"We've run out of marzipan!"For some reason, cartoon shorts are always hard for shows to pull off.
And generally speaking, it's easy to see why. Cartoons already have to work within the limitations of an 11-21 minute block to tell a cohesive narrative with a start, middle, and end, and they have to relish every second they can get. Rob them of a huge chunk of that time, and the chance for meaningful storytelling often ends up painfully incapacitated.
The extent to which "Waiting for Gumball" suffers, though, far exceeds that, thanks to a few more frustrating variables thrown into the mix. First and foremost, the entirety of "Waiting for Gumball" was the creation of Joe and Becky, the folks behind "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" whom you probably recognize from "The Puppets." As you probably know - assuming you read my stuff - one of my largest issues with the episode was its inability to bridge the gap properly between TAWOG's and DHMIS' sensibilities, with both ultimately being woefully watered down, trapping the episode in a mediocre in-between that teetered on the unnerving but without the ability to truly commit. "Waiting for Gumball" is that, but even more watered down; rid of the show's appeal, we only get that subdued DHMIS half, but without anything to really justify how dull it was, and the result was a weirdly unnecessary compromise.
