A Definitive Ranking of Every Episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, Part I: The Introduction + 240-210

Yes. I did it. I ranked all 240 episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball, from May 3rd, 2011 to June 24th, 2019.

(IF YOU WANT TO SKIP TO THE START OF THE LIST, SCROLL DOWN A LITTLE!)

I expect this to be sent to every person you know with the caption, "The fucking madman actually did it," regardless of if they know who I am, or if they've seen the show, or if they respond with "We haven't talked in a year, and I feel like we've been further apart than we used to, yet however much that initially hurt me, however much I had to step away from everything and learn to grow on my own... I'd like to keep it that way. Please delete my number." This is important.

Enough of the dramatics, though. I've been a fan of Gumball for several years now, and it's a very important, personal show to me. Since 2016, I've been writing about the series, episode to episode, meeting like-minded people and discovering things about myself. It's taught me almost everything I know about comedy; it even set forth my career trajectory and my aspirations of becoming a comedy writer, which I can only really liken to an enthusiastic but moderately-flammable ship. Basically, it's no understatement to say that a lot of my life decisions are indebted to the show.

With that all said, I decided that the best way to reaffirm my love for the show was this... I don't know either. But I wrote it! Since January, I've rewatched the entire series and carefully assembled my definitive ranking of every single episode of the show, from worst to best. But before we get started, here's a few things to keep in mind:

1. Whenever "Gumball" is italicized (Gumball), I'm referring to the The Amazing World of Gumball as a series. Whenever it's just written (Gumball), I'm referring to the character.

2. This list is more a critical assessment of each individual episode than anything else, which means that there will be spoilers, and lots of them. If you're just now getting into the show, or haven't finished it, I don't recommend reading any of it regarding episodes you haven't seen.

3. Season 1's episodes tend to be the most problematic, which is respectable; it was the series' first outing, let alone that almost everyone involved was inexperienced with creating a show. While I hold it accountable to its shortcomings, some episodes were moved around in regards to their quality relative to their season. For instance, as you'll see a bit later, I enjoy "The Drama" more than "The Mystery," but I give "The Mystery" a slight edge on the list because of its sense of scale and ambition.

4. While I rely on humor to break down some of the more lower-ranking episodes on my list or otherwise comment on certain episodes' issues, I am in no way out to insult anyone's work. If anything, my efforts to work through every episode, addressing their merits and shortcomings with meticulous attention to detail, is an effort to memorialize it. Gumball is a show that I truly love, and I want to demonstrate how much I adore it, even if that means occasionally calling it out for its shortcomings.

5. This is all my opinion! I'm not intending to stand in as the voice of every Gumball fan. Feel free to contest my opinions, but be open-minded and respectful!

Also, before I start this list, I want to thank a few people. First of all, I'd like to give a massive thank you to my dear friend Penta, the massively-talented artist who created that awesome illustration at the top of this post, and probably every future post for this list. We might try to make it into a poster or a shirt in the future, even. I love it very much, and I love him very much. Check out more of his artwork HERE!

Equal amounts of appreciation go out, too, to my two friends and Gumball-analyzers-in-arms, Guy and Henry (Angryman), who have worked diligently to edit and revise everything I wrote into a sight for healthy, un-sore eyes. Guy writes excellent, in-depth articles about the show's cast of characters (and more!) that you can check out HERE! Henry, meanwhile, has been steadily reviewing every episode of the series, and he's great with presenting new perspectives on episodes that I never would've considered; you can check out his content HERE!

Without further ado, let's get rolling.

240. S01E24 - “The Genius” (10/10/11)

What Happens?: When Darwin gets taken to a research center because he allegedly passed an aptitude test declaring him to be a genius, Gumball decides to rescue him by becoming a genius too.

Why Is It on the List Here?: This list begins, unsurprisingly, in Season 1. In a rare move, “The Genius” features three distinct stories at the same time, and in an even rarer move, none of them work for a second. The meat of “The Genius” is predicated on Gumball’s efforts to prove that he has even a subpar level of intellect to rescue Darwin, and the end result is just a series of jokes that punch down at him, degrading everything that’s been established about his character to the point where he doesn’t know what a computer is and is borderline illiterate. It just feels like the writing goes out of its way to exemplify his stupidity, and the fact that it gets nowhere means that it amounts to the deadest of air.

If that’s not enough, the other sub-plots don’t help, either: Darwin becomes the subject of a series of lame visual gags where he smears permanent marker all over his face with the sole purpose of looking generally dumb, and even Nicole and Richard get bogged down in weird roles. What should’ve been a nice respite from a horrid A and B plot ends up being an extended joke about them taking Rocky in and forcing him to act and dress like Darwin, and it just reads as both borderline sociopathic and critically unfunny. There’s not a single character in “The Genius” that’s in their element.

I love you, show, but this episode shouldn’t exist.

Best Moment: While the scene of Gumball opening an Internet browser and proceeding to lose his mind and literally crash isn’t particularly funny, it was a moment that got the show a lot of attention, if not exclusively because of all the asdf movie comparisons. At least it helped put more eyes on the show.

239. S06E41 - “The Revolt” (6/17/19) 

What Happens?: Darwin decides to help the objects of Elmore stand up for themselves.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Revolt” is, without a doubt for me, Gumball’s most ambitious satirical dumpster fire. It’s an episode built around virtue signaling, with Darwin stepping up to defend objects on account of them being mistreated, but the satire is so tone-deaf that it comes across as almost offensive. If Gumball is making a metaphor about people virtue signaling an oppressed group, then why is said group portrayed as too dumb to know that they’re worth being spoken for? Why is Darwin, at the end, the savior who shows them the right path? Is “The Revolt” suggesting that we should deliberately keep the oppressed out of the loop on their own oppression out of fear they’ll rebel? There’s no ill intentions, but it’s so sloppy in its conviction that it hurts, and ending with the oppressed objects becoming the oppressors immediately undoes anything that the episode had going for it in pursuit of a joke that fails both satirically and comedically.

Best Moment: The only joke that really registered for me was Gumball ordering a new phone when his phone starts to show even the faintest bit of aging at the worst possible point in the episode’s narrative. Sure, it ushers forth a legitimately unsatisfying ending, but at least it lands, somewhat.

238. S05E33 - “The Worst” (9/15/17)

What Happens?: After each suffering a terrible day, the Wattersons swap lives to see who truly has it the worst.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s nothing worse in comedy than satire that doesn’t land, and “The Worst” is 11 tedious minutes of Gumball attempting to tackle literally everything it can without having a grip on any of it, nor the complexities of its own subject matter. At any point in time throughout the episode, it’s either delivering painfully on-the-nose jokes without the faintest bit of insight, all with the laser-sharp focus of a Buzzfeed listicle (the glass ceiling joke is painful), or it’s just explicitly using sexism to decompose sexism, like subjecting Nicole to tired stereotypes about men being too scared to ask for help, without recognizing that doing so is literally perpetuating the issues “The Worst” is trying to deflect.

The false equivalencies plaguing it don’t help out at all, either—in what world does Anais have it as hard as someone like Nicole? Why the hell is Richard even involved? Putting every issue on the exact same level, and then failing to amply tackle any of it, just feels more regressive than anything else, revealing “The Worst” to be a thinly-veiled, lazy excuse to score some woke points that doesn’t end anywhere further from where it started. 

Best Moment: For all of its shortcomings, “The Worst” is most successful during the locker room scene with Gumball and Darwin, wherein Tobias and some other guys berate them for expressing the faintest bit of femininity.

237. S06E43 - “The BFFS” (6/24/19) 

What Happens?: Darwin feels envious when Gumball’s first best friend, Fuzzy, comes back into his life.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Somehow, on the final day of new episodes, airing directly before the series finale, there’s “The BFFS.” It’s not even a matter of it looking bad by comparison, though that certainly doesn’t help: this is just bad. The idea of Gumball having a best friend before Darwin entered his life is already iffy, but having that best friend be someone as much of a non-entity as Fuzzy ensures that there’s nothing exciting to come out of it. There’s no reason why Darwin being overly-possessive couldn’t work, but Fuzzy is so unengaging that it feels entirely one-sided, and the sloppy reveal that Fuzzy was actually evil the entire time (proving Darwin's suspicions to be true) does nothing but justify his overprotectiveness.

Throw in one of the most cringeworthy lines in the show’s history—“I’m going to a brony convention in Liechtenstein.”—and you end up with perhaps the most disappointing penultimate episode of a television series I’ve ever seen.

Best Moment: There’s one solid line, with Darwin asking Gumball if he loves him as much as Canadians love talking about actors who are actually Canadian. 

236. S01E17 - “The Party” (8/08/11) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get invited to a party; the former tries to find a date, being too scared to ask out Penny, while the latter ponders what a date actually is.

Why Is It on the List Here?: This is the Rachel episode. She’s an unlikable character who doesn’t successfully do anything to get the audience on her side for a moment of her screen time, and that makes her romantic pairing with Darwin even more painfully contrived and awkward. “The Party” really, really, really wants to sell Rachel as someone who has a rough exterior but whom we can learn to sympathize with, but you can’t just scream and pout cry your way into an audience’s heart, and her subsequent breakdown sitting outside makes her look even more pathetic and petty.

There’s a reason that even the show’s creator, Ben Bocquelet, would like to pretend that Rachel never existed. If only the Internet would find out how to take his cue... (Meanwhile, the Gumball and Penny stuff in this episode doesn’t bring anything new to the table, only working as a pleasant diversion from everything to do with Darwin, but at least it feels sweet in its understatement.)

Best Moment: “Why are your eyes shaped like hearts?” “Allergies.”

235. S01E08 - “The Spoon” (5/30/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin unknowingly abet in a criminal’s attempt to rob a convenience mart with a spoon.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Everyone is really dumb. Like, really freaking dumb. It makes the comedy feel way too easy, with “The Spoon” leaning dangerously into complete randomness for the sake of being funny, most frustratingly by having a spoon somehow be considered an intimidating murder weapon by at least half of the characters. (The other half get tied up and stuck with very little to do, failing to counteract the overwhelmingly moronic tones of the premise.)

I can only assume that the idea of this episode came about when a writer looked poetically out the window and uttered aloud, “Oh, what a complete shame that Cartoon Network won’t let us use guns in our show,” before devising a super funny plan to stick it to the man by ad-libbing it with a spoon. No hard feelings, fellow dreamer, but it didn’t really pay off, and the rest of “The Spoon” was Gumball and Darwin being uncharacteristically dumb for a bit too long.

Best Moment: Sal Left Thumb breaking cheap pieces of merchandise to force Larry, the checkout clerk, to tell him where the safe is, was the episode’s most solid comedic moment.

234. S04E16 - “The Apprentice” (12/04/15)

What Happens?: Gumball tries to win Patrick’s trust by being his apprentice for the day.

Why Is It on the List Here?: If it wasn’t for the ending, “The Apprentice” could’ve been a decent episode—if not great, at least somewhat entertaining. It does some cool stuff, I guess, especially utilizing some interesting new locations… but seriously, revealing its happy ending and 50% of its final act to have been entirely hallucinated by Gumball, and resetting all the progress he made in befriending Patrick (one of the show’s more annoying ongoing character arcs, no less) just sucks.

It’s a massive middle finger from the show, and whereas Gumball's been able to do that well in the past, here, it feels too much like a lazy way of betraying the audience, managing to drain the fun from its execution and kill off everything that happened in the most dispirited way possible. Perhaps if what was undone were more of a one-off, “The Apprentice” would be a little more tolerable, but the vicious cycle of Patrick and Gumball’s relationship was tired by the time the episode started, and the ending just reaffirms that it would never go away.

Best Moment: Gumball fiddling with his DNA in the elevator was the episode’s sole strong moment.

233. S01E20 - “The Picnic” (8/29/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get left behind on the bus during their school field trip to the Forest of Doom and set out to find their classmates.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Pretty much everybody hates “The Picnic,” and while I don’t abhor it as much as a lot of others, my biggest issue with it is just that it doesn’t feel like a Gumball episode. For any other show, the complete absurdity of the main characters' unintelligence could work out, because a lot of the individual moments scattered throughout the episode are hilarious, but the fact that this is an episode of the show, and that it writes Gumball and Darwin off as those two complete imbeciles, makes everything really difficult to believe and is kind of insulting to who they are.

There’s also a part where Darwin eats Gumball’s clothes, which I assume was just an excuse to show Gumball naked, and their little conflict that leads to Gumball going off on his own for a solid minute is so forced that if a later season did something similar, I’d have declared it ingenious meta-commentary.

Best Moment: When Gumball lets a worm go that he was about to eat and decides that it deserves to live, it immediately gets swept up by a bird, and then gradually larger monsters eat each other in the span of less than thirty seconds.

232. S05E24 - “The Diet” (2/28/17) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin put Richard on a diet, and he ends up becoming a muscular jerkwad.

Why Is It on the List Here?: If you’ve ever wanted to see both equally-terrifying extremes of Richard’s physical health, then you’re in for a treat, and the best part is that you can mute the episode because you’ll at least be getting what you want. Not to be unfair to “The Diet,” but turning Richard into a horrifically-overweight blob, and subsequently a muscular bellend, paves the way for a series of generally unpleasant jokes hinging on our disgust at what’s on the screen. Gumball and Darwin score a few laughs here as the episode’s straight men, but Richard’s too far off the rails for anything to resonate aside from an overall sense of contempt.

Best Moment: The news ticker when Richard poses in front of the house fire saying, “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” and then, once the fire’s out, “NO MORE FIRE! NO MORE FIRE! NO MORE FIRE!” is a stupid enough detail to make me laugh.

231. S01E11 - “The Laziest” (5/13/11)

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and Richard get in a lazy-off to see who is really the laziest.

Why Is It on the List Here?: This one’s a steaming pile of Season 1 issues, but most importantly, it demonstrates how frustrating of a character Richard was at the time. “The Laziest” wasn’t designed to make him look good in the slightest, showing Richard to be incomparably lazy for one thing, but also manipulative, placing his own well-being above that of his kids by casually throwing them under the bus and getting them in trouble at the end. Everything about his personality here is just frustrating and hacky, depriving the episode of any sort of happy ending in a way that isn’t delightfully cynical so much as unfulfilling.

The one saving grace of “The Laziest,” though, are its comedic moments, especially the entire subplot involving Larry, who was apparently once the laziest person in all of Elmore. Because of that, Gumball and Darwin beg him to compete with their dad by completely destroying his life, and it doesn’t even work, with him ultimately being too lazy to get up and compete with Richard. It’s fun to see the show making Gumball hoist his own petard this early on, even if the rest of the episode is an unflattering misstep. 

Best Moment: Remember the summer of ‘83?

230. S04E38 - “The Compilation” (8/25/16)

What Happens?: We take a look at various clips taken across Elmore.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Uploads” was pretty great, but did it need a sequel? That’s debatable, but certainly not helping is the fact that “The Compilation,” from head to toe, is almost routinely uninspired. Even if “The Uploads” was clearly an excuse to show some unrelated short clips, “The Compilation” doesn’t even try to give any narrative to what’s happening, presenting itself as a compilation video, let alone that quite a few of the “videos” barely fit that label and feel more like rejected B-sides from other vignette episodes. You get some good jokes—Principal Brown crying over a shag carpet here, “The Grieving” obligatory reference there—but there’s a blanket of familiarity that suffocates the episode from being able to find much originality.

The only real question is does having the series’ most famous song, “Weird Like You And Me” at the end, salvage the entire experience? No. But it certainly helps, with the Wattersons, backed up by a large ensemble of the cast, singing a cheerful song about acceptance and individuality. There’s some legitimate heart there, which makes its presence in an otherwise auto-piloted episode a bit jarring, but it’s easy to appreciate.

Best Moment: “Weird Like You And Me,” which sits at the very top of some lists, is stuck tragically at the back end of this one.

229. S06E38 - “The Web” (6/03/19) 

What Happens?: Upon realizing Nicole is technologically-challenged, Gumball and Darwin try to teach her the ways of the Internet.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Poor Nicole didn’t have the smoothest final season, and “The Web” is arguably the character’s nadir. One of Gumball’s worst reflexes as it went on was its occasional tendency to exaggerate certain characterizations for the sake of allowing its premises to work, and in that sense, “The Web” is a brutal hack job, turning Nicole into someone so unaware of how technology works that she literally creates a “firewall” around her house within the first two minutes of the episode, just for some cheap laughs.

Scant jokes here and there keep it from being a complete bust, but the degree that “The Web” miscalculates everything about Nicole on her last entry into the series is just a massive disappointment, and the lack of any resolution (everything just sort of ends without ever fixing the issues it creates with a routinely bad joke about trading in her work's computers for baby toys) ensures there’s a shortage of things to appreciate.

Best Moment: The best jokes from “The Web” are the ones that pull at more esoteric source material. Having Nicole send emails to her co-workers through animated holiday cards fits into that criteria perfectly.

228. S05E34 - “The Deal” (9/22/17) 

What Happens?: Richard goes on strike when he feels that Nicole doesn’t value his contributions in the household.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There’s an amazing premise in “The Deal,” and it’s not even that deeply buried in the episode, which makes it all the more of a shame that it just feels so… routine. Rather than being centered on character work, “The Deal” is more interested in chasing after the gimmick of turning all the kids into Gremlin-like creatures without Richard’s supervision. That should be interesting in theory, but it feels uninspired and strangely low-energy in practice. There’s just no surprises throughout the episode’s transformation, favoring a high-concept execution over the sort of low-key, direct exploration that the issue brought up at the beginning needs to succeed. While Richard does get the appreciation he deserved at the very end, the rise and fall are, unfortunately, way too out-of-sync for it to really land. 

Best Moment: Nicole’s efforts at braggadocio at the start of the episode are hilarious, with her aggressive rap, unnecessarily violent fireworks display, and running down the phonebook to call random people to tell about her promotion setting “The Deal” up for theoretical greatness. 

227. S01E14 - “The Prank” (7/18/11)

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and Richard find themselves in a prank war which quickly spirals out of control.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Prank,” in some ways, is a triumph for Richard. While he’s not shown here to be a prototypical father figure by any means, there’s a sense that, by the end of the episode, he’s actually having fun with his kids. Unfortunately, the premise only really lands indebted to him being a complete idiot, managing to endanger their lives countless times on account of his carelessness, and it’s a poor reflection of his character in an episode that begs for him to be seen as likable. Whatever sweetness it has just sort of falls at “The Prank’s” wayside with how archaic it feels by the show’s standards, and while there’s some enjoyably goofy moments, a combination of unoriginality and questionability in its conception waters that enjoyment down.

Best Moment: Gumball and Darwin hiding in a television and being forced to act out different channels in hopes of not getting caught.

226. S01E21 - “The Goons” (9/05/11)

What Happens?: Anais learns how to be dumb from Gumball and Darwin, but Gumball soon fears she’s taking his place.

Why Is It on the List Here?: This is dumb. Gumball is dumb. Darwin is dumb. Anais, for the first time, starts to act dumb. I don’t know why this development was needed. I don’t think the show knows either.

Best Moment: The shot of Richard sitting on a bench and staring longingly into a pond, after being proposed to by Larry, as Tobias, holding balloons, flies overhead screaming. It’s perfect.

225. S05E37 - “The Line” (10/20/17) 

What Happens?: The Wattersons fight to be the first in line for the new Stellar Odyssey screening.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I have not seen Star Wars. That “The Line” is so dependent on its audience recognizing the series of Star Wars references tightly bound around its incredibly barebones plot means that without its references, there’s not much to this episode, unfortunately. It’s the peak of Season 5’s dependence on popular culture, with at least 70% of its content just nods to the franchise in place of actual jokes, and that tight adherence and worship of its source material borders on comedy poison. It’s to the degree that I feel like even if I understood everything being parodied, the lack of true originality still wouldn’t do “The Line” any favors. This is just a disappointment, especially as a clear labor of love from its writers.

Best Moment: The loser fight between Richard and the president of the franchise’s fanclub (Elmore division) was pretty neat. Let’s go with that.

224. S01E29 - “The Wand” (1/24/12)

What Happens?: Richard believes that his toy wand is magical, so Gumball and Darwin try to keep the ruse up to make sure he’s happy.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While “The Wand” is already has a pretty shaky premise—the opening showed that he was severely traumatized when a wishbone he used as a kid made him realize magic wasn’t real, causing him to scream for 15 years (an idea immediately retconned by the episode that followed it)—what hurts it the most is that it came out at a really weird, transitional point in Season 1 where the show was increasingly finding its voice. Going back to square one with Richard just felt like way too much, and it doesn’t help that everything is predicated on him being out of touch with reality in concerning ways. The only reason I’m not evaluating it more harshly is that it’s actually a bit sweet to see Gumball and Darwin try to make Richard’s dreams come true for a bit, at least up until the point that he starts making them do weird stuff.

Best Moment: Richard turning Mrs. Robinson’s head into a melon is a childish joke, with the boys slamming one over her head, but the sound design of her blood-curdling scream through the melon made me laugh embarrassingly hard.

223. S01E19 - “The Robot” (8/22/11) 

What Happens?: Gumball tries to help Bobert know what it’s like to have feelings, though Bobert proceeds to steal his identity and take over his life.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Similar to episodes like “The Spoon,” there’s just way too much liberty taken here to ensure that the premise works in dumbing down literally all of the show’s characters but Gumball—how is anyone legitimately able to believe that Bobert is actually him? Furthermore, Bobert is used here in a particularly uninspired way, which would become a problem with a lot of the other episodes he headlines, but there’s not even an attempt to make him anything more than a robot that has no emotions of his own. The show, basically, had to throw out a lot of its integrity to make the premise work, but the premise isn’t even very good. 

Best Moment: In the final battle, Gumball wishes that something that once seemed inconsequential would come back to save him. Right on cue, Darwin runs out to attack Bobert, only to get punched through the fence. That joke is enough to bump “The Robot” up a tiny bit.

222. S06E23 - “The Understanding” (7/16/18) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin try to help the new kid in school adjust, but can’t understand a word that he’s saying.

Why Is It on the List Here?: The premise of “The Understanding” is somewhat interesting, as is involving the Pepperonis in the show to a larger capacity; their most notable appearance in “The Job,” after all, is one of the most beloved scenes from the show’s early history. Unfortunately, turning them into government-loathing conspiracy theorists who Gumball and Darwin accidentally agree to assist in a heist through nodding along to the incomprehensible nonsense their son Peter says is a step too far, feeling unearned following the teetering, monotonous first half. It’s a big reveal that, to the show’s credit, is legitimately surprising, but it feels cheap. I suppose, though, that the episode was never really destined for greatness from the start.

Best Moment: I liked the occasional nods to the unchanging nature of the show’s characters, whether that means making fun of Gumball and Darwin’s unchanging fashion sense or the fact that Pantsbully (that blue minor character guy) really shouldn’t be operating a hot dog stand while wearing nothing but underwear.

221. S05E21 - “The Cycle” (2/22/17) 

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and Anais try to help Richard escape the cycle of his repeated tormenting in the hands of Harold.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Look, I love it when Gumball gets a bit mean-spirited, but the problem with “The Cycle” is that it’s mean-spirited without really justifying it. All of that rests on Harold, whose entire personality here is based around being a massive douchebag to Richard, and the resulting humor often straddles along a line of discomfort—are we supposed to find Harold’s dickishness funny? It’s not. 

At the very least, this is a pretty decent outing for Richard, who shows himself to be an adorable teddy bear of a character, perhaps most epitomized in a hilarious scene where his attempts to roast the kids ends up being a smattering of legitimate compliments, occasionally at his own expense. The climax, too, offers a more clear view of what “The Cycle” is trying to accomplish, turning Harold into a cartoonishly hedonistic idiot upon discovering a fake check that Richard and the kids leave out to get one over him, and the ending ultimately giving Richard a personal victory is always nice. The murky intentions of the episode elsewhere, though, makes everything else a bit too difficult to wash down.

Best Moment: Harold revealing himself to be Richard’s therapist by ripping an identical, fake moustache off of his real moustache fulfilled the episode’s “so stupid it’s funny joke” quota nicely.

220. S05E09 - “The Slide” (11/3/16)

What Happens?: After Rocky reaches a romantic low point in his life, Gumball and Darwin help him get on a dating app and discover the woman of his dreams.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I feel like there’s a fairly contentious opinion on “The Slide,” and I’m definitely on the low end of the spectrum. There’s certainly a lot to like, but it just feels like a weirdly unnecessary outing for the show, even acknowledging that this is an episodic series where there’s no legitimate goalposts when it comes to making a narrative. Sure, spoofing Tinder is kind of a cute idea, though it’s definitely one of the series’ least incisive attempts at satire, gleaning over anything more compelling in favor of light, surface-level jokes and astute one-liners. The climax is nice, with Rocky, Gumball, and Darwin running through town and leaving devastation in their wake, only to get unequivocal acceptance in positing it as “in the name of love,” but the ultimate conclusion of Rocky’s would-be lover rejecting him on-the-spot is a little too expected, and it’s such a downer of an ending that “The Slide” just feels like it goes in a circle.

I also just wanted to point out, while it’s even tangentially relevant, that the show bible, written to pitch the series—and this is entirely true—reveals that Rocky is a fan of bowling and regularly attends bowling practice. I only bring this up because an episode about Rocky bowling is somehow infinitely more exciting than “The Slide.” That would be a first for bowling.

Best Moment: "You look like the kind of guy who likes taxidermy and long walks in the dark."

219. S02E12 - “The Skull” (11/20/12)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get caught in Clayton’s web of lies.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Despite Season 2 being almost uniformly strong, “The Skull” was a massive swing and a miss for the show. Almost all of the show's experiments with incorporating their supporting cast into episodes paid off, but here, Clayton is such a frustrating and one-note character that the plot never really gets anywhere, becoming a series of long, interconnected tangents spewed out through Clayton’s compulsive lying. Even Gumball and Darwin can’t do much to save what’s happening, with Clayton sidelining them at every point of the journey, somehow even turning what should’ve theoretically been an awesome, shape-shifting fight sequence into a relatively uninteresting snoozefest, all of which fizzles out only to be revealed as another of Clayton’s lies.

At this point, the question isn’t just what’s real and what’s fake, but why does any of this exist, and why does it matter? We never find out.

Best Moment: Principal Brown’s attempt to draw Clayton’s fictitious perp ends up looking like a boat because he can’t draw faces. It’s the best joke in the whole episode, though the fact that it’s based around Clayton means competition isn’t too stiff.

218. S05E29 - “The Weirdo” (3/08/17) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin try to fix Sussie because they feel bad about how she gets treated.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Anyone who happens to find this list in the near or distant future who has no idea who I am is probably shocked by “The Weirdo” being so low on the list; those that know me well probably aren’t, yet are still equally as disappointed. Let this be the first shocking moment on my list: as much as I’d like to be able to enjoy “The Weirdo,” I really can’t.

Everything about it should work: it’s an episode that is completely sincere, and one with a positive message it’s trying to get across about acceptance and what it means to be an individual. I admire the concept and the context under which “The Weirdo” exists, but the fact that Sussie is Sussie is enough to really strain the more nuanced perspective that’s necessary. She’s innocent and sweet in her naivete, sure, but that naivete can get grating in its reliance on non sequiturs and unpleasant slapstick; it almost feels uncomfortable laughing at her antics some of the time, meaning a lot of “The Weirdo’s” humor misses. That everything builds to a song that deconstructs into children’s drawings and finally lets Sussie truly speak for herself, too, is a bit of an acquired taste. Some people love it. Personally, I find that it feels like a bad acid trip that leads to your death by overdose and ends with you waking up in hell… but your mileage may vary, obviously.

Best Moment: Gumball readies to fight the bullies picking on Sussie by taking off all of his clothes. Cue Darwin: “Greco-Roman style?”

217. S01E22 - “The Secret” (9/26/11)

What Happens?: Gumball tells Darwin one of his darkest secrets during a near-death situation, but Darwin doesn’t have the time to tell him his in return, causing Gumball to go insane trying to get something out of him.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Secret” follows a very predictable premise without adding anything to make it particularly memorable. It adheres to the beats of its predecessors far too closely, from the moment that the secret gets first withheld to the point where Darwin lies and tells Gumball a throwaway secret instead of the real, far worse one. As such, it becomes more a game of wanting to know what the secret actually is, when it should be more focused on telling a unique story through which the secret is a legitimate reward. Instead, that clip of Gumball dancing and then proceeding to trip over a table is the only bit of true originality there is.

Best Moment: “Are you trying to read my mind?” “I don’t know, were you thinking ‘My face really hurts?’” “No.” “Then I wasn’t.”

216. S06E24 - “The Ad” (7/16/18) 

What Happens?: When Richard buys a horse, the family goes so far indebted that they rent their house out, while secretly living in it, to two fainting goats.

Why Is It on the List Here?: If you couldn’t tell by the synopsis, “The Ad” is just a very weird episode of the show that creates its stakes with as many contrivances as it executes itself. Whatever laughs there are to be occasionally had fall victim to the weirdly circumstantial nature of everything that’s happening, which just lacks the nice, organic feel of the series’ best entries. Even so, the jokes that the show forces fall unnaturally flat, and devolving into a well-tread unconscious body gag for its climax ensures that there’s really nothing that’s fighting to be remembered here.

Best Moment: There’s one fantastic little scene towards the start: Richard attempts to save money by ordering pizza from a dangerously unhealthy but cheap pizza joint, and suddenly, the episode warps into a cinematically-tinted, melodramatic mafia movie between Richard, Nicole, and pizza man Don Luciano. “You know the sad thing about betrayal? It never comes from an enemy.”

215. S01E03 - “The Third” (5/16/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin, fearing the spark is gone, set out for a third friend. Lo and behold, they buy Tobias’ friendship, though Gumball quickly begins to fear that he’s being left behind.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Third” isn’t a very interesting episode, and I think it succeeds most by virtue of its occasional comedic bright spots. Most importantly, this is the show’s introduction to Tobias, and like everyone else at this point in the show, he’s very loosely defined, pretty much just as a rich jock who likes money. Perhaps ironically, then, it’s hard to buy (not sorry) into the idea of his friendship being able to ellipse Gumball’s in Darwin’s life; his lack of personality means that the conflict is felt exclusively internally on Gumball’s part, which is fine if not somewhat imbalanced in the grand scheme of things, all at the expense of fleshing Tobias out. 

At the same time, though, watching Gumball valiantly tricycle off to save his buddy made for an amusing climax to the episode, even if it pretty much just pushed forth Season 1’s worldview of friendship being the greatest gift or whatever else you could scribble on the back of an iPhone case with a picture of the brothers hugging under a rainbow.

Best Moment: When Gumball and Darwin go to school for the first time in the show. It’s hard to even think about now, but that first glance at their school was our first real look at what Elmore actually is, with their classmates including an eight-bit Space Invaders alien, a piece of toast, a talking balloon, and a massive freaking CGI T-rex.

214. S01E04 - “The Debt” (5/16/11)

What Happens?: After Mr. Robinson “saves” Gumball’s life, Gumball feels he is indebted to him and seeks to save his life in return,

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Debt” introduces one of the show’s stranger, enduring character dynamics, that of Mr. Robinson and Gumball. It’s an idea built entirely for sitcom gold, yet that’s also part of its problem; there’s no backbone to their interactions, with Gumball always having a strange, obsessive, and entirely unexplained infatuation with Mr. Robinson, who couldn’t care less. “The Debt,” then, finds Gumball doing a ton of damage to Mr. Robinson and his day in graceless attempts to save his life that repeatedly endanger him, inducing a stalemate that only ends when Anais and Darwin interfere by putting together a fake assassination plot to end his servitude.

The episode, at the same time, is one long tease for Mr. Robinson’s musical performance (and the show’s first musical number), which is… underwhelming, to say the least—comedically so, one might argue. At the end of the day, Gumball does manage to fulfill his prophecy, though, when one of Mr. Robinson’s notes breaks a stagelight and sends it hurtling down at him. Basically, “The Debt” relies on us being enticed by its fairly generic hook, with the rest of what happens being an entirely paint-by-numbers sort of affair.

Best Moment: Gumball demonstrates the security measures he set up at Mr. Robinson’s house by activating it, sending a bowling ball flying right at his stomach.

213. S01E31 - “The Car” (2/07/12) 

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin accidentally break Mr. Robinson’s new car.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Fun fact: “The Car” was actually the first episode of Gumball written, and it definitely feels like it. It sets out to be a sort of ensemble piece that would’ve theoretically introduced each family member, but I feel like the writers opted to go with the one-two punch of “The DVD” and “The Responsible” instead because, at that point, they had definitely worked out the characters a lot more. Here, everyone feels fairly generic, with Gumball and Darwin being reckless kids who absolutely adore Mr. Robinson, Richard being dumb comic relief, Anais being manipulative but still childish (as opposed to hyper-intelligent, as the rest of the season suggests), and Nicole the disciplinarian mother. 

“The Car” feels less like an episode of Gumball and more like an attempt to make a generic episode of a television show as a proof of concept. It isn’t anything interesting, and ends up being strangely unfocused in devoting far too much time to showing Gumball and Darwin messing around before the main conflict—Gumball and Darwin seem to break Mr. Robinson’s car, but it slowly reveals itself to have been a family effort—even comes into play; in the end, it’s like two separate halves pushed together, though I can at least somewhat excuse that knowing its backstory.

Best Moment: I liked how specifically Gumball and Darwin sorted the leaves in Mr. Robinson’s yard, as well as how fast they repeatedly paint his fences. It’s straightforward cartoon humor, but it works.

212. S05E17 - “The Box” (2/15/17) 

What Happens?: When a mysterious box shows up at the Wattersons’ front door, they take turns imagining what could be inside of it.

Why Is It on the List Here?: For an episode built around the imagination of all of its characters, “The Box” is disappointingly short on imaginative ideas. Instead of pushing all of the Wattersons’ theories of what's inside the titular box to the creative max, most of their visions just sort of fall into predictable places that have one joke and stick to it for a few minutes. Gumball imagines a portal gun which just becomes a chance for the writers to play with some unpleasant gross-out; Anais’ post-apocalyptic imagining of their future opening the box feels derivative; Richard’s fantasy, though excitingly sci-fi upfront, just becomes a joke about his ineptitude.

That leaves Nicole, who unsurprisingly steals the show, imagining the box contains one million dollars and forcing them to go on the run from hitmen chasing after of their newly-acquired fortune. It’s dark, hilarious, and shocking, three qualities the rest of “The Box” just can’t really compete with, and combined with a dull ending, there’s not much this episode’s trying to stand for.

Best Moment: Nicole’s imagining of her family and life on the run. She’s almost too excited about it.

211. S06E20 - “The Potion” (7/16/18)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin make Hector a potion so he can see what life is like at an average height, only for Hector to discover that he’s miserable.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Potion” charges forth with a fistful of malapropisms and its eyes set on well-timed slapstick, but in the process, it never really feels like an episode that has anything to prove. Hector’s always gone fairly unexplored, but this doesn’t really make a great case for why he should’ve been utilized more, instead falling into the expected trappings and height-related gags that come with his character; he’s just sort of chewed up as a victim of the show’s cynical universe deprived of his gigantic stature, which feels expected, lacking introspection. It’s… alright, and it’s certainly cool from a visual standpoint to see Hector morphing into different shapes and sizes, but the narrative itself lacks the imagination that one would hope for.

Best Moment: I like the idea of there being a designated swingset in Elmore for people to sit and be depressed in, as well as the ongoing story of 8-Bit Dog’s sad existence (who last appeared in “The Singing”) as a background character.

210. S03E03 - “The Coach” (6/12/14)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin get a new gym teacher.

Why Is It on the List Here?: For a show like Gumball, “The Coach” is almost baffling in how completely straightforward it is. There’s just not a lot here, and while a fair amount of the jokes land, it’s strangely nondescript. It doesn’t help that this episode doesn’t have particularly strong focus; everything is centered around Coach Russo, a new character brought in as the school’s gym teacher, though she’s not exactly a treasure trove of interesting jokes, most of which revolve around her using photographs to emulate stunts she did in her earlier years. 

There’s also somewhat of a focus on Jamie, but no meaningful revelations come out of her being there; she’s still violent without reservation and without explanation, and the only new piece of information we have is that she’s related to Coach. (The episode’s closing joke, too, that Coach Russo is a woman in spite of her ambiguously male traits, is weirdly weak.) With that being said, I did enjoy watching Gumball and Darwin chase after Coach Russo to “save” her from Jamie (who jumps in her car after making a claim that she’d commit horrific deeds, though it was really just her being brought home), with Coach’s weirdly-specific justifications of specific gym routines manifesting themselves as obstacles.

Best Moment: Gumball attempting to run while encased in cement was a brilliant use of some limited animation.

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

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