Amazing World of Gumball Corned Beef

This is Part II of my definitive ranking of every episode of The Amazing World of Gumball. For Part I, and an explanation of what any of this is, CLICK HERE.

209. S05E26 - "The Sorcerer" (3/02/17)

What Happens?: Gumball seeks apprenticeship from Mrs. Jötunheim to learn magic, and in the process ends up unleashing a troll that eats Darwin and proceeds to terrorize Elmore.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Sorcerer" pretty much just boils down to well-tread satire of Internet trolling. It's an idea that's been done before, and the outcome is always the same, with Gumball disappointingly being no exception to the rule. (If anything, the conclusion of the episode positing that the best way to beat a troll is to annoy it into submission is… not correct at all?) At the very least, there's some admirable material along the outskirts of the central conflict, with Mrs. Jötunheim enabling a lot of hilarious jokes about her being an old witch lady in the modern era, and a knock-out song, "A Sorcerer's Apprentice," gives the episode something of a legacy to live by. The ultimate reveal, though, that Gumball's secret power is his supernatural annoyance, was a bit too on-the-nose for my blood.

Best Moment: Aside from the song, I like the joke runner of Gumball shoving a ton of trash into a witch's hat, and later, when he excitedly puts it on, all the garbage comes falling out all over him.

208. S06E16 - "The Parents" (6/18/18)

What Happens?: Nicole bumps into her parents at the supermarket for the first time in years, and the kids invite them back to their house.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Parents," in my eyes, is one of the greatest disappointments of Gumball's final season. It's an incredibly big deal, marking the return of Mr. and Mrs. Semicourt, Nicole's estranged parents who she hasn't seen in several years, but "The Parents" is too intent on being humorous to the extent of uprooting the fragility and compassion that the situation really calls upon to succeed. Some things work, for the record—even if a lot of people took offense to the comedic flashbacks that exemplify terrible things both parties have done, they at least have a sense of emotional rawness and tension to them—but there's too much preventing it from really working, all of which could've been easily avoided.

The one moment that really breaks "The Parents" is Gumball's song. It's the emotional apex of the episode, and it ultimately serves to reconcile Nicole with her parents in a theoretically sweet way (if not one that seems to overlook the horrible behavior of Nicole's parents), but it immediately gets undercut when Gumball says that the song wasn't even about them, but about getting presents from them (a callback to an earlier line). It's supposed to be a humorous reveal—the episode plays with a lot of these, including a particularly honest conversation stemming from comments made to a can of corned beef—but it's a painful moment that just laughs in the face of what "The Parents" wants to emotionally accomplish.

I get it: this is a television show, and nothing that's happening within it is real, but we as an audience want to believe that it is. Television is all about escapism, and so is its content, even when it gets as ridiculously meta and cynical as Gumball does. The issue is that the moment acknowledges the contrived nature of the show in a way that removes all of its impact and potency in one fell swoop, and while that would work fine for any other episode that doesn't have to take itself seriously, this is not the time to do it , and no amount of catharsis from smacking Gumball's head into a window can really resurrect how much the reveal tarnishes.

In an episode that should've spread its wings and flown, "The Parents" pulls a gun out of its back pocket and shoots itself in the foot.

Best Moment: At the very least, everything before Nicole meets her parents is wonderful, with a special shout-out to the fantastic grocery store fighting sequence. It brings to mind the sleek kung fu parking lot scene from "The Remote," thriving on a sense of breakneck vitality.

207. S01E15 - "The Gi" (7/25/11)

What Happens?: Nicole gets worried that Gumball and Darwin are being made fun of because of their obsession with their new karate robes.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Gi" was Gumball's first attempt at doing a more emotionally-driven episode, and that general weakness shows quite a bit. The hardest part about writing something that's supposed to make you feel is making sure everything is organic, allowing life to be breathed into everything that happens, but here, there's an imbalance because of the cheesiness of what the episode is built around. Gumball and Darwin being obsessed with wearing gis is so childlike that it almost brings about a disconnect considering that the show has already gone up and down in terms of the kids' maturity, and in the end, it feels like somewhat of an underestimation of the characters' development for the sake of pushing Gumball and Penny together.

In addition, Nicole and Richard's subplot, involving her stealing the cape he wore throughout school so he could grow up, is theoretically a smart maneuver to bring about a sense of gestalt, but it was far too underdeveloped to really land, and the fact that the show never loops back to Richard's days as the "Cotton-tailed Cavalier" only makes everything about it feel even more like an emotional contrivance. Luckily, the show kept on trying, and the results of that work encompass some of the best episodes that Gumball has to offer… but we'll get to those later.

Best Moment: The montage of all of Gumball and Darwin's attempts to find new hobbies and how much each one cost.

206. S05E03 - "The Boredom" (09/15/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin fail to notice all of the insane things happening around them during the most boring day of their life.

Why Is It on the List Here?: As a vignette episode, there's a lot of enjoyment to get out of "The Boredom's" varied scenes, including everything from Banana Joe going through light-saber product testing to Sal Left Thumb singing a Les Miserables tune professing his lust for fame and appreciation. On paper, this should be a massive hit, but "The Boredom" suffers because it presents itself as tied to the narrative of Gumball and Darwin repeatedly managing to miss every single thing that happens as they walk through Elmore, making it feel tedious and incohesive. There are moments where the episode delivers with that idea, such as Gumball and Darwin's painfully obstructed mall fiasco, but the general indecisiveness in what the writers are trying to do means that even the more winning scenes get drowned out.

(Let's also try to forget that this was the big crossover episode that everyone was hyped up about. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.)

Best Moment: Gumball and Darwin's mall seating misfortune.

205. S01E16 - "The Kiss" (8/03/11)

What Happens?: Gumball experiences intense PTSD after Granny Jojo kisses him on the mouth, so Darwin tries to help him forget.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Kiss" was an early experiment in one of the most difficult types of humor out there: cringe comedy. It's something that the show, at every point in its run, has been enthusiastic about implementing, but whereas later attempts may be a bit too intense, "The Kiss" never really dives deep enough into that sense of discomfort, and the end result is simply the show taking a familiar experience and cranking up the emotional consequences. At the very least, "The Kiss" takes an interesting, sequential approach to how it unfolds, with each attempt by Darwin to help alleviate Gumball's anxiety growing more and more intense to the point of him assembling a massive trial to put Gumball through even worse trauma, which… I guess that makes sense.

Best Moment: Gumball yelling at the squirrel who tries to help him find his happy place, causing them and Darwin to all cry together.

204. S01E09 - "The Pressure" (6/06/11)

What Happens?: Masami tricks Darwin into dating him in hopes of scoring a kiss, so Gumball tries to rescue him while getting personally entangled with Penny.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Pressure" is noteworthy because it reflects an important stage in Gumball and Darwin's adolescence; girls, to them, are changing from cootie-contaminated monsters to viable romantic candidates, and Gumball gets stuck fighting between both his pursuit of Penny and the "pals before gals" mentality of his guy friends. Unfortunately, this being Season 1, there's a lot left to be desired, and the episode finds a rather annoying hook by rendering Darwin a puppet at Masami's will in her efforts to trick him into being her boyfriend just for the street cred. Additionally, having everything culminate in Gumball and Darwin accidentally kissing one another without knowing feels like a weirdly cheap means of wrapping things up, removing whatever potential meaningfulness there was to be found in what the episode sought to explore.

I like what "The Pressure" is trying to do, but it's Season 1-ness creates a few too many problems for it to be successful.

Best Moment: Gumball second-doubting his decision to jump off the diving board before abruptly smacking the surface of the school pool.

203. S03E33 - "The Society" (2/12/15)

What Happens?: Gumball goes crazy when he suspects that there's a secret society at school.

Why Is It on the List Here?: You know how a lot of people complained about how Gumball, throughout Season 6, seemed to transgress in terms of his intelligence being downplayed for the sake of making certain jokes land? In that sense, "The Society" was something of a trendsetter by rendering Gumball with an almost off-putting level of idiocy. It's not that he's as dumb here as he is in Season 1 episodes like "The Spoon" or Season 6 episodes like "The Brain," but the extent of his conspiring, while no doubt making for some funny moments, just feels unflattering. It's a classic comedy routine, but not one that really fits Gumball as a character.

Best Moment: Gumball interrogating Rocky was pretty good. I always like seeing him worked into episodes for a quick moment or two.

202. S06E19 - "The Intelligence" (6/18/18)

What Happens?: When the Internet goes offline, Elmore descends into the Dark Ages.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There's a kernel of excitement to be had with the idea "The Intelligence" plays with. Sure, it's not the most innovative premise, but it teems with possibilities. To the episode's credit, too, there's plenty of ingenious moments, whether in Principal Brown's immaculate casting as the heroic town yokel, or framing the Senior Citizens as antagonists content with the death of technology. The problem, though, is that there's not much that really works about the core of "The Intelligence," and even though the means through which it tries to tell its story is as well-realized as one could hope, the story itself feels too simple and uncomplicated to really become anything greater. This is just one of those episodes that's halfway there, but ultimately winds up being forgettable in spite of its ambition.

Best Moment: Principal Brown is legitimately incredible, calling Gumball and Darwin "sweet imps" and "sweet spurs of the waters," exhibiting pride in his possession of kitchen towels, and dubbing Banana Joe "sweet crescent fruit."

201. S01E02 - "The Responsible" (5/09/11)

What Happens?: Nicole leaves Gumball and Darwin in charge of taking care of Anais when she and Richard go to an open house at Elmore Junior High.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While its sister episode, "The DVD," serves to set the table in terms of the show's sense of humor, "The Responsible" wants to establish some important characters, serving as our introduction to Anais and Richard. Both characters aren't anywhere near their strongest in Season 1, unfortunately—Anais exists largely as a character that other characters speak condescendingly towards because of her age in spite of her intellect, whereas Richard is pretty much just dumb beyond comprehension—and as such, "The Responsible" isn't particularly compelling. Instead, it sticks to basic sitcom tropes without any of its characters bringing forth much dimension, especially by establishing Gumball and Darwin as bumbling idiots who exist just to make Anais' time as restrictive and unpleasant as possible in their efforts to be responsible.

While all of that sounds overly-negative, it's not like "The Responsible" has anything particularly bad about it; there's plenty of great moments here and there, and it works fairly well as a whole. It's just a matter of the show not demonstrating much flavor in how its characters interact in an episode ostensibly built to showcase said characters.

Best Moment: "79% of stair accidents happen on the stairs." "What does that even mean?"

200. S04E13 - "The Comic" (10/07/15)

What Happens?: Gumball decides to become a superhero when he discovers that Sarah has written him as one in her comic book.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Comic" is actively trying to be a fan favorite, but I feel like it falls short. For one thing, while Sarah's definitely been far more refined since we last saw her in "The Fan" (a little bit higher on the list), her presence is still a bit on the grating side, and even though that's a large proponent of her nerdy character, the show's still far from cracking her formula. Gumball, too, is always somewhat frustrating at this stage of his character's development when he acts obliviously and recklessly, and the jokes involving him waltzing through town and creating a path of destruction along the way just feel like they've been done better.

Of course, "The Comic" tries to redeem itself in the end with an admittedly ambitious comic-themed climax, but it just feels the episode was built around having it, which would be arguably acceptable if it was a complete home run, but… it just wasn't. This is the sort of fun display that makes you appreciate the show, but it's not one for the history books.

Best Moment: Darwin, recalling Sarah's spins on things Gumball's done: "Or when you traveled through time… No need to flashback, you were just sitting in front of a ticking clock."

199. S06E26 - "The Stink" (11/05/18)
What Happens?: When Mr. Small realizes that his attempts to live his life without leaving a footprint behind have failed, he decides to become one with nature.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Perhaps it's the depressingly recent news that this planet's screwed come 2030, but "The Stink's" nihilistic message of "whatever you do won't matter, so don't even bother trying" just comes across as bleak and poorly-aged. Even excusing that, there's not much exciting here, and while there's a few great jabs at corporations disguising themselves as eco-friendly local businesses, the further it steps away from its satire, the more uninterestingly the episode fares, becoming nothing more than an opportunity to watch Mr. Small get beaten up by nature. A relatively forgettable climax, too, pushes "The Stink" into obscurity, even though it hasn't been but a year since it aired.

Best Moment: The slow pan across every recycling bin was a great little moment, with special classifications for everything from metal, to heavy metal, to thrash metal, to bees.

198. S05E03 - "The Guy" (09/08/16)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin are skeptical of someone who seems all too willing to be Anais' new friend and help her dig up dirt on him.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While Anais' ongoing search for a new friend has, for the most part, yielded some really sweet episodes, "The Guy" falls short because it doesn't really bear any progress, with Anais' new friend Josh inevitably turning out to be some weird cultist looking to make a sleep pod for his new friend. I'm game for the show going with more of a downer ending, but "The Guy" is so insignificant otherwise that the fact that it amounts to nothing renders it entirely forgettable.

Though Josh wrings out a few laughs, he lacks the active role that he'd really need to leave a lasting impression, and ganging up every character against him leaves his dynamic with the other characters, Anais included, far too wobbly. It just feels like he's a one-off weirdo even before the final twist, ensuring that while things land, they don't feel well-earned.

Best Moment: Gumball's wallet "sound."

197. S06E07 - "The Cringe" (2/02/18)

What Happens?: Gumball and Hot Dog Guy team up to try to eliminate their awkwardness and, when all else fails, search for the root of it.

Why Is It on the List Here?: To Gumball's credit, its first two entries into the Hot Dog Guy trilogy—"The Hug" and "The Awkwardness"—are, against all odds, impeccable works of cringe comedy. I assume the writers were hoping for lightning to strike a third time with "The Cringe," but no amount of ambition can really make it work, and while it's certainly a well-realized premise that the show tackles with appropriate gameness and excitement, it fails to really pick up momentum.

Part of the problem is that it peaks with its first scene, with Gumball and Hot Dog Guy suffering through the worst, most full-bladdered school day of their lives in their repeatedly-foiled attempts to pee in peace. Everything that follows certainly succeeds in raising the stakes, but never to an end that's really memorable or entertaining, and occasionally, as with the "Elmore's Got Talent" bit, the insufferability of the situation just makes you hate watching it. The climax, too, suffers from issues with escalating properly. While the presentation is undeniably eye-catching, swapping the visuals out for cardboard dioramas, the jokes that make it up aren't up to par, and the final reveal that their awkwardness started when both shared chickenpox is such a disappointing revelation that even having Gumball and Hot Dog Guy literally beat the memories out of each other doesn't allow the episode to end in a great place.

There's a lot of great ideas that "The Cringe" really sinks its teeth into, and while it's easy to appreciate, it's hard to love.

Best Moment: The opening segment, as previously stated, especially how it evolves into psychological torment.

196. S05E20 - "The Catfish" (2/21/17)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin create a fake online profile so that their grandfather, Louie, can have someone to talk to.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Catfish" has a theoretically-interesting idea backing it up: as Gumball and Darwin chat with Louie under the guise of being a like-minded woman, Muriel, they discover that Granny Jojo has strictly limited his freedom out of fear he'll be swept up by another lady. Unfortunately, there's not really much in terms of emotional examination here, with Louie's confrontation with Granny Jojo at the end of the episode only really building to the nonstarter ending of him finally getting a true friend on social media—her.

Instead, "The Catfish" is more content on dishing out laughs, and aside from an annoyingly on-the-nose joke about literal "catfishing" which… speaks for itself, it mines some good material out of the circumstances. Louie's onslaught of texts interfering with Gumball's inability to live his life due to incessant phone vibrations was brilliant, and the climax of the episode, if nothing too memorable, at least mines some humor out of Gumball and Darwin trying to foil Granny Jojo's plans to destroy the "real" "Muriel" (the woman that Gumball chose as the image for his fake profile). It's funny, if nothing else.

Best Moment: "Our romance was ravenous, insatiable, our hearts melting with hunger until we consumed each other like a pair of feasting lions… but very soon, her loving arms refused to let go of me, and she kept me captive, her tender fingers now the bars of a gilded cage, from which I can never escape. Anywho, enough about me. What's your favorite food?"

195. S06E27 - "The Awareness" (11/06/18)

What Happens?: Gumball wants to prove to Leslie that he's well-versed in plant culture.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Awareness" works, but only as much as necessary. There's inherent humor in the tried-and-true formula of having Gumball push a scenario to its absolute extremes just to prove a point, and his goal gets nicely matched-up with an equally aggressive Leslie, but this is the sort of episode where you get exactly what you expect. There's some great gags and clever dialogue sprinkled throughout to keep what's happening interesting, but as a whole, "The Awareness" challenges you to remember much about it, and its occasional tendency to rely on Gumball being inanely stupid to make its jokes work borders on distractingly cheap.

Best Moment: Gumball emerging from his dehydrated body, traumatizing Banana Joe for the rest of his existence, made for a great cutaway gag.

194. S02E16 - "The Watch" (1/22/13)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin fight with Marvin Finkleheimer after they give him a family heirloom watch which, unwittingly, sparks a feud between both their families.

Why Is It on the List Here?: It's weird how "The Watch," at one point, was one of the most annoyingly rerun episodes of the show, all while being one of Season 2's more uninteresting adventures. There's nothing wrong with "The Watch," really—there's a lot of fun moments between Gumball and Darwin as they attempt to pass the watch back and forth between each other before Marvin enters the picture—but nothing truly exciting happens.

Marvin Finkleheimer is brought in as the unlikely antagonist, an elderly character who the show occasionally used for quick flashes of humor throughout Season 1, but he's not a very fun person for Gumball and Darwin to bounce off of in their merciless attempts to regain the family watch from him. Even the climax, where Gumball, Darwin, and Richard ensue a chase after Marvin on motorized wheelchairs, is unsurprisingly slow and steady, and everything fizzles out shortly thereafter, a rare feat for an episode that ends with a freeze-frame explosion.

Best Moment: Gumball vanishing around the corner after passing the watch over to Darwin. Those wiggly hands made for a well-used reaction GIF back in the day.

193. S06E13 - "The Pact" (4/09/18)

What Happens?: Gumball and Principal Brown make a pact to notify one another's girlfriends of some pesky habit, but Brown fails to complete his side of the deal.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Other than the fact that "The Pact" perfectly summates the state of Penny's post-"Shell" existence with a whopping four seconds of screentime in an episode ostensibly centered around her, this is an entry that's fun, but never throws you any real curveballs. It coasts by largely in the effective pairing of Gumball and Principal Brown, two characters who are rarely on the same side yet have shockingly great comedic chemistry, and more than anything else, "The Pact" is just an enjoyable opportunity to watch them go to war with one another as hilariously, equally incompetent rivals. The issue is that there's really nothing memorable, with the episode becoming a pile of gags more than anything else, so while it hits all the right points, the route it takes to hit them isn't a very rousing one.

Best Moment: Of all the fly-by moments that fill up "The Pact's" middle section, I like the brick-through-the-window gag the most. It's simple, it's stupid, and it gets the point across.

192. S06E35 - "The Wish" (5/13/19)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin convince Principal Brown that Miss Simian was transformed into a neck pillow because of a wish they made.

Why Is It on the List Here?: The better of Season 6's two Principal Brown offerings, "The Wish" is still fairly difficult because nothing about it makes logical sense, yet it works in that blatant inconsistency. Most prominently, there's no reason why Gumball and Darwin should be so naive to the extent of believing that a gnome keychain transformed Miss Simian into a neck pillow (at least Principal Brown is weird enough that his acceptance of it makes some strange level of sense for him), and it feels like the lowest the two have been in terms of their intelligence since Season 1. Even so, their banter and overall snarkiness help salvage that lapse in judgement quite a bit, emulating a sort of middle ground in spite of its core discrepancies—there's only so much you can praise the exploitation of the show's characters.

The entirety of the episode feels like a balancing act, and while it can never really make up for its dire transgressions, it's still pretty easy to be won over. Principal Brown's quest to say "I love you" to Miss Simian has the right intentions, even if expressed in the most roundabout way imaginable, and there's plenty of great, inventive beats in the story to keep you entertained; the three characters involved, too, have a great rapport that keeps everything energized. It's just hard to overlook what lay at the "The Wish's" center.

Best Moment: There's something about the moment where Sal Left Thumb decides to steal the neck pillow instead of Principal Brown's car (which it was inside of), only to realize how poor of a decision his crime was and sink into a downward spiral, that just clicks.

191. S06E29 - "The Drama" (11/08/18)

What Happens?: Gumball starts to worry about how strong Carrie and Darwin's relationship is, especially once her ex gets into the picture.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While there's nothing all that wrong about how "The Drama" lays itself out, there's also just not much right to it, either. The bulk of the issue is just that "The Matchmaker" seemed to be opening new doors for the show in bringing Darwin and Carrie together, but "The Drama" feels less like a continuation of that development so much as a check-in, a surface-level acknowledgement that it happened that doesn't ask any questions.

The entirety of the premise is bent around Gumball spying on them as they go through a day exhibiting several signs of being incredibly different people (albeit compatible), and at every turn, he makes some weird comment about how their relationship is on the rocks via some unnecessarily-extended metaphor. It's a very formulaic episode that suffers in, yet again, structuring everything through Gumball's perspective rather than the characters actually in question (which "The Matchmaker" also struggled with… that'll pop up a fair bit later). The cycle only gets broken through the introduction of Carrie's ex, Azrael, a charming but ultimately uninteresting fellow for Gumball to further react off of, as well as enabling a weird segue into a cool, albeit tacked-on, sequence with a change in art direction.

"The Drama" wants to be ceremonious, but it just isn't, and that leaves me feeling disappointment more than anything else.

Best Moment: Probably the art style change; for however much it doesn't really need to exist, it looks stunning.

190. S01E13 - "The Mystery" (7/11/11)

What Happens?: In a classic game of Whodunnit, Gumball attempts to decipher how Principal Brown ended up getting stuffed in his locker, covered in paint and toilet paper with his hair missing, and who's responsible.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Mystery" has a story that it wants to tell, but it does so in such a straightforward and predictable way that I was never particularly tickled by it. It's all classic cartoon shenanigans, and even though involving a large chunk of the show's supporting cast, there's not a sense that it manages to make any interesting breakthroughs on the tried-and-true formula, simply integrating its characters without finding a unique voice to breathe new life into how everything unfolds. Even in the context of being a mystery, too, the individual beats the episode takes feel too carefully coordinated for any of its revelations to feel organic.

The best parts, unsurprisingly, are the moments where the character's voices shine through, such as Gumball's interpretation of how Penny would've committed the crime as a passion of love, but those moments were few and far between.

Best Moment: The gag of Mr. Brown, and subsequently Ms. Simian, being run over slowly.

189. S01E08 - "The Quest" (5/30/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin set out with Anais to get her Daisy the Donkey stuffed animal back after it gets thrown off of the school bus.

Why Is It on the List Here?: I know there's a lot of defenders of "The Quest," and for good reason: there's a lot to like here. Similar to "The Mystery," this is incredibly ambitious for Season 1 in how it wants to tell an actual, cohesive narrative, which it succeeds at doing. Plus, this is one of the first episodes to really utilize Anais well, as well as emphasizing that she and her brothers do actually care about each other.

Personally, though, I've always found it to be a bit dull. The decisions it makes never find a solid compromise between humor and mystery, with "The Quest" sacrificing a lot of its laughs to tell its story, but because of that lack of jokes, everything takes a bit of a hit. As such, I can admire the scope of what the writers were trying to accomplish, but that's as far as my appreciation of it can really go.

Best Moment: The climactic chase through the graveyard from Tina was one of the show's earliest moments to demonstrate the sort of awesome cinematography Gumball is able to accomplish, and it still holds up five seasons later.

188. S01E25 - "The Poltergeist" (10/17/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin find Mr. Robinson living in their attic after his wife kicks him out of their own house, and they decide to help him get his anger back.

Why Is It on the List Here?: While I generally don't hold "The Poltergeist" to a very high level, I was actually sort of surprised by how much I enjoyed it when I watched it most recently. For what it's worth, the episode managed to find an interesting way of examining Mr. Robinson's relationship with his wife, and having Gumball and Darwin help him get his mojo back by abusing him so much that he snaps, brings everything full circle in a fun way. At the same time, though, it still suffers from a lot of the issues Season 1 episodes do, with Richard looking as incompetent as ever and Gumball and Darwin's obliviousness playing a crucial role in how everything works out, though I think the latter works out better here than anywhere else.

Best Moment: Gumball attempts to make Mr. Robinson laugh by enduring the slapstick routine of hitting himself repeatedly with a rake; Darwin, however, says he has to put his heart into it, and proceeds to hit himself with a baseball bat so hard that he straight-up passes out. Weirdly dark.

187. S02E25 - "The Photo" (7/17/13)

What Happens?: Gumball struggles to get a perfect school photo and spends the rest of the day preparing his face for the perfect shot.

Why Is It on the List Here?: It's strange, after all of the strides towards originality Season 2 had been making, that "The Photo" slipped back into familiar territory; its premise is something that plenty of other shows have played with, and it feels like the sort of thing that would've been attempted in Season 1. Nevertheless, while "The Photo" may be lacking in originality, it makes up for that with some fun additions to the main story in the form of Alan and Banana Joe.

Alan, a character who hadn't been explored much up this point, has a field day in his supporting character role, establishing himself as frustratingly senseless, the perfect comedic foil to Gumball's cynical, snarky attitude, all culminating in Alan admitting that his deepest secret (for now) is that he donates all of his allowance to charity. Meanwhile, Banana Joe is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, hell-bent on getting revenge after Gumball ruins his perfect shot. He's as pathetic here as always, though, and his attempts at being angry and taking Gumball down backfire horrifically when he gets slammed into the wall by Gumball opening a door.

As for the rest of "The Photo?" It's fun, and largely an excuse for the show to flex some delightfully horrific facial reconstruction jokes… but nothing revolutionary.

Best Moment: Alan looks good in literally every photo ever taken of him, including one that Gumball took of him asleep at 4 in the morning.

186. S01E26 - "The Mustache" (11/21/11)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin suddenly become grown men.

Why Is It on the List Here?: Having kids suddenly wonder what it would be like to grow up and then magically waking up as an adult is a well-worn cartoon and sitcom trope, and Gumball doesn't make that anything more than it usually is, but "The Mustache" is still chalked full of some really enjoyable details that make it surprisingly engaging. Gumball and Darwin fantasizing intensely about being able to vote is such a hilariously specific aspect of being an adult, and watching them try to navigate the real world for a few minutes is pretty funny, even if not particularly unique.

I also appreciate that the episode actually pinned their sudden adulthood to something—in this case, it's Richard's supplement cereal (which is pretty much just steroids)—as well as briefly exploring Richard's insecurities about being overweight, an idea that the show hasn't really poked around much, even if the foreshadowing leading up to that reveal is a bit too on-the-nose.

Best Moment: Darwin's resume for job hiring is a drawing of him voting.

185. S02E22 - "The Hero" (6/19/13)

What Happens?: Gumball and Darwin hurt Richard's feelings, and he feels that they don't value him as a father.

Why Is It on the List Here?: There's a lot of mixed feelings about "The Hero" among fans of the show, and while I'm not as firmly on the hate-train as a lot of my peers, I still can't give it a full pass. I get what its intentions are: it wanted to be the show's proof that it could be emotional, and that it understood and could demonstrate the personal nuances of its characters, but "The Hero" gets too bogged down by its cynicism and the attempts at humor it tries to make.

Look. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't mind humor being mean-spirited when it's done well, and I've given a fair amount of mean episodes a pass because I feel that they at least understand what they're doing, even if the final result is far from everyone's cup of tea. "The Hero" just can't satisfy either side of the coin, though; Gumball's sardonic throwaway lines and commentary would be theoretically funny if the episode wasn't trying to carry emotional weight, and everyone else's deeply emotional convictions would theoretically work if the whole episode committed to that side of things. (This is why I think that Gumball's critique of all of Richard's attempts to save them in the final act, at near-death, feels as disingenuous as the zero-joke song Richard belts out in the middle.)

Perhaps "The Hero" was insecure about what it ultimately wanted to be, leaving itself split between two wildly different choices, the combination of which finds both sensibilities at war with one another. Either way, while that means that certain moments do work for both sides, they don't mesh into a solid episode, and the tear-jerking climax feels kinda unearned because of it, even if, by that point, "The Hero" was actually trying to be sincere.

Best Moment: Even so, "The Hero" still has a lot of great little moments, especially in the montage of them trying to live without the rest of their family's help. The scene where all of their discount food rapidly expires is pretty fun, and I like the joke about the school bus' suspension being off because they smell so bad that nobody wants to sit on their side of the bus.

184. S03E34 - "The Spoiler" (2/26/15)

What Happens?: Gumball tries to spend a week avoiding spoilers for a new horror movie, The Screamening .

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Spoiler" is fun, though generally lacking in fresh ideas. It's not like every beat that these types of episodes take aren't tweaked properly into Gumball's formula, but there's no surprises here. At the very least, it finds fun roles for both Darwin and Anais, with Darwin constantly struggling with his fear of seeing the movie and Anais attempting to coax Gumball into letting her see it despite her age. Their parts are fairly straightforward, but there's plenty of great touches for both that allow "The Spoiler" to get more inventive, such as Anais' efforts to psychologically manipulate her brother and Darwin's appreciably dumb idea to see the movie before "seeing" the movie.

Best Moment: Gumball's spoiler-laden online exchanges with Carrie and Masami make for some easy but solid jokes.

183. S03E10 - "The Vacation" (7/31/14)

What Happens?: The Wattersons' family vacation reaches a snag when their car breaks down.

Why Is It on the List Here?: This was the first episode of the show written without Ben Bocquelet's involvement, and that slight lack of confidence shows in how "The Vacation" isolates the Wattersons from Elmore and any of their more comfortable, well-established surroundings. Because of that, this is an incredibly low-stakes endeavor that simply wants to show the Wattersons' dynamic in a new environment, and it does that well, if at the cost of memorability.

The key component to "The Vacation" is its heightened sense of reality. The Watterson car breaks down, stranding the family until a mysterious guy shows up and pushes their car to his home, a derelict gas station, which eerily fits the description of a horror story Nicole made up. From there, "The Vacation" just sort of coordinates itself to make the unnamed character and his mother look as malicious as possible to the Wattersons, even though it's clear to us that they pose no harm. All of this culminates in the Wattersons freaking out and trying to escape, which, aside from having some fun gags and enjoyable cinematography, follows all the beats you'd expect.

There's not a lot of surprises here, but "The Vacation" doesn't have anything glaringly wrong with it. It just is what it is.

Best Moment: Richard tries to find a mechanic on-foot but uses a watch as a compass and ends up spending twelve hours going in a complete circle.

182. S05E32 - "The Best" (9/08/17)

What Happens?: When Gumball senses that Carmen is acting a bit too presumptuously, he plots to take her down a peg.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Best" would be a perfectly acceptable outing for the show if not for the fact that it spends so much of its early screentime flexing for Internet brownie points. Aside from some prods at the concept of shaming and ageism, its rather frustrating centerpiece is Gumball turning into a literal social justice warrior, spinning everything Carmen says into an attack on her insensitivity. Maybe it was funny at the time, but as for how it's aged, I'll go on a limb and say pretty badly; it's a hacky joke without any insight, and while it racked up a lot of views online, it didn't do Gumball any favors aside from telling everyone involved that, yes, this is what the people want to see. And that's damaging of the show as a whole.

After that, though, "The Best" settles into a more steady flow consisting of some fun, albeit scattershot extended gags. Most successfully, the scene of Gumball and Darwin trying to break into Principal Brown's office to dig up dirt on Carmen, as documented by security footage, becomes hilariously vaudevillian, scrapping dialogue and sound effects for a musical score to underline each painful mistake Gumball makes after getting stuck in the ceiling vent. The final sequence, too, of Gumball and Darwin racing to knock all of their classmate's phones out of their hands, allows for some great rapid-fire visual gags and character work, including Darwin shooting Bobert with a water gun set to a cinematic, sweeping score. Of Mice and Men reference? You decide.

While there's some great bits here and there that keep "The Best" briskly moving along, the rocky, provocative first half leaves the episode stumbling out the gate a little too much.

Best Moment: The security cam footage. It's just dumb cartoonery, but executed terrifically.

181. S06E15 - "The Brain" (6/18/18)

What Happens?: When Anais ends up in the hospital for facepalming her way into a near-comatose state, the Wattersons must protect her for a week from permanent brain damage caused by their stupidity.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Brain" is such a personally conflicting episode. The critic in me wants to decry its complete degradation of its characters, with Richard, Gumball, and Darwin being even dumber here than usual for the sake of enabling the premise, let alone that the idea that Anais facepalms so much from being surrounded by idiots that she risks brain damage is sort of a cruel way of demonstrating how far Gumball and Darwin have fallen at this point. I acknowledge all of that as completely fair criticism, yet I still have a lot of legitimate appreciation for what it's trying to do, and once you get over the initial hump, it really starts working, eventually to mesmerizing effect.

Granted, the supermarket scene, complete with a minute-long dill pickle rap, is incredibly divisive (though personally I love it in a profoundly stupid way), but once the series suddenly starts pulling medical imagery out of nowhere, "The Brain" becomes hypnotizingly enthralling. It's eventually revealed that Anais was hallucinating the entire time, having been set off by something dumb Gumball says in the first two minutes of the episode, but the path to that reveal is remarkable, with Anais fading in and out of one dangerous situation after another in a dream-like stupor that gets repeatedly interrupted by faint beats of recognition in the weird doctor paraphernalia that keeps dramatically reappearing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that to enjoy "The Brain" is to, not unlike Anais, turn off the part of your brain that wants to object to it. While there's a lot of times that bridge is too narrow for me to be willing to cross, this'll always be a weird sort of anomaly: it's problematic, but darn it, it's riveting.

Best Moment: The climactic dream sequence.

180. S02E33 - "The Castle" (10/01/13)

What Happens?: Richard's lack of rules leads to the family getting kicked out of the house when Nicole's at work.

Why Is It on the List Here?: "The Castle" is half of an amazing episode and half of one that's just okay, and weirdly enough, the amazing half is how everything starts. For some reason, both acts are almost entirely separate in terms of content and execution, despite fitting under the same thematic umbrella. The start of "The Castle" is what I think makes it most alluring, featuring some rare, genuinely adorable slice-of-life moments of Richard and the kids going through a day without rules. Seeing Gumball and Darwin race downstairs thinking it's a school day, eat toast with toothpaste, watch cartoons sped-up, and give each other a milk shower are perfect cartoony antics, and that spirit extends all the way to the moment that Harold Wilson knocks on Richard's door in hopes of finding the true promise land: a house without rules.

From there, though, "The Castle" is just… alright. It falls into predictability, with the four trying everything they can to get back into their house after it gets taken over by partygoers. There are some fun revelations to emerge from the party—Mr. Small, most notably, says he only acts like an eco-warrior to get a rush of superiority while shoving a ham in his face—but there's not a lot to what's going on until the ending, when Nicole emerges as the show's deus ex machina to snap everything back in place. Clever ending, but uninteresting execution. I did like, though, that Richard's triumphant speech to reclaim the house that the episode builds up to the entire time bombs entirely; Gumball's as blunt of a show as ever.

Best Moment: In the first half, the show acknowledges the changing, puberty-riddled voices of its voice actors, Logan Grove and Kwesi Boakye, by having Gumball point out how much his voice is maturing, while Darwin's is getting even squeakier. It's a fun nod, and it'll later become the hook of one of the show's greatest episodes...

For the last part of this list, from 240-210, CLICK HERE.

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

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

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Source: http://www.mattalamode.com/2019/08/a-definitive-ranking-of-every-episode.html

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