Again you’ll join the blue cat kid, Gumball, and his friends as they go about their days in school and at home. The title episode is about Gumball and his friends crashing a party they’re not really cool enough for. They manage to get in with the old "I’ll tell your parents" line, and the fun ensues. It’s a cute episode, with the mismatched dates that Gumball and his friends end up finding for the party. Gumball ends up with the T-Rex girl, Tina. He bungles a chance to go with Penny, his true crush. Penny is the uh, walnut thing with antlers, by the way.
As I watch more World of Gumball, I get a feel for the fast-paced, mini-episode feel of the series. One liners and fun little conversations make up the series. Everything is compressed and miniaturized. There are no big story arcs to follow. There are no threads or major character development issues, just fun (if not predictable) little scenarios. This is along the same style as much of Cartoon Network’s current offerings. It’s easy to digest, and easy to watch a few episodes, and then put it down and come back later.
Still, I have to admit the show is not growing on me. To be fair, this kind of unstructured, wacky comedy is not easy to do well. The Amazing World of Gumball has its moments, but like its myriad of art styles and characters, it feels like they were put together by several different people sometimes. For example, "The Debt" is an episode that combines some tropes about the classic clingy, annoying character. Gumball and Mr. Robinson spend the episode together as Gumball has made up his mind to save Mr. Robinson’s life for no real reason. He likes Mr. Robinson for no reason as well. So the entire premise starts off a little too silly for me to care about. But then it never takes off into being really funny. To top it off, Gumball’s siblings make a comment at the end of the episode that just sums up how everything falls flat in this show. They come down on a platform, but the platform ends up crushing Mr. Robinson. "Oh no, I think we squished Mr. Robinson," says Darwin. "Nah, he’s OK. Let’s go home," Anais answers. Then they run off. It just doesn’t add anything, and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s funny in a sense that they shouldn’t have said that, but not much else. It’s the kind of thing that makes you think they’re going for off the wall, nonsensical humor, but it just seems to fall flat.
Still, the show does have its moments. There are some nods to the adults in the room with moments like the one in "The Secret." Gumball admits a secret to Darwin. He asks Darwin if he remembers being pulled aside for a creepy drawing in his yearbook. Darwin flashes back to standing next to two of the school's teachers while they look through his yearbook. They glance at him, then back at the book, then back at him. One of the teachers has a priceless look of dismay as they can’t believe what they’re looking at. Gumball says "Well, that was me." Darwin yells at him saying he had to go to school counseling for that. We never see the picture, which makes it pretty hilarious to imagine what was actually in there. The show also shows its visual versatility in episodes like "The Ghost," where Gumball gets possessed by the emo ghost Carrie and goes on a first person view rampage through the city.
The Party is the title episode for the DVD, but the rest is filled out with 12 episodes scattered around from the First Season. My thoughts on compilation DVDs like this have been established in previous reviews, but I’ll just say it again. I really don’t like this kind of scattered collection packaging. It’s good as an impulse gift buy, since you might not know which episodes the recipient likes anyway, but full seasons are the only way to go, in my opinion. At least if they’re going to be broken into chunks, I’d like to see them in order. Alas, this is what you get right now.
The full listing of episodes is "The Party," "The Debt," "The Painting," "The Kiss," "The Goons," "The Secret," "The Poltergeist," "The Date," "The Fight," "The Ghost," "The Prank," and "The Robot." As for the special feature, it’s another art gallery with characters and their descriptions. So it’s not the most robust DVD offering, but it’s what is out there now for The Amazing World of Gumball.
