User blog:Mattalamode/The Bobert Problem

Alright, so as a cooldown for all those "A Second Opinion" articles, I'm going to reiterate what's going on here.

For the next few weeks, I'll be highlighting specific characters that I have issues with and figuring out the root of the problem, all while discussing how such issues can potentially be overcome. Basically, it's like "A Second Opinion" but more focused on the offensive.

Will it work? Will it bomb tremendously? I don't know, but remember, as I've fallen back on as a crutch to my arguments on at least two occasions, experimentation is imperative to progress. Either way, there's only going to be four (for now, at least), so just hang in there for a hot second, okay? It'll be fine.

The Actual Start of the Article
I've had this idea resting quietly on my list for a while, and while I hadn't worked on it much, there were two words that I wrote as the basis for the article that literally sums up every issue with Bobert.

KILL HUMANS.

That's the reason that the character barely sticks the landing. Don't get me wrong. I think that episodes like "The Bet" and "The Loophole" are perfectly fine. The issue is the fact that there's nothing new brought by them, and even the addition of other ideas doesn't compensate for the tired plot which, regardless of shape or form, always circles back to him trying to kill Gumball and Darwin or, if failing to pursue that, at least mutilates them to some capacity at some point in his appearence.

I get it. He's a robot. That at least justifies his behavior. It just doesn't make up for the fact that the writers struggle so much to find some other way to deploy him. If anything, combining that with the nuances of his character makes it even worse, with every joke he elicits stemming from his complete incomprehension of emotion or metaphorical language. What we get out of all of that is a character that does nothing distinctive nor allow anything distinctive to happen.

The only ways the episodes distinguish themselves and leave any sort of lasting impression is how the characters are deployed. The jokes consistently fall in the school of "X says something, Y reacts." There's no back-and-forth; it's just Bobert being the butt of every joke, which is unfortunate because so few of the jokes push at any new concepts. That's not to say that I won't laugh at them, but there's a sense of diminishing returns. At some point, even if it's vaguely funny, it still feels tiresome and intuitive, like it's the show going through the motions. Bobert's episodes are among the select few that suggest creative fatigue in the plot department or, at the very least, filler.



I can at least partially pin the blame on Season 1 for being so narrow in giving Bobert any versatility. "The Robot" was a death sentence for the idea of variation in the character, setting a remarkably drab precedent for his personality. Yes, later episodes worked on refining that a lot (especially adding in his literal thinking), but the fact that they had so little to take away from his first outing meant that every subsequent performance would feel, to an extent, reheated. Basically, if one of the first laugh lines of an episode is "Nerd!" then we can pretty much rest assured that it's going absolutely nowhere at all, but alas, that's just Season 1's comedic sensibilties - something that tainted pratically every character and which only a few have fully escaped from.

There are only two episodes that really found proper means of deploying Bobert: "The Love" and "The Upgrade."

First of all, "The Love" is a bit of an anomaly. It's not really a Bobert episode at all; he's instead used as the prompt to jump into another vignette episode. That's the only reason the episode works: even in the segments featuring Bobert, all the jokes are the standard spiel. He's a robot and he doesn't get love (outside of tennis terms, at least), so the gang has to teach him what it is. He is entirely inconsequential to what makes the episode as successful as it is, so it feels weird to really call this a proper episode for the character. Still, any victory with Bobert is worth noting at this point. (I guess I could also say something about the ending, but it's a bit underwhelming, so we'll keep pushing along.)

A lot more can be said about "The Upgrade," which succeeds from taking an astonishingly radical approach to using Bobert. For once, the jokes aren't entirely about Bobert being a robot in the sense that he doesn't understand morals, with the episode instead lampooning redundant technological advancing and the falsified idea of what truly is cutting-edge. It works because it actually creates an adventure. There's intent to be creative and a willingness to, if not embrace a new angle for the character, use him as a launchpad for more interesting things to happen instead of have him dominate and inevitably weigh the episode down. Guy already talked enough about all of that, though, so I don't have too much more to add. I guess I could discredit Bobert here in the sense that he becomes a pseudo-McGuffin part-way through the episode, but as a whole, "The Upgrade" works due to Bobert, not in spite of him, and that's a nice touch for once.

Everything other than that varies from bad to good, but never that great. "The Loophole" was about as close to great as the tired Bobert formula could get. It's paced well, the jokes hit well (Darwin's enema particularly), and the climax actually felt proper. The issue simply circles back to how derivative Bobert is, which is really unfortunate. I feel like it was almost an attempt to remake "The Bet" with the show's current iterations of Gumball and Darwin, but that only served to make it feel more contrived, regardless of how much of an improvement it was. It doesn't come across as a marked improvement, even if it objectively is, because at the end of the day, it's almost the exact same.

The only way to properly use Bobert, it seems, is to use him as a platform for some scenario rather than the true driving force. While it doesn't sound like there would be that much of a difference, I'll default on an example in the form of "The Skull" and "The Move" with Clayton.

In "The Skull," Clayton took control of everything, and because of the sheer unlikable nature of the character, it sunk. Meanwhile, "The Move," while unleashing some much-needed insecurities in the character, also fell back on using Gumball and Darwin to move the episode along. Both Clayton and Bobert are characters so entrenched by specificity that they can only be salvaged by the peculiarities of circumstance, and while that's fine for a character shoved off to the side to deliver some non sequiturial aside, it doesn't work when that flaw in their creation is put brazenly before us.

That's enough about Bobert. Next week, we'll be covering Miss Simian. Here's some food for thought: at what point does a character designed to be grating become too grating? We'll find out soon enough. I'm also incredibly sick at the moment, and while that has no relevancy that pertains to the article, I'd like to pretend that other people cared.

For last week's "A Second Opinion" about "The Hero" with Guy, CLICK HERE.