Review: The Amazing World of Gumball “The Loophole”

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Spoilers Below

Gumball is dead set against doing his homework. When he sees how quickly Bobert finishes his homework, Gumball and Darwin decide to try to reprogram him to do theirs as well. They give Bobert all sorts of orders, most of which involve Gumball getting injured. Deciding that Bobert is destructive, the pair try to find a way to keep Bobert alive while keeping him from harming the human race. When they tell him that he can’t harm any living thing, Bobert decides that the human race is harming the Earth and every living thing on it. As Bobert attempts to obliterate the human race, Darwin (and Gumball, to an extent) point out that Bobert said he couldn’t hurt any living thing – including viruses. Since he has classified the human race as a virus, Bobert can’t harm it. With the conflicting orders in his programming, Bobert cancels both and goes back to being a normal robot.

Most of the time, this show is both ridiculous and poignant at the same time. This episode isn’t any different. Gumball and Darwin go through the various issues with artificial intelligence and whether it will destroy life as we know it. The duo try their best to give Bobert orders that they think will keep him in line but, since Bobert takes everything at face value, it doesn’t work out quite the way they wanted. It’s almost like Gumball and Darwin read some Issac Asimov.