The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Box

"Why did you choose to merge with a cockroach?" "Just imagine what I could do with the powers of a nuclear-resistant parasite!" "Repel girls even more?"
I blame myself, I really do. Perhaps it was because yesterday's episode was immaculate. Perhaps it was because I've been surprised by almost all of the recent episodes and inadvertently raised expectations a bit too high. Unfortunately, I found this episode to be just... fine. Not bad enough for there to be too many salvageable points that stand out and not good enough for what works to be consistent. This was just flat peaks and moderate valleys. Don't get me wrong- some of it I did appreciate. Most of it, however, I did not.

"The Box" is, in effect, a slightly different version of the much-superior "The Check." My main issue is that the latter was completely original and astonishingly smart with every approach it took (see: Darwin accidentally founds a corrupt charity, Anais attempts Marxist utopianism, Gumball destroys the universe). Here, a lot of the ideas felt reheated and lacking in originality, and when you top that with a surprisingly boring ending, there's no true satisfaction to be gained from it.

The premise is a simple one that serves merely as a launching point: Gumball finds a box on their front porch, but nobody ordered it, so they all take turns imagining its contents. No, seriously, that's it. There's not much set up like in "The Check" either. It worked fine, though: it makes sense that a suspicious box would be found by chance and without reason. That's how it works.

First up to hypothesizing is Gumball who, after some portal gun experimentation, starts to develop freakish side-effects, getting progressively worse through his desire to gain superpowers. I'm not entirely sure how the premise could've worked successfully, but it just felt weird to watch, and not the kind of good-weird that the show tends to excel at. It gave me flashbacks to those terrible modern SpongeBob episodes where the only joke is, "Wow, look how gross this is! LOOK AT IT!" It's just pus and eggs coming out of Gumball's face. It certainly wasn't intolerably disgusting or anything, but it felt lacking in anything aside from the shock of it all. I did like the laser vision joke though.

Nicole's fantasy is a vast improvement, finding millions in the box while simultaneously recognizing that her and her family are now on a hit list, but what does she care? They may be fugitives, but they're fugitive millionaires, and that's all that matters. This was probably the best bit of the whole episode just because of how much fun the whole concept was and how it started off so stupidly cheerful before taking a super dark pivot almost instantaneously. Bonus points for Nicole's self-satisfied enjoyment through the whole sequence.

Anais' vision was fine. Arguably, it's great. My main issue is that the idea has already been done by the show and much, much better in the form of "The Joy." Sure, there were some great jokes, like Gary receiving his change from the phone booth whilst being eaten alive by zombies, but it came off as a tad bit generic. That being said, the explanation as to how it started, showing Richard opening the box and finding some chemical vaccination gun that he proceeds to shoot at his dopey family ("OOO, SQUIRT GUN!") was the perfect explanation and a smart choice in juxtaposition. Even so, that punch is ripped from "The Joy" too, when they underplayed the dramatic climax by cutting to Principal Brown swinging around a broomstick (in reference to an earlier joke). I do think that this joke was more insightful, but it still felt derivative.

Richard's vision is the complete opposite of that, taking the form of an epic, Matrix-type mission to save the President, his memory brought back by finding a phone in the box that reminds him of his code name - Lazarus - allowing him to exploit his brain's potential to 100%. What makes it work is how it comes in complete contrast to what the show usually does, conjuring up something surprisingly dramatic and intense. Then, of course, the whole thing falls apart when Gumball points out that 100% of nothing won't make Richard any smarter, showing how the events would actually play out. It's the more expected approach, but it's necessary.

Lastly, Darwin proposes that the box is just empty, but before he can break out into painful song about the box's true potential, Gumball grabs onto the camera and forces it back down as it begins to rise. I don't think that the show has actually had a character physically hassle with what angle is being shown (though in "The Gift," Alan struggles with an uninterested camera), so it felt fresh and smart. I mean, before the song started, I knew I'd hate it.The show is fully aware of all of the cheesy pratfalls other cartoons take and plays it against our expectations, which is brilliant.

The family then frantically fights over opening the box, launching it out the window and onto the road in the process. After a series of fake-outs of it almost being run over (the issue being that after the second time, we knew the joke would keep repeating), it gets struck by lightning and disappears, much to their annoyance. The next day, Mr. Robinson comes around looking for it and fills them in on what they missed out on, which was butt ointment. And that's it.

Look, I get that the ending is supposed to marginalize all the imaginative things that the gang has thought up. That makes perfect sense. But I do think that there could've been something a bit more creative mined from the situation than butt ointment, and it would've probably been marginally better to make the ending quick instead of have Mr. Robinson drolly draw us up some weird visual of what the ointment is supposed to be used for. There are times when drawing out a joke is greatly effective, but it didn't work here because there was no pay-off aside from Gumball saying, "Alright, we didn't want to know." A while back I joked about how much I hate endings where characters just shrug off everything or render all which has previously happened pointless (with rare exceptions, such as "The Plan")- this is precisely that, and it didn't sit well.

Takeaway:
-When Richard asked the credit card company if he could order anything online, there's non-stop laughing on the other end of the line. "It's been like that for three days. I think they're working in shifts."
-"It seems teleportation is dangerously affecting your DNA." "So you're saying I'm getting superpowers?" "No. That's a rather specific interpretation of what I just said."
-"I can take a submarine to school every morning!" "But there's no water between here and school." "We'll buy some!"
-"Please hang up. This phone will self-destruct in 10 seconds." "No, you hang up!"
-Prior to its release, there was a ton of speculation that the episode would deliver upon the painting from "The Oracle" due to one of the leaked images holding a resemblance to the last scene, so I went in probably expecting something way too surreal and amazing. That didn't happen, tragically, and I will admit my bias on the review as such. (I did try to make up for the difference by upping the score a bit, though.)

Final Grade: B-. The only thing truly saving this episode from C-range is that it got courageous at points with some of its concepts, specifically Nicole and Richard's fantasies. Other than that, a lot of the material was lacking innovation. I'm worried that these kinds of episodes might predict difficulties in expanding the show's range in the future, but I sincerely hope not.
I will admit that, watching it a second time, I appreciated it a bit more, but it still seems comparatively weak despite attempting some pretty audacious ideas. It's just the execution of them that I was having trouble with.

For the last Gumball review of The Matchmaker, CLICK HERE.