The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Deal

"You won't last five minutes in there."
Well, that was something. I don't know if I'm sufficiently able to objectively break down the episode, so I apologize for that in advance.

Before we get into all of that, though, the first half of the episode was great. It's nothing more than setting up the events of the second half - which I'll pedantically nitpick in a moment - but it goes all out in making the central joke, that Nicole doesn't give Richard enough credit for the work he does, a lot of fun. I mean, starting off with Nicole launching an aggressive rap about getting the small raise of "three cents on the dollar" and employee of the month is always promising. It's what the show does best - take something terribly mundane and turn it into something hilarious.

It's upon seeing her on top of the world that Richard gets set off, feeling all of his hard work is being neglected. He then goes on to try to prove that point in the typical Richard fashion which, by the way, doesn't make it any less great. (Among the highlights are Richard using the kids to mow his lawn by eating the grass and drying them off post-bath to heavy metal/Irish music.) Nicole shakes it off nonetheless, so Richard goes on strike.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Best

"She's just trying to help you be a better person." "Exactly, she's raising the bar! Which is totally unfair for someone like me who liked the bar exactly where it was."
"The Best" was an interesting episode, to say the least. It hit all the high notes, with some smart jokes and visual gags, but for some reason, it never really triumphed as a whole. That's not a bad thing, per se, and to call "The Best" bad is a huge overstatement, but it never became anything truly memorable, played out as you'd imagine, and was pleasing if not revelatory.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Worst

"What's happening?" "It's the glass ceiling Mom was talking about!" "What's that?" "The invisible barrier that stops anyone who's not an old, rich dude from getting the best jobs!"
There are three possible reactions I can imagine to come out of this line. You could laugh. You could "mmhmm." Or you could cringe internally. I took the third option.

No no no, I'm not sexist, don't you play that crap on me. But I think that quote pretty much sums up how you're going to perceive this episode - you're either gonna really dig it, see it as defiant to the expectations of society or something, or hate it.

I... hated it, I guess. Hate's a strong word. Basically, the episode's getting a C-. For "confused." "The Worst" is an episode where the show is trying to make a statement, but it just can't.

Update: "A Second Opinion" and Abroad

Well, it's finally my summer, and you know what that means: the guy that writes things that you read every once in a while's gonna write something you'll never read. At the very least, this is sort of relevant to the aim of the blog: diversifying.

Cartoon Splurge: Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Season 1

Hey. If you're new here, let me do a quick introduction: I'm Matt, and I write bits of analysis that are so pedantic that all fun is lost. (Riveting, I know.) I'm not a massive cartoon fan, though I'm currently infatuated with The Amazing World of Gumball; it is for that reason that I'm doing this right now, indebted to Mr. Anonim. So, uh... hello. Hope everybody's doing okay.

As you probably know, his grand idea was to hop between communities and spread word of other cartoons to establish a sort of "Community Watching" and give some shows some new fans. Since so few people seemed to be playing along with it, I decided I had nothing to lose and that I was diving straight in. Though he planned out a few episodes of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, I saw the first episode, recognized its potential, and decided to stick around for the whole first season. That's what this is: a so-called "Cartoon Splurge," where I go all in on a cartoon and review a season of it at a time. At the very least, I can offer an outsider's opinion, and that's good, right?

Oh, and as a disclaimer: I apologize for any anachronisms or technically incorrect assumptions: I haven't seen Season 2 and know basically nothing about it, so my views of the show might be slightly incorrect as I lack the complete image.

First things first, though: one of the things that Anonim repeatedly tried to warn me of was that Star was an insanely plot-heavy cartoon, but it's really not, at least not yet. (I've endured HIMYM - this isn't that, thankfully.) Yes, there's some chronology to it all, but it's still light. You can tell that the show is slowly building up, what with Toffee and the Headmistress (?) of the Reform School, but the show doesn't ever let that detract from simple character interplay and quirky ideas. It's a lot like Wander Over Yonder's approach in Season 2, where four, plot-heavy, 22-minute episodes were punctuated by interludes of 12, lighter, 11-minute ones; through it, the story could build up without compromising on any light fun. For Season 1, at least, Star seems to be following a similar course of action. (The two's similarities may or may not be intentional as per Craig McCracken's post discussing Disney's more rigid views towards serialization.)

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Heist (and the Gumbomb)

"Kapoosh?"
Okay, so yesterday was rough. I'm going to move right along, ignore that, and say that I really enjoyed this episode. (Also, I'll be talking about the Gumbomb in general at the bottom- double feature, yo.)

Realistically, "The Heist" is very similar to "The Box" in trying to take the same general format as "The Check," and while it once again falls short of that level of excellence, that doesn't mean this episode was bad. In fact, this is probably my favorite episode to come out of this week, believe that or not. For all of its complexities, it was probably one of the simpler episodes this week- it didn't try to push at anything new, instead offering more delightful takes on the Watterson family and how they think.

First of all, I'm going to say that I honestly didn't mind Richard's ignorance of the situation as a catalyst, at least partially because his helmet was the real issue. Even if he made some poor decisions, it wasn't out of his stupidity alone so much as a series of honest mistakes. The plot is set up so that it makes sense why Richard would use the sign to confuse the bank for a Joyful Burger and, with Larry at the helm of the bank, it makes sense that he wouldn't assume anything was wrong. Admittedly, there were some stupid twists, like Richard telling everybody to put their hands in the air because he believes it to be someone's birthday, but I at least like that Richard retains that joyous, loving character. It's just that the message is misconstrued.

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Weirdo

"I think we've seen enough, thank you."
Let's get this out of the way so as to help deflect that which will follow: I'm cold-hearted, I'm cynical, I'm a terrible human being and a waste of the air supply. We good? Good. You ready for this? I don't think you are. Okay. We can do this. It'll be fine. All I have to say is that this episode was boring. And I get that everybody else thought this episode was phenomenal and y'all are all teary-eyed messes, but this episode just didn't work for me.

You don't know how long I debated just lying and saying that I loved this episode, because me finding this to be tedious is a solid dent in my reputation. After all, this is definitely my second most polarizing opinion for the show (the first shall, for the time being, remain undisclosed. It'll surface in time). It's much easier to just join the crowd of admirers, but I don't want to be dishonest. I already view the series with probably abnormally high prestige, so if I find that something doesn't work, there's actually a legitimate bone worth picking. So... let the ostracism begin.

A big part of the issue is that I just don't like Sussie as a character. There's nothing interesting about her. She's realistically one of the few links the show still has to Season 1 because of her unchanging nature in the show, and that can really drag stuff down.

The only times that I think Sussie was used successfully were in "The Night" (for the meta sequence) and "The Question," where she spurred an unexpectedly complex personal philosophy. Those occasions worked because a new angle was taken in understanding the character and exploring something different. Here, we get stuck in the inevitable rut of Sussie being Sussie, a character without anything to prod at, and a clear message that didn't warrant 11 minutes to understand.