First, let's address Sarah, the yellow ice cream cone who seems to be one of the most hated characters on the show. The basic idea is that in her fruition, she considered Gumball and Darwin to be cool even without knowing them and quickly became clingy and obsessive, as explored in The Fan and The Comic. At the end of the day, the character is a parodical take on obsessive, Internet-dwelling sadsacks (heck, one quick scene had her cuddling a body pillow with J-pop in the background. Gumball's getting real), so her design is to be annoying just by default. In this I don't see any issues- the only character I have issues with is Clayton because he's not designed to be abrasive but, as a compulsive liar unable to reach beyond a shallow viewpoint, there's little ground he can cover.
Her existence in the episode is also aided by the fact that the episode is a kind of Internet culture critique, with Gumball walking away blatantly offended by a Buzzfeed-esque personality test (with shots all around, especially in the nonsensical non-sequiturs Gumball is forced to answer for the test). It's important that the show is able to so deftly tackle such topics as it allows the show to cover more bases and stay topical- episodes like "The Gripes" and "The Points" are definitely hilarious, but they also have a point that they lay brazenly before you.The episode itself is kind of interesting but kind of substandard at the same time. I will say that I appreciate recent efforts to attempt new concepts (the House of Cards spoof, the hacking sequence, etc.), and I feel that some of that boldness was lost last season, but this episode is a rare example of picking on an alternate genre, in this case a cliched sitcom, and not making it a complete runaway.
The premise is simple: Gumball is insulted by being labeled as the sitcom "Loser" of the group and seeks to change it by suppressing all of his lesser qualities (turning him a sickly green: "Be careful you don't get an ulcer." "Yeah, I think I'm way past that point,"), making him popular and pushing the second biggest loser, fake-jock Tobias, into the spotlight. The result is admittedly brilliant, with Tobias not only stealing his thunder but his entire family and life, and this is when the episode reached its sweet spot.It starts simple enough, with Tobias doing the standard routine of encountering dating woes and making faces to bouncy sitcom music ("A two-timer date story?! That's the laziest sitcom set-up of all time!") before turning it into a clip show. Then it gets weirder, with Anais becoming his stereotypically smart sister wearing thick glasses with the nerd band before abducting his whole family, with Darwin being glitched into the curse. The best part of the sequence is when it suddenly becomes a Christmas episode with the perfect topper: a robot sidekick called Gworp ("The lovable alien that's only there to boost ratings!").
However, the ending, with it being revealed that it was all Tobias' dream after being hospitalized and Gumball vomiting his angers out and melting Tobias' face off, felt contrived. Even though the reason for the hospitalization was admittedly great ("You had a boating accident while trying to jump a shark on waterskis."), the ending itself was too on-the-nose. Yes, we get that Tobias' role was, by design, supposed to be as deliberately contrived as possible, but the ending serves as a bridge back into reality, and it wasn't mock-lazy so much as it felt like it was legitimately lazy. The king of all episode endings will still be "The Finale", and I do feel like this episode was trying to summon that fourth wall-shattering spirit, but something about it just felt off.It's certainly not the character's fault. I feel that Tobias is a vastly underappreciated character on the show: he's supposed to be the jock, at least by his conviction, but lacks any of the features that push him into that particular reality. He's an all-around jerk without the capability of getting the ladies but manages to brush it aside, largely blindly out of his huge ego. While he could easily become the most stereotypical character, he instead serves to both mimic and reinvent the idea of the school jock. Further, his appearances usually enhance episodes greatly, such as when he tried to steal Gumball's girlfriend Penny away from him in The Knights donning knightly clothing and stiletto heels or the whole episode of "The Slap" where he was somehow able to add huge dimensions to the dumb storyline of Gumball wanting some quality slap-ass.
The weird thing is that the episode didn't fail on virtue of Tobias taking the lead. The show's done fine with it. It's simply the fact that the climax of the episode was never able to reach a solid peak before coming crashing down, which is unfortunate.
-I didn't talk about last week's episode, "The Scam", as it was released in other countries much earlier and is technically part of last season, but here's some verdict: a big fat A. Gumball episodes can be broken down into three categories- gleefully standard, embracing its large cast of characters; experimental, embracing abstract concepts; and action-packed, which this one falls into. While they tend not to be my favorite episodes (The Return and The Routine, for instance), this one blends those epic themes as well as utilizing some good 'ol no-brain humor. I could break into the plot, but that takes way too long, but it's the big Halloween episode, and it's probably the best of the three Halloween-themed episodes over the past five years.
-Jesus Christ, it's been on for five years.-"The more we look at these things, the more our brains detereogenoriorate."
-"You're the character the audience likes to laugh at: The Loser. Usually likes to criticize everyone, but stays completely oblivious to their own feelings."
-"I got anime-obsessed fangirl who stalks 'The Loser'. which is completely accurate."
- Gumball's ideal vision of himself looks "...kind of like a muscly mime with a horse mane."
-"Hurry up Anais, or we're gonna be late for the battle of the bands!"
-"I'm like that Roman emperor guy who kept drinking a bit of poison everyday to build up his resistance!" "Oh, and how did that end?" "Uh, his palace was invaded and he tried to off himself drinking poison but it didn't work and he got hacked to pieces by his own soldiers."
-I just want to get out there that my grading scale for Gumball and SNL are completely different due to how inherently different the two are: SNL is rapid-fire, with a team of sketch writers creating short bits to be executed in a week's time whereas Gumball is animation taking eight months to complete, taking the form of a much longer narrative. It's hard to say that "The Code" was better than Tom Hanks hosting SNL because the two are so different its incomparable. While Hanks may have invoked much greater laughs than "The Code", it had weak points that undermined those in equal parts.
For the last Gumball review of "The Code," CLICK HERE.
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