A Definitive Ranking of Every Episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, Part IX: 24-16

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

24. S05E18 - “The Console” (2/16/17)

What Happens?: Gumball gets sucked into a video game alongside Darwin and Anais.

Why Is It on the List Here?: The idea that a television character gets sucked into a video game is so overdone that it borders on cliche—it feels like almost every show that makes it this far has an episode with the same premise—but “The Console” is, hands-down, the greatest exploration of that idea because of the writers’ complete commitment to the premise. More than just taking referential nods to video game’s past, this is an episode that completely embodies everything about video games, from its low-res PS1-era graphics to its repetitive, compressed musical score; these are things that don’t even affect the comedic value of the episode, but they enhance it in legitimizing the show’s expertise over is subject matter, proving “The Console” to be a labor of love.

Even when the episode is blatantly on-the-nose about its premise, though, it’s hilarious, employing Gumball’s penchant tendency to deconstruct everything around him as a means of mocking all of the conventions and peculiarities of video games, whether the efficiency of gun-blades and obligatory equipment boosts or cutscenes ruining the chance to save his progress. It’s not just that he’s pointing and laughing, either: he, Darwin, and Anais are just forced to work with the intense limitations and conditions of being in a video game. It leads to some great moments that allow “The Console” to adhere to a more exciting narrative structure with fun twists and turns than most other episodes of the show, concluding in an epic boss fight against the game itself that gives a massive chunk of the show’s cast a chance to shine as various allies who help defeat it.

“The Console” finds a heavenly middle-ground between both the conventions of a video game and the show itself, pulling out the best of both into an effortless fan favorite, and it deserves the credit it gets. Gumball, you spoil us.

Best Moment: Gumball, Darwin, and Anais’ horrified victory animation after pelting Penny with a VHS machine is too good.

23. S05E11 - “The Fuss” (2/08/17) 

What Happens?: Nicole is angry at Richard and the kids for forgetting a very special day.

Why Is It on the List Here?: It’s kind of mind-boggling how rarely anyone talks about “The Fuss” which is, for my money, one of the sweetest episodes that the show’s ever done. Part of the issue is the fact that it existed in a time and place so close to “The Choices” which will always stand as one of the show’s most beloved episodes, but while “The Choices” reaches deep into its soul to produce an episode of the highest possible emotional caliber, “The Fuss” is a lot more chill, and most importantly, grounded. There’s a realism in the everyday nature of what the episode’s about—Nicole is angry and disappointed that Richard forgot about their wedding anniversary—that allows it to be completely humble, a monument out of a molehill. (I know that’s not how the phrase goes but language exists to be manipulated.)

Most of that is indebted to how adorable (a word that I can rarely use to describe the show) the ending is. When Nicole discovers that she got the date wrong—their anniversary is on 11/01, and it’s actually 10/11—she races to the town’s tattoo parlor to stop Richard from getting the wrong date tattooed. She fails, but after a good laugh about her being wrong for once, Richard fixes the tattoo up with a few lines to say “LOVE.” Cut to black. No off-kilter jokes, no wisecracking. Just complete wholeheartedness. It’s the perfect ending.

It certainly helps, too, that the rest of “The Fuss” is hilarious, with varied bits ushering everything along with as much inspiration as possible. The first half of the episode, for instance, consists entirely of Richard, Gumball, Darwin, and Anais finding various ways of getting information out of Nicole about the date, culminating in the most non-committal celebration in the history of celebrations with an equally-confused song. The episode’s best gag, though, is the split-screen during the climactic chase sequence, showing Nicole and the kids racing off to stop Richard on the left, and Richard readying himself for a tattoo on the right. It’s the perfect combination of fake-outs on Richard’s part, and most importantly, visual absurdity, with the split-screen causing visual obstruction for Nicole and co, and the clash of both halves even have some hilariously unfortunate object/body part placement.

“The Fuss” is the perfect blend of sharp, inventive comedy and emotions, showing that Gumball isn’t a show that has to make grand gestures to land. Sometimes, all it takes is an upside-down calendar and a butt tattoo. 

Best Moment: That ending.

22. S02E18 - “The Flakers” (2/05/13) 

What Happens?: Gumball, Darwin, and Anais have to take care of chores (and a heavily-anesthetized Richard) while Nicole is at work, though they have a few issues to personally resolve.

Why Is It on the List Here?: In a perfect world, “The Flakers” would be one of Gumball’s most cherished episodes, but as fate would have it, it’s been largely forgotten… and that’s a massive shame.

In a good sitcom, the characters should be so well-conceived and developed that you can literally just place them in the same room and magic will happen, and “The Flakers” proves that Gumball is that kind of show. There’s no new characters brought in for the Wattersons to bounce off of. There’s no new locations to explore. There’s nothing to try to make a satirical point out of. “The Flakers” is literally just about watching a ton of characters interact during a particularly strained moment in time, and in my opinion, it makes for one of the most hilarious episodes of the entire show.

Half the episode is literally just built around Gumball and Darwin being mutually pissed at one another over an incident that happened in school earlier, and we get to watch them vent their frustrations or otherwise act passive-aggressively towards one another while Anais rolls her eyes or maneuvers a senselessly high Richard away from electrical sockets. It’s indescribably fantastic. Even if there’s not particularly fancy visual humor or memorable lines, it’s meticulously-crafted interplay between all the characters, and it’s so organic and believable that it works. By the time Gumball and Darwin forgive each other and wrestle with cushions with Anais, “The Flakers” is so sincere that it almost hurts.

Once the second act of the episode drops in, though, “The Flakers” becomes a different beast entirely. Richard flees the house, leaving destruction in his wake, and when Nicole calls home, she senses something’s up and heads home immediately, leaving the kids to clean up the mess they’ve caused over the episode as quickly as possible. Whereas the rest of “The Flakers” is reserved and collected, this back-half is a frenetic meshing of everything that makes the show great, with brilliant, fast-paced visual gags (Darwin paints a maze on the road to slow Nicole down, and Gumball draws an angry picture of Nicole on a piece of paper to resemble the mirror Richard broke earlier) and one of the most satisfying resolutions in the history of the show, with everyone doing a perfect, Simpsons-esque couch-sit right before Nicole storms in. 

“The Flakers” isn’t fancy or flashy, and it doesn’t have anything to prove. It’s just some damned good television.

Best Moment: The entirety of the climax makes “The Flakers” one of my go-to episodes.

21. S06E44 - “The Inquisition” (6/24/19)

What Happens?: Rob makes one last-ditch effort to save Elmore in Gumball’s climatic series finale.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While there’s a lot of ambiguity surrounding “The Inquisition,” not just in its cliffhanger but in its execution—Ben has expressed some level of disappointment in the final product, which is disheartening to say the least—it’s hard to deny that it’s certainly one of the ballsiest, most bombastic ways you could close out a series of Gumball’s caliber. 

The most meta cartoon ever made deserves its most meta hook yet for its final outing, and choosing to make note of the show’s visual identity, a component that’s been quintessential to the show’s uniqueness from the very beginning, was a brilliant decision. This is a show whose bread and butter is its varied, legitimately special cast, and “The Inquisition” turns that on its head—their individuality, as the suspicious School Superintendent Evil (depicted as a live-action human portrayed by Garrick Hagon) points out, is their downfall, and he makes it his mission to turn them into normal humans.

Unsurprisingly, his plan fails, with Gumball and Darwin turning their transformed classmates back into themselves, and it’s soon revealed that Evil is, in fact, Rob in disguise. Suddenly, “The Inquisition” isn’t fun and games: it becomes a matter of life and death, and out of complete ignorance, Tina pummels Rob into unconsciousness. The decision has been made, and they’ve chosen death, but they’re none the wiser. It’s not until Rob reawakens that we discover their ultimate fate: the world around him starts to crumble, and the last shot is Rob falling into the Void; we presume the others will follow.

Maybe there will be a Gumball movie, and we’ll get a happy ending to the series. Maybe we won’t. But “The Inquisition” makes for the epic culmination of eight years of one of the finest artistic works of the past decade.

Best Moment: The final shot of the series. If anything deserves a “Best Moment” on this list, it’s that, right?

20. S05E05 - “The Vision” (10/06/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin uncover Alan’s political manifesto to take over the world.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Vision,” while proving to be more of an absurd detour from Alan’s storyline as the world’s most altruistic person/balloon in existence, is a flawless example of Gumball firing at full cylinders. I’d go so far as to argue that it's the series’ best work of satire, transforming Alan into an evil, tyrannical mastermind who House of Cardses his way through school, destroys his political opponents, and takes over the world, imprisoning all those he deems too unhappy to what are, in practice, concentration camps.

This is Gumball being as subversive as you could possibly imagine. It’s almost impossible to fathom that the show’s target audience is kids with an episode like this, which just comes across as a merciless, cold-blooded travesty. It becomes so dark that even Gumball and Darwin are left speechless and conclude that they have to assassinate Alan, and while the climax is a departure from the episode’s more satirical elements in favor of becoming an onslaught of botched, often balloon-related assassination attempts, the end result is slapstick heaven, with even the stupidest ideas (Gumball, at one point, puts a thumbtack on his seat in class, but Alan floats completely over it) proving to be comedic gold. This is the biggest showcase Alan got over the course of the show, and even though it’s a step in an entirely different direction, he’s a show-stealer.

Best Moment: While the happy camps sequence is fantastic, I also want to give a quick shout-out to Manu Javelle’s awesome, WWII-esque political posters that appear in this episode. I’d kill to be able to buy and frame those—seriously, CN, so much potential merchandise.

19. S06E011 - “The Faith” (2/23/18) 

What Happens?: When all color fades out of Elmore, Gumball and Darwin set out to discover who’s responsible only to find that the cause is Alan, who has lost his sense of hope.

Why Is It on the List Here?: As a disclaimer, I feel like it’s a very difficult toss-up for me to say whether “The Faith” or “The Vision” is truly better; whichever one you’ll end up liking more really depends on your current state of mind. If you want something more comedically sharp, go for “The Vision,” but if you want something compassionate, there’s not a lot of better episodes than “The Faith.” And that’s such a strange thing to say: Gumball was a show that rarely utilized a true sense of compassion all the way to the end, but there’s a sort of legitimate optimism, of sweetness and hope, that makes “The Faith” so stirring and transcendent. In other words, it’s a complete 180 from #20.

Don’t get me wrong: this is an incredibly simple episode. Most of the bits leading up to the final reveal aren’t phenomenal in their own right, with the welcome exception of a particularly heated feud over whether bird magic or embroidery is better; they serve the purpose of building to the episode’s reveal that the entirety of Elmore is dependent on Alan, the one soul in the world who actually cares about being a good person. The moment Alan, of all people, loses hope, Elmore descends into gray, and to the episode’s credit, it never feels like a gimmick. The writers don’t play into the more meta nature of it for laughs; it’s a means of demonstrating the severity of the situation.

That severity, too, calls for one of the show’s greatest musical numbers, “Life Ain’t Perfect.” I’ve written a lot about certain songs in certain episodes, but what makes “Life Ain’t Perfect” stand out so much is that it’s never just for laughs in the same way that songs like, say, “Goodbye” are. That’s a weird distinction that doesn’t necessarily make it better, but it feels so immediately different that it just catches you off-guard, even moreso in how thoughtful the song is. It’s rare to see the writers channeling a legitimate sense of empathy, but “Life Ain’t Perfect” gets across a message that we all need to hear in these perpetually-troubling times. 

The world will never be without its flaws, and it often veers towards being a nightmare—the fact that “The Faith” is followed immediately by "The Candidate" is an ironic testament to that fact—but we have to be there to find the good in it. Life isn’t perfect; it’s as far from perfect as you can get. But there’s one word you really can apply to it, in all of it’s weird flaws, nuances, and complexities: it’s beautiful.

Best Moment: The song.

18. S03E32 - “The Safety” (2/05/15)

What Happens?: Darwin takes over Elmore in an attempt to make it a safer place.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Jesus Christ, this episode is insane. There’s so much to like about it; from the fake, incredibly terrifying safety video that starts things off to the even more incredibly meta, fourth-wall shattering jokes that it uses to illustrate its central premise, “The Safety” is an incredibly ambitious little episode that epitomizes how magical Gumball can be. There’s not a lot of other shows that can get away with something as insane as having their moral compass transform a town into an Orwellian nightmare, but this is that kind of show, taking advantage of Gumball’s warped, cartoonish logic to spiral into complete insanity in the course of a few minutes.

It’s not just that “The Safety” is a conceptually-daring episode, though; it’s also a amazing showcase for all of the Wattersons (as many of my favorite episodes tend to be). Darwin, naturally, has the best time here, amplifying his pacifism and caring nature into unknowingly becoming Elmore’s cutest, riding crop-wielding dictator; Gumball, then, becomes the episode’s leading who gets to save the day, though not without the crucial assistance of the rest of his family. Richard gets to cross-dress and knock someone out with a fire hydrant because, y’know, why not; Nicole gets to engage in a heavily-censored fight with Darwin’s safety-conscientious lackeys; and Anais (of all characters!) gets the episode’s best joke, deconstructing those cheesy hacker scenes in movies and television with perhaps the most accurate description of hacking pulled off in the history of television. Whatever parallel reality “The Safety” came from where Darwin’s in charge and Anais delivers the hardest laughs, I desperately want to go there.

There’s not a humorless second in “The Safety’s” runtime, and that it manages to keep getting better and better by the minute is a testament to how sharply-written Gumball is. Sure, people are always gonna be talking about the series’ animation and knack for visuals, and that’s undoubtedly going to be its legacy, but Gumball is one of the most well-written comedies in recent history and we need to draw attention to that fact.

Best Moment: It’s a three-way tie between “Watch Out, Little Teddy!,” the Wattersons (minus Richard) slamming into a disclaimer, and Anais recounting how she hacked the mainframe.

17. S04E04 - “The Others” (8/20/15)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin force themselves into the tragic life narrative of Clare, a student saying goodbye to Elmore.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I always forget just how smart “The Others” is. On one level, it’s a spoof of sappy teen dramas, with Clare taking the lead role as a sad, depressing tween going through the motions. But on a more meta level, this is the show expanding its universe beyond that which Gumball and Darwin understand; suddenly, they realize that there’s an entire group of students they’ve never seen before in their life, and their natural instinct is to commandeer their lives, too. You just can’t contain the two in their own little ecosystem, because for better or worse, they want to save the day, and because of that, they literally take over Clare’s life. 

Clare, too, is a perfect foil. She’s someone grounded in a deeply sad reality where her family has to move, and she has to leave all of her friends behind in pursuit of a new life, and however deliberately cheesy she is, there’s something striking about her in contrast to Elmore as a whole. She’s a realist grounded in tragedy, but she’s in a land with t-rexes, robots, bananas with butts, and a fish with legs—she’s the real anomaly, and the perfect sort of character for Gumball and Darwin to viciously wrap themselves around. Meanwhile, “The Others” introduces even more fun characters, such as Wilson Bilson, an exquisite corpse-like fellow who can’t decide what his overarching personality trait is, and Mr. Corneille, a teacher who talks with the deep philosophy of your stereotypical movie teacher figure, but interspersed with aimless facts about geography.

Most importantly, though, “The Others” is just straight-up hilarious. Every second of the episode has some gag, whether loud or subtle, that just kills. Like, I can’t choose what’s funnier: Gumball and Darwin’s demonstration of how Clare should be more proactive (by throwing Gumball out of a window), or Darwin pitifully and verblessly offering Clare a pen when she says that she writes in tears. This is an episode that shows off literally every single facet of how the show does comedy, with genre spoofing, meta commentary, underplayed gags, and in-your-face punchlines. It’s pure chaos, and I love it. 

Best Moment: Mr. Corneille, in his one minute of screentime, manages to establish himself as one of the most memorable supporting characters in the entire show. That one shot of only his knees is the funniest thing to me and I can barely describe why.

16. S03E20 - “The Shell” (10/09/14)

What Happens?: Penny breaks out of her shell.

Why Is It on the List Here?: “The Shell” will forever be remembered an emotional peak for the series, and it was arguably the first time that the show was truly successful in crafting something that impactful. It was the first episode of the show, too, that people really started talking about, an early high point for the series demonstrating that Gumball was able to transcend being a simple kid’s show and that it had a heart buried underneath its boundless comedic chops. Nobody in their right mind can ever really dismiss the episode.

It’s an episode that came at a crucial moment to demonstrate that Gumball was, well, breaking out of its shell. It wanted to try new things, and it wanted to show the emotional maturity of its cast by finally bringing Gumball and Penny meaningfully together in the most enjoyable way possible.

Penny’s always been somewhat of a strange character in terms of her design—as Gumball says himself, she “looked like a big coconut with holes in it,” and also has antlers for… reasons—but the idea of observing her adolescent vulnerability through her newfound ability to shapeshift (based on her temperament) is a stunning concept, on top of allowing Gumball to show off its visuals and slick animation in Penny’s climactic emotional rampage across Elmore. It’s not just that “The Shell” is conceptually bold, though; it still manages to feel sincere in how it deploys its cast, and that makes all the difference.

The rest of the Wattersons and the Fitzgeralds get a chance to shine as well, rounding out the episode perfectly. Richard, for instance, takes on the role of heavily explaining every event he is a part of throughout the proceedings, a tongue-in-cheek way of showing his emotional investment and furthering “The Shell’s” similarities to Beauty and the Beast. Perhaps more importantly, though, Patrick plays a sizeable role in how he butts heads with Gumball and Penny coming out of her shell. His place in the show has always been consistent, but “The Shell” suggests an important break in the stasis: she’s not just his little girl anymore, and she should be able to make her own independent decisions. 

So why is “The Shell” not any higher, sitting just a stone’s throw from the top 15? Well… almost everything that the show did since the episode failed to really maintain the strides that the “The Shell” attempts to make, and it’s a shame. Penny, no doubt, has had some wonderful episodes since then—“The Romantic” is a great example—but it’s frustrating how little Gumball really seized upon their relationship during its run. I get that the show didn’t want to go head-first into emotional drama as a lot of its contemporaries did to mixed results, but that Penny and Gumball’s relationship went on to be so unexplored is, in my opinion, one of the series’ greatest disappointments.

It’s something I’ve gone back and forth about a lot regarding where this should be placed on my list; if not for those issues surrounding its place in the show, “The Shell” would be virtually spotless. Ultimately, though, while my opinions may have soured somewhat, I can’t deny that it’s an amazing episode, and as a standalone item, one of Gumball’s masterpieces.

Best Moment: Banana Joe’s computer. It’s still one of the show’s greatest jokes.

For the last part of this list, from 49-26, CLICK HERE.

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

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