The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Sorcerer

"But I brought all sorts of witching stuff! Eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat..." "They'll never let us back in the zoo after this..."
At the heart of this episode was another Internet joke- don't feed the trolls.

And man, even when the episode is fine, I get frustrated with stupid "Look, we use the Internet! This is a hip joke" plots. It's not even that it was executed that badly, it's just that the general idea just feels tired. Sure, the show can easily revitalize even the drollest of plots, I get that, but I feel like this episode, while fine, didn't really push hard enough to make this something distinct, instead feeling largely like yet another rendition of the same old joke.

Basically, Gumball realizes that he is completely talentless, despite several attempts to prove the contrary, but eventually, he becomes inspired upon seeing Mrs. Jötunheim using her witchery. After a fair bit of deliberation, she takes him in as an apprentice- kind of. Realistically, she takes advantage of Gumball's ignorance to make him to do chores, the classic anti-Karate Kid, but at the very least, it leads to a dope song.

There haven't been any real dud songs this season yet. (I'm especially fond of Sal's in The Boredom, even though the episode itself wasn't particularly good.) I think the real success of "A Sorcerer's Apprentice" is, like "Without You," that it's a legitimately good song that doesn't lean as heavily on humor in its lyrics as visuals. As much as I like songs like "Everything Day" from "The Fuss," it's really hard to call it a song so much as jokes delivered rhythmically. Here, it's just a solid jam, for a lack of better terms, and it just sounds good. Combine that with, again, all the great visuals of Gumball and Darwin doing remarkably unusual household chores, and you get a quality 90 seconds.

After the kids think they develop superpowers from all of their work- they are, in fact, high on cleaning fluids- Mrs. Jötunheim tells them to clean the downstairs without opening the Door of Forbidden Secrets which, per Gumball being self-interested, Gumball opens anyway, where Darwin gets sucked in by a troll.

Yes, the troll... Ehh. Nothing that new was brought to the table with the whole aside. Once the realization strikes- the troll mockingly insults his victims before eating him- it's funny in theory, but it's not especially original. Further, the way that Gumball takes him down, through admittance of his flaws, just felt kind of off. If we're doing real-world applications here, wouldn't it be more accurate for the troll to be defeated through just being ignored? I don't see how challenging the troll wouldn't make it worse. Either way, the troll is defeated, Darwin is vomited up, and Gumball discovers his true talent- being supernaturally annoying. Ha ha. The end.

Realistically, nothing really happened. I'm really tired of Gumball being played as a gullible idiot and I'm not particularly fond of his success in the episode through his sheer ignorance. That's why I hated Season 1- when problems were solved, it was through dumb luck way too often. Here, it's not as bad, but I would've preferred Gumball actually toughing it out and figuring out something himself instead of just being annoying.

If there's one thing I did appreciate, especially in regards to the episode's Internet references, it was the sense of tying these old mystic perceptions of folklore and witchcraft and giving them a modern context, essentially normalizing them. Yes, there's the troll, sure, but I thought the orb was a great reveal, with it actually just being a computer connected to "Witch-Fi." Even better was the joke that all of Gumball's spells were watermarked with "Demo-Lite," which is so absurd that you just have to love it.

Other then that, it was a standard affair.

Takeaway:
-For such a throwaway joke, Alan long jumping was probably the funniest moment of the whole episode for me. It's just the fact that, as a balloon, he just floats at a steady rate ever-so-higher instead of jumping and coming back down, and Penny looking in bafflement was a nice touch. The show is always smart in knowing how to use its characters and their traits to make a joke- what they are and how they act are completely inseparable from one another.
-I loved the Buster Keaton gag of Darwin cleaning both sides of the mirror- just really well executed.
-The joke of the music advancing and reversing with the kids' steps by the Door of Forbidden Secrets was fine, though I think it went on a touch too long. I liked the idea, though, of the music being directly in response to what's happening instead of just present at opportune times (if that makes any sense, which it probably didn't).

Final Grade: C+. It was a decent effort, and there were some great jokes conceptually, but the whole "Troll" idea never really became anything distinct, instead succumbing to reliable and uninspired jokes. The show is best when it takes something overdone and reinvents it. That just didn't happen here.

For the last Gumball review on "The Ex," CLICK HERE.