The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Inquisition

"It's better this way."

You know an episode is a bit of a head-scratcher when you just sit back and don't know how to really comprehend what just happened, so I'll just start with a basic, two-word sentence. Cliffhangers, right?

Cliffhanger endings are scary, especially when you compound that with them being an unequivocal downer. Everything about "The Inquisition" throws the future of Gumball, not just as a series but as a franchise (if movie rumors turn out to be true), into doubt, and whether or not the finale yields anything else determines how much its ballsiness pays off. Before we really get into the nitty-gritty of all of that, though, and of all the abstract questions raised by the episode, by the show, and by the people behind the show itself, let's just talk about the episode for a minute, because finale or not... this is still a review. "The Inquisition" is fantastic.

Warning: major spoilers. You knew this.

It's hard to know just how much of the past six seasons of Gumball were really building to this exact point, but everything about the premise, and how it becomes increasingly dark and twisted, is perfect. Not only is the show tackling untapped territory which, at this point in the show, is sort of an intrinsically exciting rarity, but it's a master-class in deconstruction, with its humor more meta than ever before. This time, Gumball subverts its own visual identity, with its vibrant cartoon characters existing in a photorealistically-rendered world, by acknowledging that its characters are an anomaly. While their irregularity and individuality makes them charming and who they are, it also means that, as their world comes to a screeching halt, none of them will survive.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The BFFS

"What are you doing?" "Oh, just looking for a darn to give."

It's so weird to think that we're one episode away from the end of the series, and that, come the 24th, I'll never write a standalone review of the show ever again. Certainly not helping with that general weirdness is the fact that "The BFFS" doesn't feel like the penultimate episode the show. In fact, it barely feels like anything. At best, it feels like a disappointment. Maybe I just didn't have enough darns in my darn pocket, but this was a strange one, and not necessarily in a great way.

Certainly not helping is the premise of Gumball's first best friend, Fuzzy, knocking on his door one day, with the two reconnecting, much to Darwin's immediate discomfort. There's a lot wrong about the premise itself in that it forces us to pretend that there's a logical reason Gumball would even have a best friend as a toddler that went completely unmentioned over the past 238 episodes, let alone that friends you have as a toddler don't really add up to anything, because we all know that toddlers are stupid. (I said it. We were all thinking it.) Even so, though, beyond having to suspend your disbelief, "The BFFS" just feels rocky on a lot of other fronts.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Decisions

"There! I made a decision to do... exactly what that guy told me... ugh."

Self-awareness in late seasons of a TV show is something of a double-edged sword. In some cases, it comes across as smarmy, making fun of your show's own failings without making any proper amendments to fix them, but in other cases, it's a step towards fixing some deeper-set issues. Whether or not "The Decisions" was able to symbolically fix up Darwin's spotty history as a character over the past few seasons of sidelining, it's far more in the latter lane than the former.

Darwin's always been something of a difficult character for the show to grapple with. While there are some pretty solid spotlights here and there, most recently with "The Sucker," he's relegated to a supporting role without even the faintest bit of influence over what's going on too many times to count, and while he once had a fun level of tact in that role (like in "The Hug," by calling out Gumball's idiocy), the past two seasons have eroded most of that away, making him a pleasant but biteless partner-in-crime. That's what makes "The Decisions" so exciting in its self-awareness: Darwin finally realizes that all he does is whatever Gumball tells him, and he needs to learn how to forge his own path in life.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Revolt

"STOP OBJECTIFYING OBJECTS!"

Remember how, in my last review, I said that when all is right, Gumball's writers sure know how to make an episode fly? Yeah... this is what happens when that fails.

Gumball is, indisputably, a show that puts comedy first, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Whereas cartoons are generally headed in a more serious, narratively-driven direction, Gumball is one of the last strong shows working episodically with the central focus of being fun, and that prevents it from being as weighed down as its contemporaries in the sense that anything can happen. While that usually plays out to the show's benefit, though, there's a lot of ways it can go wrong, with writers instead using the opportunity to go sloppily apeshit in pursuit of some self-destructive idea that works against the show, because as I said, anything can happen, right?

"The Revolt" isn't just one of those episodes: it's the epitome of everything going as roughly as you could imagine. It suffers every single issue that a Gumball episode possibly could, and whereas there's quite a few episodes that unfortunately fall victim to a few issues, "The Revolt's" licked a few too many doorknobs, and it's just sweltering with grotesque infection.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Heart

"What seemed sweet has turned out to be lethally toxic, like feeding a chocolate cake to a puppy, next to the tailpipe of a 4x4, in the middle of an oil spill, while reading it Elmore Stream comments."

It's surprising how many recent episodes have made efforts to be legitimately sweet or optimistic in one way or another. "The Heart" is the latest installment to take that direction, serving to bury the hatchet between Mr. Robinson and his toxic relationship with Gumball and Darwin by reaching into the emotional core, or rather the lack thereof, of his character.

It's an exciting development considering how repetitive and nonsensical the Watterson brothers' infatuation with him is. It feels like one of the few major elements from the show's first season that's really survived this far into the program, with episodes centered around him often going in the same direction: Gumball and Darwin give him nothing but love, but he isn't having any of it. "The Heart" reaches an interesting fork in the road, though, by forcing them to realize that Mr. Robinson has never loved them, and it crushes their souls. Not only does that freeze up the normal route these sorts of episodes like to take, but it pushes Mr. Robinson into the spotlight as an unlikely protagonist, and the new angle does wonders.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Mess

"Ask me for anything you like and I'll buy it for you!" "I would like the golden twinkle in an old man's eye as he holds his infant granddaughter." "What?" 

For whatever reason, Gumball's writers really like making Gumball sleep-deprived for quick jokes. The good news, though, is that they do it incredibly well, and evolving his sleep-deprivation into a full-fledged, conceptual episode alongside Darwin was a smart way to elevate the gag with some new wrinkles added to the formula. Fueled—or, I guess, the opposite of that, really—by a night of video-watching, Gumball and Darwin are tasked with watching Penny's sister, Polly (making her first major appearance in an episode) though they fade in and out of consciousness repeatedly, losing Polly along the way and awakening every minute somewhere else, in the middle of a new scenario with an inexplicable lack of context.

That's the game of "The Mess," and it's a ton of stupid fun. Watching Gumball and Darwin run around at only half of their mental power is already fun enough, allowing for more interesting dialogue and an all-around weirder narrative, but centering it around them attempting (and failing) to babysit Polly adds a nice sense of urgency to everything. It's just a terrible day, but amplified up a thousand times, and that kind of idea is right up the show's alley.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Web

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

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

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

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Agent

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

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

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

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Factory

"If you're not back in two minutes, we'll move your desk to a bathroom stall." "I know you mean that as a threat, but as we're not allowed to take bathroom breaks, it would technically be an improvement."

An episode centered around the Rainbow Factory has been teased for quite a while, so expectations of "The Factory" were fairly high. This was our chance to find out about one of Elmore's few locations that has never been properly explored, after all, and it's a factory that makes rainbows! Obviously, knowing Gumball, there's something a lot more shady afoot, but it was all a matter of trying to figure out what. The answer: it's pretty much like anywhere else, if not painfully sugar-coated.

Thankfully, though, "The Factory," even if a fairly traditional episode, was able to key into the funner aspects of a change in location. Everything, plot-wise, is fairly straightforward: Nicole has to negotiate with the CEOs of the Rainbow Factory to make sure it doesn't get shut down, and Gumball and Darwin do their silly little Gumball and Darwin thing of tagging along without being asked. They're definitely made more naive here than usual, acting more like kids without the faintest bit of cynicism, but focusing on the more juvenile aspects of their personality works well enough here, especially in the episode's musical number.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Wish

"I can't believe I've been guilt-tripped by a neck pillow. I mean, who am I? Mr... actually no, that's never happened to anyone before."

So... this was an interesting one, wasn't it? Usually, when an episode struggles, it's because it feels unrealized, but it's not that "The Wish" didn't put in the most sincere effort it could into everything it was trying to do. It's just that, well, having Principal Brown struggle to profess his love to a neck pillow is a step too far, and the episode feels all the more bizarre because of it in generally unproductive ways.

I mean, I'm always down for Gumball going balls-to-the-wall with the most insane idea it can think of; that's one of the show's greatest qualities, and it's helped create some of the greatest entries into the show's massive, diverse catalog of knock-out episodes. What "The Wish" does, though, is confound the logic that the show tries to use by churning out an adventure where every character just feels miles off from how they should be as some strange compromise for the narrative to work. And here's the thing: "The Wish" does sort of work in its own absurd way, but at what cost?

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Future

"Mom, I missed you." "And I miss hardcore hip-hop."

There's a lot to take in with "The Future." For one thing, it was intended to be Season 6's season opener, though that's panned out to arguably one of the worst outcomes to befall a premiere—being so ambitious that its production cycle pulls it all the way to the final quarter of said season (let alone the final season). Luckily enough, though, the events of "The Future" have, realistically, no impacts on the show's timeline, at least not any super obvious ones at this point. (The existence of "The Spinoffs" as an episode that was intended to follow "The Future," for instance, seems explicitly contradictory.)

For the sake of this write-up, though, let's just say that "The Future" exists at a deliberate point in the season's runtime: this is a packed episode, injecting so many interesting concepts into Gumball's quietly unceasing narrative, some more spelled out than others... but I'll get to all of that in a second. Honestly, trying to figure out how to unpack everything is gonna take a second.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Master

"Boom. Mega happy ending."

Dungeons & Dragons, Dragons & Dungeons. It was something of an inevitability for Gumball to cover in its ongoing mission to get an angle out of every major pop culture phenomena of our current era; if anything, it's shocking that it took until close to the end of the series to make an episode centered around it. It's the sort of idea that allows you to theoretically do what the series does best: explore the many complications of its core cast by putting them together on the same road and watching what happens. "The Master," in that regard, is generally successful.

As a disclaimer, I should say that yes, I have played Dungeons & Dragons. I had a triumphant run as Sheridan the Aasimar that lasted all of two games before being pummeled to death by lowly goblins, but realistically, that's all the experience you need to understand all of "The Master's" jokes. That's not a diss, in any way: that's really all you need. "The Master" isn't looking to do some elaborate survey of everything D&D; it's all about the experience, the perpetual bickering and dicking around and those incredibly-inconvenient 2 rolls, which I swear happen more often than 1's. The entirety of their journey reminds me of me and my five other roommates managing to wring out an entire hour of D&D getting into bar fights—good times.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Possession

"We want our refrigerator repaired." "Ah, that old thing's still going?" "Yeah, she is. And she thinks your lifetime warranty still means something."

I can't believe it's been over four months since I've written literally anything television-related, let alone Gumball-related. Sure, there have been several incredibly unfortunate episode leaks, but for the most part, I've stayed loyal to the show's erratic television airing, even if it... annoys me to no end. Nevertheless, as we approach Gumball's last leg, starting everything off on "The Possession" is a great step—this is a fantastic episode.

Gumball is a show that thrives in conceptuality, and "The Possession" is the perfect combination of cleverness and legitimate emotion, starting strong with some good-natured, sharp fun before taking a sweet, emotional pivot. This, truly, is an episode that exemplifies the series at its finest, even deep into its sixth season with only a few more episodes to burn off, and that unrelenting charisma combined with fact that this is a show that could, at any moment, surprise us with an all-time great, has been the key to the series' longevity. "The Possession" is Season 6's poster child of that principle.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Silence

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

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

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

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Buddy

"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!" 

One of the show's more underdeveloped but enduring story arcs is Anais' long quest to try to make friends. While that arc's progress, for the most part, has slowed down, with the last installment ("The Guy") pretty much just suggesting that she'll never be able to find a healthy friendship, "The Buddy," taking a cue from Season 6's other, generally winning efforts, decides to finally answer her long-awaited call for help in a pretty unexpected place.

I'm talking about Jamie. While other similar episodes have generally gotten by through introducing new, one-off characters (like Jodie in "The Parasite," or Josh in the aforementioned "The Guy"), "The Buddy" indulges in that surprising alliance with a buttload of, despite the odds, chemistry and charisma. Jamie hasn't been explored at all since "The Girlfriend," where she found an identity based entirely in abuse and incomprehension, but that just makes her use here even more interesting, especially because it never really undermines how she's already been established. She's still unaware of how the world works by all means, but she takes it with stride, and in the crime-fighting partnership that flourishes as the episode progresses, she's the brawn to Anais' brains.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Drama

"Oh, it's funny 'cuz we're dead." "Darn it, he's right, it is funny for that reason."

Isn't it weird to think that, across the last 52 episodes, Gumball has barely done anything to address the fact that Darwin and Carrie are in a romantic relationship? No, like, seriously. The only times it's really been acknowledged are in brief moments where the joke can be made (like "The Deal" and "The Best"), but not in any meaningful way beyond light implication.

Because of that, there's a lot of pressure on "The Drama." More than just being an enjoyable episode, it has to face those near-insurmountable expectations, or else risk being completely ineffective and difficult to believe in its sincerity. Ultimately, it falls somewhere in between, a fun albeit long overdue episode that wants to reaffirm Darwin and Carrie's relationship more than further illustrate it.

There's nothing wrong with simply showing that their relationship is on the show's mind somewhat, but instead of trying to find any particularly incisive angles, "The Drama" examines the perception of their relationship and Gumball's increasing doubt in their well-being (which is, to be fair, incredibly true to the show considering how little anyone has seen of it). That pretty much enables Darwin and Carrie to be at the center of the episode, but they never motivate it in their antics; rather, they present material for Gumball to riff concernedly off of. Because of that, the episode doesn't really go anywhere until Gumball decides he's had enough, even though the events of "The Drama" can barely count as evidence in support of his worldview, cynicism aside.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Slip

"Can't you just give it to me?" "Yeah, sure, I'll just give it to you! If rules and regulations mean nothing to you." "So I can have it?"

Despite the past few episodes creating a sort of midseason slump for Season 6, "The Slip," and the two episodes that followed it, are a step in the right direction, each delivering fantastic stories with a refreshing sense of confidence and direction. "The Slip," for my money, was the most successful of the three, taking a silly but pedestrian premise that you might find in any show and taking it to the sorts of extremes that only Gumball is really capable of.

The central premise at play here is that Richard needs to get his package delivered, but he accidentally misses its initial delivery, spiraling into a relentless quest to pry his package from a belligerent delivery man with ruffled feathers (pun unintended). While it could've easily been another forgettable Richard vehicle that made jokes at the character's expense, or otherwise give him some stipulation that causes his identity to misalign (see: "The Diet" or as early as "The Laziest"), "The Slip" was so successful because it was true to who Richard is as a character, and instead of modifying him, it plays out entirely indebted to his strengths and flaws, all without interrupting the pacing of the episode and making him the episode's greatest asset, culminating in a heroic speech dedicated to the lazy (even if they sort of choke in terms of reciprocating enthusiasm).

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Ghouls

"Dude, it's so sad! We need to help them get their scare back." "He's right, we'll do anything. Is there a page we can like or a wristband we can wear or something?"

Sorry this post is a bit late, but I've had a busy and exciting weekend which I will be sure to write about! And also college. So if you're not cool about this coming out late, then... sucks to be you, man, I guess you have to find someone else to read. Good luck with that!

Watching "The Ghouls" helped me realize that modern Gumball episodes are at their most successful when they succeed in two regards: one, they have an interesting structure bound around a strong concept, and two, that they're just downright fun (see: "The Founder," "The Vegging," "The Candidate"). Unfortunately, the past season has been filled with a frustratingly disproportionate amount of episodes that only really succeed in one of those regards (usually the former). "The Ghouls," then, is an episode that is fun... but it's difficult to properly evaluate on the level of how it's put together considering the weakness of a lot of every aspect of it otherwise.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Awareness

"We should just nip it in the bud." "Uh, no, let's not. That phrase is actually incredibly offensive to plants."

Continuing off of Gumball's grand tradition of releasing episodes early in different countries without a US airdate in sight, "The Awareness" found its way inconspicuously on British airwaves yesterday, and through the power of shady Internet wizardry, I'm here to review it.

I think I'll start things off by saying this much: even if I don't think a lot of episodes are great, I can generally see how people could get to those conclusions. Maybe you like "The Intelligence" and the extent of its commitment to the medieval motif, or you enjoyed the macabre hijinks of "The Ad." But "The Awareness" is an episode that eludes me on that front; it's not that it's bad, it's just uniform in every way. It takes a fun premise and just goes along with it as much as necessary without ever breaking into more exciting territory, making for a respectable but unmemorable outing.

First of all, it's worth noting that the episode tackles a very interesting satirical target in the form of Gumball attempting to demonstrate an understanding of plant culture to a skeptical and condescending Leslie, with the two creating an echo chamber of cultural appropriation in an attempt to maintain the upper hand. Theoretically, the premise brings out some of the strongest cynicism that Gumball has to offer, at times bordering on Season 2 levels of deviousness, but none of the episode really gets channeled into a satisfying end, and in my opinion, there's a lot of reasons for that.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Ad

"Well, I guess we all learned a lesson today. It's okay to commit a crime if it means you get away with a different crime." "Nicole, that's a terrible lesson."

"The Money," in my opinion, is the greatest single episode that Gumball has ever created. Its examination of the Wattersons' financial situation, how it manages to strongly demonstrate the role that each Watterson plays in the family dynamic, and how it shatters the fourth wall so dramatically makes it, no matter what angle you look at it from, a complete blast. With that being said, though, I don't think it really warranted a sequel, but alas, that's sort of what "The Ad" is.

I'm not saying that "The Ad" traces the plot of "The Money" very much, though in all honesty, it's not a bad episode to take notes from. Rather, it follows the same basic plot of Richard wasting money on something particularly lavish—in this case, a horse named Wunderklopp—causing the family to take every measure possible to scrape up the money to survive for a month until a potential horse buyer can pay the money back. While "The Money" devotes itself to exploring their depravity and falling dignity, though, "The Ad" simply finds them involved in a scheme, using their house as a bed and breakfast to earn money, all while secretly living in the house. Theoretically, the premise offers up promising absurdity, but the route the show takes somehow winds up crafting one of the most boring, uneventful episodes since Season 5's "The Deal."