User blog:Nacho1804/Season 6 Expectations Analysis 5: The Best Summer Ever (?), Part 1

The Introduction
Welcome back, ladies and gents and electronic creatures, to this edition of Expectations Analysis. This week: the Best Summer Ever. I've decided, since it's apparently the Best Summer Ever (according to Cartoon Network), that you deserve to have a chance to read this before, you know, the day before the next episode airs. So... let's get right to it.

The Brain
Synopsis: The Wattersons have to stop doing stupid things in order to prevent Anais from falling into a coma from facepalming too much.

Expectations: Low

Okay. Okay. Okay. I know what you're thinking. "Oh, why'd you give that perfectly okay-sounding episode a low expectation rating?" Let me explain.

The Wattersons are a strange bunch. They are crazy. They are wacky. Yes, they can be stupid at times. But usually, they keep each other in check. Or rather, Anais keeps them in check. That's how I see it. Pulling Anais out of the equation might lead to some fun shenanigans, but I'd have advised the writers to tread carefully (had I been there of course. Ha.) Anais objecting to the crazy things the rest of the family does can be a source of humor and can keep the plot moving. Without her? The Wattersons are just an exhibition of insanity, with no moderation, no one for their dysfunction to be displayed against.

A second issue: the dumbing down of characters. Back in one scene of Season 2's The Authority, the Watterson kids (including Anais) become what can only be described as mini-Richards, and while that episode managed to not take it to far, let's admit it, The Authority is no one's favorite episode. (Of course, that sequence is not the entire reason that the episode is forgettable, but that scene in particular left a bad taste in my mouth personally.) And more recently, a major complaint for The Deal just recently was that the Watterson kids, again, had been dumbed down and seemed to have little personality whatsoever. They were Gremlins, not Gumball, Darwin, and Anais. And lastly, Richard is often thought of by some as having little actual personality to him whatsoever, simply being a source of fat jokes and a dark spot on a show that has been lauded for its characters. (Among many other things. Also, I'd like to point out that I don't find anything wrong with Richard, he's not my favorite character, but I don't hate him like some people do.)

On this show, at least, a loss of intelligence correlates with a loss of personality, and that can drag an episode down. I'm not referring to Anais here. I predict she won't be the focus of the episode (like Penny wasn't the focus of The Pact), but the Wattersons (sans Anais) will be. And of course, their 'stupidity' is the reason Anais is falling into a coma (!?), and a dumbing down of their characters is almost necessary for anything like this to work. So there.

Also, I researched whether it's actually possible to fall into a coma from facepalming too much. It is, but she'd have to facepalm extremely hard. Like, baseball-bat-to-the-head hard. And unlike what the synopsis would lead you to believe, she'd only have to do it once.

The Parents
Synopsis: Nicole reconciles with her parents.

Expectations: Sky High

Aaaaa it's finally here!!1!

Anyway, Nicole reconciling with her parents was bound to happen eventually. There's not really that much to say about this, except it's happening and I'm excited. It's also the end of Nicole's arc. Not really that much to say.

(But when are we gonna see Darwin's parents? Aaaa.)

Also, I'm not completely sure but wasn't Nicole's dad supposed to be dead? Wasn't that something in Season 1?

The Founder
Synopsis: Richard creates chaos in the Chanax building when he is mistaken for the long lost CEO. Nicole and a disgruntled employee must save everyone from Richard's dangerous ideas.

Expectations: Average

I don't really have anything against this idea. It's not a bad idea. It's just that generally, episodes that run on Richard's stupidity tend not to be so great. As I've said before, Richard is pretty close to one-dimensional, more than the rest of his family, as all his traits seem to revolve around the fact that he's stupid, and the stereotypes that follow that. He's a big eater: that's because he's fat, and he's fat because he's stupid. He has no basic common sense: that's because he's stupid. He's dangerously reckless: he doesn't know better because he's stupid. Of course, in real life, none of these traits have to correlate to each other, but in the realm of the sitcom, they almost always do. And despite Gumball's subversions of many sitcom stereotypes and expectations, Richard seems to fit the mold of the 'lazy sitcom dad' almost perfectly.

So why didn't I give this episode a low rating? One word: Nicole.

Now, CN's synopses have come to be known over the season as inaccurate to the point of throwing off expectations so extremely that they drag the episode down. (Don't believe me? The Pact was a perfectly fine episode. Not amazing, but not at all bad. People hate it so much because the synopsis mentioned Penny and everyone assumed she'd have a bigger role than she did.) Anyway, this episode might not even be about Richard. It could be more about Nicole (and an unnamed "disgruntled employee") stopping him before he destroys a... uh... corrupt business? Okay...

Anyway. Onwards.

The Schooling
Synopsis: Gumball and Darwin take on Larry's jobs for 5 minutes and realize how bad it is.

Expectations: Average

Larry, the poor guy who works almost every job in Elmore. He's become such a fan favorite over the years that having an episode dedicated to him interacting with the Watterson brothers has become a bit of a foregone conclusion. The vaguenees of the synopsis, much like that of The Parents, means that I can't really give my impressions of it. It's just so vague, it could mean almost anything.

Anyway, work is hard. Next.

(Also I just read the synopsis again and 5 minutes??? It's that hard???)

The Intelligence
Synopsis: Technology reaches human intelligence then becomes dysfunctional as it picks up human flaws.

Expectations: Average

What does any of this have to do with- okay. I'm just gonna assume that this is either another attempt at getting Bobert to work as a character, or some major plot thing that I couldn't have guessed if I had tried.

Bobert is a robot. That's it. And that is why he can't work as a character. He has all the traits you'd expect from a robot: he's smart, he's literal, and he can be incredibly powerful when he needs to be. But the problem is, that's it. Robots in fiction will only work if they have a humanlike trait, like being sarcastic or helpful or unhelpful or evil. Just being a robot does not make you a good character. And that's where this synopsis gets interesting.

This being Season 6, and probably the last season, this will most likely be the last episode focused on Bobert. One last try at getting him to work. And they might have done it. Think about what I just said, then look back at the synopsis. If this episode is about Bobert, then it's trying to adress this. Bobert is picking up "human flaws." What are human flaws? I don't know. But this might just be the episode Bobert needs.

The Conclusion
So there we have it. You might have noticed that I've given up linking everything, and I am glad to inform you that is not due to some technical reason, but is simply because I am lazy.

I'll see you all sometime in July for the rest of the new episodes, starting with The Potion. Have a good summer- actually, you all go and have the Best Summer Ever. Yay. Advertisement.

If you want to see the rest of my Expectations Analyses, click here, here, here, and/or here. (Wow. Remember when I put effort into these? Good times.)