The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Petals

"Look, don't worry. True beauty is found on the inside - your personality." "Good-looking people don't need a personality! Personalities were invented by ugly people to make up for what they lack on the outside!"

Of all the episodes to come out of this batch, perhaps it's a bit odd to label the filler episode as the best, especially next to a controversy-hound, a reference fest, and a style-swapper, but "The Petals" succeeds in its incisiveness yet utter simplicity. Part social commentary, part gardening show, part psychological horror... it's got everything you could want. The best part, though, is how unassumingly the whole episode starts out before quickly gathering momentum and hitting as many ridiculous high notes as you could imagine.

The episode starts out with a simple idea: Leslie's beauty is fading, so Gumball and Darwin decide to do everything in their power to return the poor guy to his former glory. What we get, at least leading up to the tonal shift midway through the episode, is exactly that: a series of consistently successful and creative gags running the gamut from botany to social psychology. And it all makes sense, too. Leslie is designed to be a vain character, and being a flower is a major proponent of that. The idea of his eventual wilting is thus the perfect opportunity to play around with the character more while exploring how his mind operates, something we hadn't really gotten a proper glimpse of prior.

And to reiterate for the sake of honing back in on the episode's specifics: every joke is an unequivocal hit. Even the simplest ideas - giving Leslie some accessories to hide his face or getting him to sit out in the sun, surrounded by an exuberant supply of mirrors to maximize his tan - backfire horribly and hilariously - Leslie is left unable to photosynthesize, and in the latter, he ends up getting set ablaze.

Arguably the best scene in the bunch, though, was the exploration of the cheerleader/frat guy effect. The concept is already fun enough, and entirely true to boot, but it also cutely observes Gumball and Penny's relationship in her ongoing love of him regardless, albeit with some admittedly fair reservations. The whole season's struggled with portraying the two's chemistry - she only appears meaningfully once, in "The Ex," and it doesn't really cast their relationship in a favorable light - but their scene here was a delightful little character study. The show could use more of that, sometimes; a touch of poignancy can do wonders.

Gumball and Darwin finally figure out the proper way to fix Leslie through deadheading, or cutting Leslie's head off, which he reacts to accordingly by running away in terror. This kickstarts the most exciting part of the episode as the show spectacularly juxtaposes two different genres to make for an inventive climax. While Leslie's vision becomes one resembling psychological horror, he's countered by the soothing voices of Gumball and Darwin's fake gardening show, chalked full of playfully scripted banter, as his greatest threat. I've felt like Season 5 has always struggled with creating climaxes to its episodes coming across as safe and underwhelming, but everything here is so off-the-wall that it works.

Meanwhile, the ultimate resolution - Leslie decides to go through with it upon learning his head would grow back, only to find out it might take longer than he would've thought, causing him to lash out and chase the boys around with some hedge clippers - was a simple way to deflate all of the tension, but it does a nice job of wrapping up the episode, so I can't complain.

That's all good and nice, sure, but there's something that I feel like I should single out specifically: the gross-out. To my complete surprise, it actually worked here. Gross-out is a tricky game to play because it exists to horrify the viewer while exerting the lowest effort possible, but instead of existing to "embellish" the episode, it was integral to its execution.

Notice, for instance, how Leslie's appearance gradually deteriorated into an even more horrifying one with every beat in the episode. That's a simple gag, but the show elevates it by exploiting the situations for as much humor as possible with a series of ridiculously specific yet spot-on metaphors. (My favorite was "You know when a movie comes out and you're just like, 'The sequel can't possibly be worse,' then it is? Well, it's like the 10th movie.") In this sense, the gross-out wasn't simply a crutch to fill up time - it was the foundation from which the show built up its humor. The show treats gross-out here with the same attention as, say, it gives to creating the zombie horror vibe  of "The Joy" or the dramatic sensibilities of "The Detective" by fusing it to the show's identity, and the result is remarkably effective.

In other words, even with the odds stacked against itself, "The Petals" was unstoppable.

Notes and Quotes:
-To be honest, a broken accordion on a pile of trash is a pretty apt description of high fashion
-Everybody's done the whole comedy routine of stretching out an obvious idea but managing to loop back to it in the end - that's a clumsy way to phrase it - but Gumball discerning where the petals on the floor came from was as delightfully convoluted as you'd expect.
-That scene of Leslie getting delusional off of perfume was hilarious and I can't stop thinking of it. Oddly enough, it seems like the show loves drugging its characters, but when the outcome is this great, who am I to complain? More bath salts in the water supply, please.
-"Have you seen your sandals? You look like you're about to walk on water."
-"LOOK AT ME, WORLD, AND GAG ON MY ELEGANZA!"
-The "WARNING: JUMP SCARE" sign in the parking garage was a nice touch.

FINAL GRADE: A+. When I see an episode I don't like, I don't like it a lot more than other people, but when I see one that I do like, I feel like I have an infinitely larger amount of respect for it - that's not a diss on other people's tastes, mind you, but I'm a guy of two extremes, and "The Petals" perfectly hit that sweetspot for me. So, is A+ an insane grade? Probably, but it reeks of that desire to watch it again and again, and I haven't felt so strongly about an episode in terms of its infinite rewatchability as much as "The Sweaters," even. This episode just does so, so much right.

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