The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Father

"How about a joke? Knock knock." "Dad?" "What? No." [profuse crying for split-second]

Well, thanks to CN and their impeccable scheduling, I completely missed watching "The Father" live, and that's a shame, because it's definitely one of the tighter episodes we've gotten so far. Don't get me wrong, Season 6 has been pretty darn close to perfection, but the fact that every episode is able to become such a distinctive little story is a testament to how delightfully-written the show is. For an emotional one, especially, there's always going to be lofty expectations, and those expectations can very easily make or break an episode; wisely enough, "The Father" found its own quietly touching niche among its poignant comrades.

Part of how it carves out its place is that the episode takes a decidedly "Fuss"-like approach; instead of devoting itself to an emotional crux, it sets forth the course of action through comedy firing on all cylinders. Admittedly, the beginning was a bit slow, largely indebted to an extensive but relatively unremarkable musical number—"pleasant" is always a nice term for this sort of thing (though Granny Jojo's death stares while holding instruments were great)—but as a means of establishing the narrative, it's a nice change of pace.

Most importantly, the focus isn't necessarily Frankie, which seems to be irking quite a few people; it's Richard's perception of Frankie. His father is the centerpiece of the episode, but the events happen around him, not through him, or at least not until the end. Whereas I do think the show had issues coming out of this, largely in some mild detouring (the middle portion ran just a little too long), it led to some genuinely inspired moments.

Most glaringly is Richard's coincidentally wordplay-ridden comfort-eating session. There's something to be said about the show's ability to pile on with a simple joke so much that it's legitimately impressive, and here, an entire conversation about Richard's abandonment issues is maintained around Larry's announcements of the food he's handing out. I mean, there's something so great about the overlap of "awful" and "waffle." Whoever on the writing staff that's been doing the wordplay over the past few episodes (looking at you, Thasa Man) deserves a raise.

The cloud-watching segment, too, was pretty darned delightful. Sure, it's been done before, but like the pun assault preceding it, the game is piling on an insane amount of complexity as Richard's psychoanalysis gets increasingly, unfathomably stretched-out to a point where every cloud formation he sees sends him into despair. ("How about that one? It's like a horse-shoe!" "Shoes are for walking... like he walked out on me.")

There's also plenty of delightful conversational blurbs—note the pull-quote quote (?) at the top—to keep things moving along briskly enough.

If I may gripe, though, there's not really a proper sense of escalation to this general middle potion, and the episode piles on instead of compounding; this is an issue a lot of episodes have, but in "The Father," it's especially glaring because it transitions to emotional weight beyond pure silliness. We expect it to escalate, and instead, the jokes land with varying success; if there's not a true dud, there's also not a sense that it's building to anything.

I think this makes the fact that "The Father" has such a strongly-defined second half so great. Gumball decides the best course of action is for Richard to re-experience are that he missed in quality time with Frankie. This is where the episode starts to really formulate as we watch Frankie and Richard try to have some father-son bonding, though all it does is point to how dissimilar both characters are. There's a sense that, in spite of both having sincere efforts, they never see eye-to-eye. Richard's a family man, and Frankie's a conman; they can't spend quality time because their idea of quality time is so drastically different. The sequence, further, plays out entirely in tongue-in-cheek subversion, with fuzzily color-tinted visuals and an emotional score undercut by every way Frankie bastardizes his life lessons.

The ending, though, is when everything truly comes together. Frankie confesses that he left Richard because he didn't want Richard to turn out like him. Richard confesses he's no hero either, though, but that every day he works to live up to how his children see him and blah blah blah it's all sweet, it's 11 PM, I don't want to summarize. But the whole scene is as lovingly sincere as the show's proven it can get: that is to say, incredibly. What "The Father" does is finally put these characters on the same level, and it's an amazing scene of raw emotion opening the door for more profound storytelling in the future. Just watch it, seriously.

Yet again, Season 6, you're a triumph.

Quotes and Notes:
-It's worth noting that, interestingly enough, Gumball, Darwin, and Anais take very passive roles in the episode. Whereas other Richard-centric episodes like "The Cycle" and "The Menu" rely on their chemistry, here, they merely coax proceedings along, and this allows Richard to steal the show as he should.
-"You're late, dad! You almost missed the show!" "Well at least I'm here now! And if anyone asks, I was also here Thursday night between 8 and 11."
-I wasn't overly impressed by the gag of Richard being rushed plates of food in a ball-pit (I think I was missing something there?), but the pay-off of the Watterson kids waiting outside the hospital only to see a traumatized Larry carried out on a stretcher was a great reveal. Oh, and then Richard walks out calmly dabbing his mouth with a napkin. Brilliant.
-The joke of Richard singing was a bit wonky, but the solid three seconds before he actually starts "singing" were dragged out beautifully. TAWOG's acute sense of comedic timing never ceases to amaze me.
-"I would need to make a time machine!" "Why?" "Because if I invented a time machine, my dad would be really proud of me..."
-"It's perfectly normal to be nervous your first time driving... a getaway car."
-Remember when I gave the last Frankie episode, "The Outside" a relatively high A-? Thank God I finally found out how numbers work... for the most part.
-Rich Fulcher's name has been appearing in the credits the whole season, so I'm hoping this isn't the last we see of Frankie, because Fulcher is such a freaking gift.

Final Grade: A-. "The Father" isn't the most structurally sound episode, and its vision is largely limited to the ways through which Frankie are employed, but it's a greatly enjoyable experience all the way through, with a loving dose of sentimentality to seal the deal. There's nothing like strong character work, and I can't think of many other shows that can hit the mark as consistently as TAWOG.

For the last review of "The One," CLICK HERE.