Review: The Amazing World of Gumball ‘The Finale’

Spoilers Below

Where can rooms, houses, or even entire cities be destroyed and rebuilt from one week to the next? Where can someone recuperate from a severe injury in a matter of minutes without even visiting the hospital? Where does missing hours upon hours of school go completely unpunished? Give up? The answer I’m looking for is in the wacky world of cartoons. Long-term consequences are virtually nonexistent in cartoons, but in this week’s episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, they’ve finally caught up to the Wattersons.

Imagine if Bruce Banner was held accountable for the monumental decimation of public property he’s done over the years (it’s bad enough that he’s probably spending a pretty penny on pants). When it comes to fiction, especially in the world of cartoons, some of our most beloved characters are doing damage that would have them jailed or exiled in the real world. At the very least, they’d have a whole lot more enemies. That’s exactly where Gumball and his family found themselves this week. They made their beds, and now it was time to lie in them. The problem was, they’d probably have a hard time sleeping through all the phone calls from bill collectors and angry neighbors.

How would the gang handle the pressure of actually being held accountable for their actions? Would a little time in the slammer straighten them out, or would it would make repeat offenders out of them? Did Gumball and Darwin actually have to restart school from Kindergarten? Even though their reckless behavior had caught up to them, that didn’t stop them from doing everything they could to escape the consequences. Gumball came up with a plan to stop their world from caving in on them. You know that phrase, “Two wrongs don’t make a right”? Well, the Watterson family disregarded that advice. They did more damage. They caused more mayhem. They ticked off more neighbors. In the end, just as the whole town had them surrounded, it wasn’t chaos that saved them, but rather the abrupt end of the episode.

I thought the concept of the episode was clever, but the execution didn’t really do it for me. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m not particularly fond of Gumball’s parents, or the neighbors for that matter. After the few episodes I’ve seen, I’m starting to realize that I’m very partial to plots that focus on the kids’ overactive imaginations and wild antics. Personally, I’m watching Gumball for silliness, not for high drama. Consequently, this week’s episode earns a