-fledged effort to demolish it with an exciting new layer. Now that Gumball knows how Rob plans on ruining his life, he can repeat the cycle and come out on top with the addition of some invaluable foresight… even though that ends up worsening the extent that Rob ruins Gumball’s life to a gratuitously brutal degree. It also makes for a perfect melding of the episodes’ dramatic and comedic sensibilities, lending to both its tensest and funniest moments, sometimes going hand-in-hand. (One of my personal favorite jokes is how, after Anais gets violently sucked out of existence, Gumball and Darwin almost immediately forget she ever existed.) 

There’s so much that can be said about why “The Disaster” and “The Rerun” are such quintessential Gumball episodes, really, and others have certainly done it better than myself. It’s the greatest actualization of Rob’s character, perhaps even a premature peak; its meta humor is bonkers; its dramatics are well-earned and legitimately gripping. While it might not quite be my favorite set of episodes that the show’s ever done, they’re tough to beat.

Best Moment: In the midst of complete insanity, Gumball pops in a delightfully succinct one-liner while talking to Darwin: “Whatever you say could alter the future in some terrible way!” “Yeah, but whatever you do in the present does that anyway.”

5. S02E01 - “The Remote” (8/07/12)

What Happens?: After finding out they all want to watch a different show at 8 PM, the Wattersons fight over who gets the TV remote.

Why Is It on the List Here?: It’s kind of insane to think that the first episode of Season 2 is better than every episode of Season 1, but Jesus Christ did the writers nail “The Remote.” The moment it starts, it feels improved in every single way. Hell, one of the first jokes in the episode is Darwin pushing aside the moral implications of being classified as a pet just so he can appear on a show about the world’s cutest pets. Everything about the show tonally, visually, and as we’ll witness later in the episode, choreographically, is a massive step up.

Perhaps most importantly, “The Remote” makes it its job to introduce us to these new versions of the Wattersons by putting them all against each other. Gumball and Darwin, while still kids, have matured quite a bit and become snarkier as a whole; Nicole’s become more two-faced and competitive; Richard’s not just a bumbling idiot but now possesses a strong, personal drive; and most importantly, Anais isn’t just smart but diabolical, playing the rest of her family like pawns just to be able to watch Daisy the Donkey, leading to one of the greatest slow burn reveals from the entire show’s run.

Another big key to its success is that, like “The Detective” a little bit before it on this list, “The Remote” is bent on telling an intricate, linear narrative, but moreso than the former, it’s rooted in the entire cast at their highest level of performance. Whereas “The Detective” is so compelling because it hones in on Anais’ perspective, “The Remote” tells its story passively and without preference for any character, and it allows all of them to shine and take turns having their moment. All of this culminates, too, in the episode’s centerpiece kung fu sequence amongst the Wattersons (sans Anais), a moment that still blows me away every time I watch it. More than being eye candy, it’s an early demonstration of the brilliant cinematic direction that Gumball would increasingly embrace.

Put all those pieces together, and “The Remote” is a flawless ride, the distillation of what a good episode of Gumball looks like that simultaneously raised and surpassed the bar. That the show came swinging right out the gate from Season 1, too, is amazing, and I’d kill to be in the writer’s room to see how that kind of seasonal shift was made.

Best Moment: Dude, it’s the kung fu battle. It’s the moment that I knew that Gumball wasn’t just another kid’s show that managed to occasionally strike gold, and to date, it’s one of my favorite moments from the entire series.

4. S02E40 - “The Finale” (12/03/13)

What Happens?: The Wattersons must finally face the consequences for their actions.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Finale” never gets any respect. It’s not just a matter of it being underappreciated in the same way as episodes like “The Banana” or “The Sweaters”—”The Finale,” at the time it aired, was reviled. I remember barely being able to parse any of it together when I watched it at the ripe age of 13, and I assume a lot of people felt the same way.

But that’s the sort of consequence which befalls an episode that gets ruined, in one fell swoop, by an arbitrary commercial break. The whole point of “The Finale” is that, suddenly, everything matters. This is the darkest timeline for the show, a timeline where everyone suddenly gangs up against the Wattersons, fed up with their failure to acknowledge the amount of destruction they’ve caused. It doesn’t magically get fixed; people work hard to clean up after their messes, but payment is long overdue. The status quo is the Wattersons’ undoing, and yet, by the episode’s end, their savior. 

The final joke isn’t the last line Gumball delivers, wishing there was some sort of magical device that would reset everything and bring it back to normal; it’s the credits that follow. The credits, with their happy-go-lucky recorder tune, is one of the greatest meta jokes the show’s ever done, a grand mockery of what Gumball as a show is. Unfortunately, that final joke got lopped off the episode in favor of commercials, because who cares about credits, right?

Even ignoring that, though, “The Finale” is an absolute fever dream (if we are to consider fever dreams as strictly positive experiences). I’d go so far as to say that “The Finale” necessitates watching Season 1, bringing back as many awesome nods as possible to the Wattersons’ destructive past adventures. For God’s sake, Kenneth comes back! And he has a fight on the street with Hector! “The Finale” is an amalgamation of everything that Gumball’s accomplished over the past two seasons of the show, and it’s a love letter to fans, albeit one that’s not afraid to be particularly smug. The idea that the Wattersons’ solution to undo every ounce of damage they’ve inflicted, too, is to embrace the cyclical nature of their behavior by deliberately making everything worse, is fantastic.

Also, think about this: “The Finale” could’ve been the last show of Gumball ever made. This is already a ballsy as hell episode, but imagine if this was all we had. You may hate “The Finale,” but you have to admit that it really makes you grateful that the show kept going, doesn’t it?

Best Moment: The credits.

3. S05E06 - “The Choices” (10/13/16) 

What Happens?: In a fit of rage over her dysfunctional family, Nicole considers how her life would’ve been different if the day she met Richard played out differently.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Choices” is an episode that I’ve always been scared of writing about. The very first review that I ever wrote was for the episode that directly followed it—“The Code”—because I wasn’t confident enough in my writing abilities then, and over three years later, I can’t say that confidence has really been gained. That two month hiatus between this and the last piece of the list? “The Choices.” 

It’s hard to really say what makes the episode so compelling simply because it’s so visceral. You can dissect and intellectualize it as much as you want, and it certainly deserves that analysis, but its greatest component is that which it triggers within the viewer: its emotions. 

Before we delve into that, though, as this is a Mattalamode-branded list, there is some dissecting and intellectualizing to be done. Perhaps most simply and most immediately, “The Choices” takes a unique risk in telling the story through Nicole’s lens. We’ve never seen her used to such a capacity before, with Gumball tending to side with, well, Gumball (or a Gumball-flattering omniscience), but it’s crucial to the episode being able to bear the emotional appeal that it does. 

Nicole, too, is able to give proceedings a very distinctive, darkly comedic flavor. Before the emotional climax, she sifts through potential bachelors that she ran past on the fateful day that she met Richard and sees how her life would’ve been different… and the outcome is uniformly disturbing, with her spiraling into insanity if not being outright killed in every scenario. It’s an interesting symptom of how the character thinks—after all, this is a series of hypothetical scenarios that play out in her imagination—and it makes “The Choices” feel different and fresh when it risks becoming strictly indulgent. We can surmise, too, that her cold and disciplinarian upbringing factors into her development and thought process as well; as something that Gumball hadn’t ever addressed prior, it feels immediately right, even if it’s painful to watch.

But the real reason “The Choices” is this high is because of how it ends. This is an episode designed to be the emotional high point of the series and a pivotal moment in the show’s trajectory, and thankfully, it delivers. Flashbacks and montages are two scary, cliched concepts to work with, but it’s rare to see both concepts melded together as perfectly as they are here, bypassing any of the potential cheesiness and going straight for the heart in chronicling Richard and Nicole’s entire history together, through the lows (most revealingly, Nicole disowns her parents for refusing to accept her life choices) and the ceremonious highs. Ultimately, then, Nicole decides that there’s no better place for her to be, through the thick and thin, than the present.

If there’s something that the episode really sends home, it’s that even if the Wattersons aren’t perfect by any stretch of the term, in all of their dysfunction… they’re somehow even better. Richard is far from the kind of person that Nicole is, but there’s no better pairing. Richard brings a sort of equilibrium to Nicole as a spouse; even if it may seem invisible, and even if Richard may frequently seem like a thorn in her side—something even Nicole feels at the start and needs to remind herself is far from true—Richard shows Nicole what it means to be alive. More than just being a prototypical sitcom family with an overworked, strict mother and deadbeat father, they’re truly compelling, and it’s sort of a shame that we rarely saw them to such an intimate capacity over the course of the series.

We have “The Choices,” though, and that’s a blessing.

Best Moment: The montage. Simple, earnest, tear-jerking, and heartfelt.

2. S02E08 - “The Job” (9/18/12) 

What Happens?: Richard gets a job as a pizza delivery guy, causing the universe to implode.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Dude, it’s “The Job.” What started out as (by the admission of writer James Lamont) an excuse to put Richard on a motorcycle ended up becoming the first episode of Gumball to turn heads. It’s the fight-or-flight moment that proved this wasn’t just another cartoon, and that it was ready for combat, demonstrating everything that the writers were capable of. More than being another silly, simple Gumball outing, this was an impassioned deconstruction of convention and meta-humor, all because the universe refuses to let Richard have a job.

The status quo is something that a lot of episodic cartoons and TV series often like to take for granted, and when they’re feeling particularly playful, they’ll give the audience a cute little wink. “The Job,” meanwhile, wields it like a deadly weapon, with Richard’s attempt to better the family (even if it started out as an attempt to order pizza) calling forth the end of the world. Having a character as oafish and irresponsible as Richard at this point in his development be at the crux of something so devastating is ingenious, but “The Job” keeps pushing.

Weird little events slowly trickle in throughout the first half of the episode to suggest that something’s going wrong—Nicole’s sink sends water to the ceiling, the Bananas all get stuck celebrating their pizza delivery in an unceasing loop—but the second that Richard accelerates and almost everything in Elmore suddenly launches into, and gets suspended, in mid-air, is a moment that still makes my hair stand on end. The pizza-infused operatic score kicks in, the Wattersons’ pursuit of Richard (oblivious of his self-destruction) intensifies, and when they arrive at the house he’s set to deliver pizza to, a giant beam of light shines down with cars swirling around it. At this point, “The Job” is absolutely insane, and gloriously so.

“The Job” was going strong up to that point, of course. Its comedic well is deep, spending the first act of the episode having Gumball and Darwin go house-to-house delivering pizza that Richard accidentally loses fumbling around on his delivery motorcycle; perhaps most infamously, their delivery of a pizza child to the Pepperonis meets an excessively morbid end when they accidentally drop it. It’s those dramatic elements, though, that secure “The Job’s” spot as the second greatest Gumball episode: the end of the journey may have been a massive universal reset, but the status quo of the series would never be the same.

Best Moment: The second that the opera music goes into full swing.

1. S03E40- “The Money” (7/09/15)

What Happens?: The Wattersons are in dire straits when Gumball refuses to give up his integrity in the face of the family’s financial struggles.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I feel as if “The Money” is both a very conventional and incredibly unconventional episode to consider the greatest that Gumball ever produced. I can easily see arguments made for entries that take greater narrative risks, like “The Choices” or “The Disaster” and “The Rerun,” and while I won’t deny that they’re perfect additions to the series’ catalog, I don’t see them as Gumball at its most true to form. It’s a matter of what you prioritize, and I’m far more of a sucker for the series at its most comedic and unhinged. Perhaps that’s a strange argument to make, but “The Money” epitomizes to me what the show has always been; of 240 episodes, it’s the first one that I think of when I think “The Amazing World of Gumball.” It’s the meat and potatoes, if that meat was filet mignon and the potatoes were au gratin. 

There are some very obvious things about “The Money” that always get addressed, but it’s a routinely perfect 11 minutes of the show, and I feel that so much of that goes unacknowledged. The basic premise at play, for instance, is quite clever and goes entirely neglected in how people assess the episode: Gumball gets in a phase defined by integrity and willpower at the absolute worst time. He’s not self-righteous, and perhaps most interestingly, he’s not even in the wrong; case in point, the other Wattersons are forced to concede that Gumball may be right in refusing to sell his family out for a Joyful Burger commercial despite their slow descent into homelessness. 

It’s just a matter of the world being unjust, and the Wattersons being the Wattersons. That their poverty is suddenly caused by Richard literally throwing all of their money into the ocean sets a precedent for the sort of shenanigans that they’ll get themselves into, and “The Money” is practically a case study in “one step forward, two steps back.” It’s also a great chance to showcase every member of the family at their prime, something of a rare delight as the series progressed. Everyone gets a solid set of bits to deploy, though perhaps none benefit greater than Nicole who, as the family matriarch, is forced to compromise the most for Gumball’s passion (while also landing an awesome imaginary sequence as the mascot for a Japanese burger commercial). 

That sourness eventually rises out of everyone, becoming rather joyfully realized in the episode’s musical number, “Imaginate,” devolving into a good old-fashioned Gumball beatdown, and it’s also the perfect segue into the deconstruction scene. “The Money” keeps discovering rock bottoms and then somehow manages to fall through them into even rockier bottoms, but there is perhaps no lower point the Wattersons could go than literally ceasing to exist because of their lives being budget constraints. They become sketch stills, and then storyboards, and then sticky notes as Elmore disassembles and glitches into heaps of polygons. 

It’s the series at the peak of its meta humor. Gumball is a show defined by its unique animation and mixed-media aesthetic, so to pull all of those visuals back and watch them collapse is gloriously anarchic. It’s one of those rare moments from television that blows you away and makes you gasp in awe, and that’s no small feat (even if Gumball sometimes makes it seem like it is). And yes, as perhaps the greatest stickler for the show’s perception online and the sorts of stunts it pulls, I’ll always stand by the adoration for “The Money’s” climax as completely earned.

I’ll conclude by saying that perhaps it’s a little strange and disarming to say that the best episode out of the entire series came smack-dab in the middle of the Gumball’s run, and this is in no way intended to invalidate the next four years’ worth of work. If anything, the fact that Gumball kept pushing itself to its creative limits, always scheming and ready with something equally insane, is a testament to how amazing (not sorry) The Amazing World of Gumball is. Even when it occasionally stumbled, it fought until the very end, and there’s no more respectable trait for a television series to have.

Best Moment: While the deconstruction scene is the obvious answer, I’d also like to highlight some of the episode’s other wonderful moments. Gumball’s opening speech is fantastic, as well as setting the tone for the episode immediately; the Wattersons’ attempts at subliminal advertising for Joyful Burger make for a hilarious one-two-three punch; and the cheesy, ‘80s-channeling commercial at the very end is such a great note to end Season 3 on, featuring Darwin in his best moment of the episode as the token urban appeal, beatboxing and sliding backwards into frame.

Closing Thoughts:

I can only hope that, with time, the show will be seen as the masterpiece that it is. There are traces here and there of it receiving the sort of recognition it deserves—most notably, Film School Rejects recently named Gumball the best animated show of the past decade—but there’s still much left to be desired. You can’t say that over the past five months, I didn’t do my part, though. 

This is, by far, the most monumental thing I’ve ever done, and there were a lot of points where I just wanted to give up in spite of how much that would undermine the point of the list… but I didn’t, and I can contribute a lot of that to the amazing people who have been rooting for my work from the start; special thanks, then, to my good friends Guy, Penta, Henry, Zoe, Jasper, Maddie, Martin, James, Kata, and Game. Sorry I got this out before March and how, because of that, I don’t owe each of you $5. 

I would also like to thank the Gumball staff for being so supportive of all of my review work over the years, even when my critiques could be particularly harsh. I have nothing but respect for everything that you’ve done, and that you’ve embraced me to the capacity that you have is flattering beyond words. Shout-outs especially to Ben Bocquelet, Richard Overall, Bianca Ansems, and Guillaume Cassuto for their generosity.

And lastly, thanks to (statistically speaking) you, the casual reader! You’re the life force of my website, and even if I don’t know your name, you mean the world to me. The fact that any of this was worth your time to read is insane for me to think about, and the level of patience you’ve had with me will serve you well in all of your future endeavors.

Maybe I’ll talk about Gumball even more one day. Maybe I won’t. It’s hard to say what’ll come next, but it’s been a fun as hell journey to take.

For updates whenever I post anything, follow me on Twitter @Matt_a_la_mode.