User blog:Mattalamode/Improvable: "The Boredom" and Disconnected Halves



Hey. I'm still here. And having shredded through 26 articles of what I would describe, proportionally to nothing (hence re-calibrating the scale), as a critically-successful series—A Second Opinion—I wanted to try something new. I've spent more than enough occasions discussing the merit in poorly-received episodes, as well as underrated episodes in a, uh, rather arbitrary venture... but believe it or not, there's some episodes that I don't think are particularly great. Even I have limits to how much I can tolerate. Hence: Improvable.

That's not to say I'll be discussing exclusively bad episodes, even if those are certainly gonna be banged around the hardest; heck, the episode we're discussing today is more mediocre than anything else. What I'm hoping to do is use such episodes to highlight why the show is so great through pointing out how what they do operates opposite of it. Considering my interest in comedy writing, too, (and yes, I know what you're thinking, but I'm throwing away my life by my own volition, so shut it,) I hope this series will be a fun experiment in seeing how I would try to amend such episodes' issues.

The first candidate, I decided, was "The Boredom."

The Diagnosis


First of all, let me get something straight: I don't think "The Boredom" is a bad episode. More than anything else, against the standards of the show, it just comes across as pleasant but generally forgettable.

The main issue, in my opinion which I will for the sake of argumentative purposes accept as fact, is the structure: "The Boredom" never really commits to being either a full-fledged vignette episode or a more pedestrian affair. As such, it tries to give the episode some semblance of cohesion, but does so in the most middling way possible, using Gumball walking from one side of the screen to another while groaning as the signifier for the next sequence. Because of that, it felt like an episode for the writers to throw all of their random ideas at and loosely tie into a plot, and true or not, that's not a great vibe to get.

This theoretically shouldn't be an issue, but there's also a serious problem with how each sequence is weighted. Let's refer to "The Uploads" for a second: it's conceptually very similar, with the focus of the episode being the series of videos that Gumball and Darwin watch and commentate over. In that case, though, the emphasis is squarely on the videos, with the two kids merely being an accompaniment. "The Boredom" doesn't quite get that because it still wants to tell a story through them, and the issue is that there's not enough substance to compensate for how much time we get with it; its rinse-and-repeat nature of "'characters comment on how boring something is, situation suddenly becomes less boring once they're gone" just doesn't evolve into anything more. Further, there's no escalation to their sub-plot in the same sense that everything else going on amps up, creating an imbalance that makes the episode more problematic than it should be.

The Procedure


What "The Boredom" needs more than anything else is a considerable amount of restructuring. What we're going to do is break down what works and what doesn't, all while trying to focus on those effective bits in approaching how a new, Matt-approved episode would look.

I, of course, am not a professional comedy writer, or for the sake of the analogy, a surgeon. And as a further disclaimer, I'm not saying that I have a better understanding of how this stuff works than people who are paid to do this for a living, because I certainly don't. But per my own education, we experiment while the stakes are non-existent. It’s also just fun, man. Let me have fun, okay?

The Surgery


First of all, I want to highlight a specific part from "The Boredom" that really worked: the scene in the mall.

For those who need their memory jogged, the scene is as follows: Gumball and Darwin are sitting on a bench in the mall when suddenly, things actually start happening before their very eyes. And by that, I mean behind a series of incredibly pesky and ill-timed obstructions before their very eyes. It's masterfully-executed and a hilarious burn that makes it clear that even if our two protagonists have things going on then and there, the world won't let them have their victory.

What the episode needs is more of this! The two halves of "The Boredom" consistently feel disconnected, but this scene nails everything by actually putting the two face-to-face with one another. It's not just a matter of shared location; it's a shared experience, albeit one rigged against our heroes, and it elevates the material to an entirely different level bordering on the supernatural. But of course, immediately after, that bit of goodwill gets lost in the shuffle of character ignorance.

I could just say, "Let's change the episode so that such sequences are consistently occurring in front of our characters!" but another issue persists: that premise is equally stagnant and would quickly grow tiresome. The episode has to have a turnaround point where the understanding of the characters shifts from "nothing interesting is happening" to "everything is happening in spite of us."

That does, however, mean that the whole skit mentality of the episode gets lost: we have to, for the sake of this revision, keep Gumball and Darwin and their interactions with the world around them (as opposed to the lack thereof) as the focal point. As such, the first two and a half minutes—with Gumball and Darwin hawking up appropriate screentime and narrowly missing events occurring at virtually the same time—don't really need to be changed. It's once that shifts to them being entirely out of the picture that the episode's looseness shines through. And don't get me wrong: bits like Banana Joe going through the lightsaber test facility and Sal belting out into a Les Misérables-esque musical number are delightful and sharply-written. It's because they fail to contribute and serve to steal the spotlight over and over again that I have to pull them out.



In terms of what we should try to mirror, let's look at episodes such as "The Nobody." The first six minutes of the episode are spent building up tension, and the final five channel it into something that expands upon the concept by setting forth a new dimension to the episode's narrative. "The Boredom" should do the same: spend the first five minutes with our two heroes simply bored, but again, still the focus, and then have the mall altercation set a new, game-changing precedent. Use that to further explore their mounting frustration in knowing they're being left out of the most amazing day ever by the universe.

And this leads us to the ending. Technically, the ending is alright; it's simply Gumball and Darwin accepting that today just isn't their day, all while further playing on their ignorance even when an adventure literally knocks on their door. But if the newly-constructed, Matt-sanctioned "The Boredom" leans more heavily on their knowledge of the tides against them, I think a better ending would be them actually having some small victory. In keeping up with the episode's general theme, this of course happens at the expense of something far more insane, but the characters ultimately get some ironic win all their own, too.

Let's see how it looks.

The Result


"The Boredom" is an episode following Gumball and Darwin's search for adventure on a day filled with that titular boredom. At first, they're ignorant to the absurd occurrences happening around them that could lead to excitement, but they slowly become aware of the fact that the universe is operating against them; they're not bored because the world is boring so much as the world refuses to let them partake in anything remotely exciting. Eventually, they get so fed up that they take matters into their own hands, and ultimately find a way to stave off their boredom through some simple pleasure of life. Naturally, their small win comes at the cost of perhaps their greatest adventure yet, which they just narrowly avoid by not holding out too much, but I digress: this is their day, seized. And scene. That's my "Boredom."

Of course, I'm not going to act like some know-it-all, so tell me: what do you think? This series, I should hope, will be far more interactive beyond simply re-affirming this and that. Feel free to comment and say what you think of my little rendition, or offer up your own take on how to fix the episode, or just disagree altogether that the episode needed to be fixed at all! I am your communion.

Lastly, considering this series involves a bit more thinking, I can't promise that there will be a tight schedule through which articles get published. That's just the nature of the series. I do, however, plan on getting at least one more article out by the end of April or beginning of May, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Either way, hopefully lightning'll strike twice. I'll catch you again soon with "The Test."