Tuesday, June 19, 2018

The Amazing World of Gumball Review: The Schooling

"Are you trying to deny my consumer right to make bogus complaints to get free stuff?"

Writing episodes centered around trying to teach lessons through commentary is always a risky thing for TV shows to do, and despite being surprisingly adept at it, Gumball doesn't have the cleanest track record either. "The Schooling," thus, was an episode I was initially skeptical of, but it turned out to be, if not a revelation, a pleasant surprise playing to the show's strengths.

Where commentary episodes so often fail is in being ham-fisted; they tend to put whatever message they're trying to get across at the forefront, and then try to align the show's sensibilities in tandem with that message, and the outcome, when done poorly, risks condescension and preachiness, as if exercising an obligation. "The Schooling," though, demonstrates how commentary can be done at its finest: while there's a message underneath—that we undervalue and take for granted a proper education and otherwise neglect the difficulties of the service industry—TAWOG's distinct charm is always at the forefront, and it never relinquishes a part of its identity to get the job done.

More than anything else, "The Schooling" is a bit of a vignette episode, thrusting Gumball and Darwin into a series of Larry's jobs (in an ill-advised attempt to prove their point that what he does isn't that hard). It's an interesting formula the show hasn't attempted very often (that is, employing a sketch-esque approach with defined characters and not an ensemble), enabling the show to run through as many short, silly ideas as it can with a unified pace and sense of direction. While not every scene was a winner, the briskness with which everything proceeds in case it doesn't land for you, and the variability of each segment basically ensures you'll walk away satisfied.

The episode was actually at its best when working with its more simpler ideas, benefiting greatly from its quick delivery. Despite having the most basic premise, Felicity asking to be moved closer to the window was my favorite scene, taking a simple idea and executing it with cartoonish gusto in the extent of Felicity's stubbornness and the degree that Gumball and Darwin had to accommodate. Similarly, casting Gumball and Darwin as bank-tellers who, in a particularly biting reversal, end up holding up their customer by virtue of the corruptness of their positions, made for a solid laugh, even if it lingered for a beat too long.

When "The Schooling" experimented with more long-form concepts, the outcome was a bit more dicey. The scene where our two protagonists take up customer service to help an old woman find her long-lost son, for instance, walked that dangerous line between amiable cringeyness (there's really no way to make that term look graceful) and exhausting tedium. Cringe comedy is always hard to implement because it becomes a job of finding a way to make that which you can't stand watching, well, watchable and enjoyable, but here, the limit isn't pushed enough to transcend its awkwardness, and the result feels irritating. Meanwhile, while not a failure, the Black Friday segment, delightfully-contorted Delacroix-posing aside, took a straight and easy shot without elaborating the basic joke enough to stand out.

All of those moments, however, come together in the episode's ending: if there's anything to be taken away from "The Schooling," it's that Larry is quite possibly the most depressing character in the entire show. And while it's certainly satisfying to watch Gumball and Darwin, with their smug misunderstanding of the amount of crap he puts up with on the daily, get slammed around like a shoe in a washing machine, Larry is nothing more than the sacrificial lamb, burdened by a nightmare that he's trying to teach the two to avoid. As the two march off with newly-found crow's feet and crushed innocence under squeaky-clean smiles, Larry just stands for a moment, finding himself no more fulfilled than ever.

And so the spirit-crushing cycle of Larry's life begins once more.

Notes and Quotes:
-Oh, I also greatly appreciated how each bit transitioned to the next. Sometimes the best way of connecting an episode together is the simplest, and triggering each one with the sound effects of Gumball and Darwin's next shift was especially smooth.
-"Isaac Newton would be spinning in his grave, but gravity can't let him."
-Gumball and Darwin have no right to complain about a 9-to-3 grind when I had to wake up at 6 every morning.
-The simple visual of walking Gumball and Darwin make their way to the end of Larry's schedule worked wonderfully; the train was a smart touch.
-"I feel dirtier than a rat who joined law enforcement but actually had family connections to the mob and was turning police evidence over to the gangsters." "You mean like a rat who's a rat?" "Yeah, I guess that's a better way of saying it."
-I love the show for single-handedly encapsulating how much I feel for people who have to clean out movie theaters, even if that ice cream dude looked pretty dope.

FINAL GRADE: B+. With its foot more firmly stamped in the show's identity than teaching a lesson, "The Schooling" took its simple premise and executed it with an admirable looseness, allowing creativity to run wild. There isn't much to the episode, ultimately, but it takes what its premise and skewers as many interesting angles as it can, and the result is a complete delight.

For the last Gumball review of "The Founder," CLICK HERE.

10 comments:

  1. It seems like this episode should be fun, but somehow I never really got into it. The jokes didn't really land, I guess. That being said, it had an interesting premise.

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    1. The more I watched it, the more I got into it. It's just a simple little idea that the show found an enjoyable grip on, even if there's not much worthy of a standing ovation. I'll take that sort of quality any day.

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  2. Looking back, I honestly think that this was the strongest of this batch. It just had a lot of animated fun with its premise while smartly integrating some satire. The episode had a message to deliver, but it never came at the cost of the comedy and show's charm.

    "The Schooling" did not have much of a structured story, rather opting for a more vignette-like format. I know you initially had a problem with that initially, but I think it was the best way, given all of these various jobs give way to a lot of comedic potential but are somewhat difficult to tightly tie together. This was a great way to handle the subject.

    All of the bits worked for me save the one involving the mom and his son for reasons already discussed. My favorite bit was easily the one at the bank out of the oxymoronic irony (that's a term now) of the situation.

    Not that it would affect my perception of the episode, but I liked the nice little nod to the Bobert Store during the montage. There was brief glimpse of the pure white background and Bobert production before the boys were fired.

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    1. I will say that the fun thing about reviewing is that you often, in being forced to discuss something regardless of your opinion, tend to develop a stronger opinion on the episodes. It's sort of a mental game of, strangely, convincing myself whether an episode is strong or weak in breaking down what I like or dislike about them. "The Schooling" was one of those episodes for me that became better in my eyes in tearing it apart, which is always a nice change of pace from how things usually go...

      I wouldn't say it's my favorite, but out of a rather ambivalent set of episodes, it definitely stands out. It just feels like a textbook example of the show knowing how to handle what it's talking about; there's not much classy with it, but it's smart and fun, and those are the goalposts. I liked it.

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  3. Would you say this is a skit episode or more of a string of events episode? I can't decide between either.

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    1. I'd say it's more of a skit episode, but it's definitely a hybrid. It's pretty comparable to "The Question" in that sense.

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    2. I think it's a string of events episode that has a common theme, like The Butterfly showing how much destruction it can cause in Elmore, The Question showing what the meaning of life is to other characters, heck, even The Worst counts, showing the trials and tribulations of being a man, woman, adult, or child (this one they could have done better, but I do applaud the effort).

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    3. In the case of The Schooling, the common theme is how sucky it is to work low-level jobs, like retail and foodservice.

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  4. I have to add, the satire was on point, those situations were things that happen in such jobs and now that I read the review I think this episode was exemplar on how to convey a message without sacrificing the show's comedy.

    I can't complain and I loved how they use the comedic potential of the various jobs but I feel the skits lacked more effective punch lines like the ones we have seen in the best episodes, I feel the skits didn't payed off as much, that could make this an A+ episode instead of a B-ish.

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    1. I didn't really think that the skits lacked decent punchlines, for the most part. The issue, of course, is that the subject matter is incredibly varied and has to be delivered fast, so the show has to come up with end-all punchlines for each premise as opposed to more openness, which might make them feel like they end rather abruptly.

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