User blog:Mattalamode/Second Opinion: The Promise

       Hello! I'm Mattalamode, and I'm a new user! I've been working on my own personal blog for quite a while, giving decently comprehensive reviews, and it's been received pretty well, so I decided I'd get more involved with the community. And what better way to do that than to claim that other people's opinions are wrong? (Excluding, of course, the much less abrasive and much more efficient ways, but that's besides the point.)



        The whole idea stemmed from one episode which has (almost unanimously) been proclaimed the worst episode in the show's history: The Promise. I was initially just going to put a bit of a rant out there, but since there are a lot of other episodes I appreciate that others don't, I thought it would work better as an entry in a series. (Also: shout-out to ThatGuy456 for inspiring me to make this series, which, itself, was inspired by my blog. How reciprocal!) 

        The purpose of these articles is to discuss episodes that I personally find to be successful against a pretty hefty majority. I'm hoping to create a series of them at regular intervals, so if you like it, you should be seeing a lot more. If you don't, uh, sorry. I will say that I start writing with a general idea and just let the words flow without too much regard to making it structurally sound. Basically, I'm a less adept Faulkner while simultaneously managing to somehow make even less sense.



        Regardless, that's enough meaningless exposition. Let's just get to talking about it.

The Actual Start of the Article
        The whole episode is based on Darwin trying to mediate between either spending time with Gumball playing the new Tale of Zelmore or Banana Joe, with whom Darwin wants to make amends due to the inadvertent tribulations the pair repeatedly inflicts on him. Gumball, naturally, is too self-obsessed to throw away their special weekend, causing Darwin to try to sneak around him, but he fails. After some bickering, Gumball confesses that he just wanted to spend time with Darwin, but Darwin didn't seem to feel the same. The two make up, and everything's alright- except for Banana Joe, who's just doomed, defeated, and ground up in a treadmill while waiting for the guys to show up and help them out, which they inevitably fail to do.



         That's where the issue lies with most people about the episode- there's no true payoff. It doesn't have a happy ending, the resolution (wherein Banana Joe communicates to the guys with a bell due to his severely bandaged state, ringing once for yes and twice for no- when asked if he forgave them, the school bus they're on hits a bump in the road, causing it to go off twice) feels cruel, and Gumball's just a massive prick throughout the whole thing. With all that being said, though, that's why I appreciate the episode. 

        I like to think of "The Promise" as an episode purposely designed to showcase Gumball in the worst light possible as well as featuring an abrupt ending that makes no progress at all. Based on the way the episode is framed, we get sympathetic towards Banana Joe, but then we're screwed when the show toils with that sympathy by throwing him what is, in effect, some graphic banana maiming. The episode is, in other words, designed to play us.



Let's circle back a bit. Throughout the first season, almost every episode was based around Gumball and Darwin makin g a series of mistakes due to their sheer idiocy and trying to dig themselves out of their predicaments (See: "The DVD," "The Responsible," "The Spoon," which I think is the most glaring, "The Picnic," "The Sock," "The Date," and "The Curse"), but the shift is so clear from the start of Season 2 with "The Remote," where each character, especially Anais, is manipulative for the sake of their own personal gain, and towards the end of the season, it just snowballs. This is the show telling us that it's not just some screwball slapstick with a positive message to tell, and from this point forward, the trouble that the characters get in isn't inadvertent. It's from their own exploitation of the situation. (Heck, the episode even shows Darwin using the leverage of his selflessness to burden Gumball with guilt, showing him manipulating his principal character traits for his own benefit- though he fails due to Gumball's even apathy being stronger. Again- worst light possible.)

        It just so happens that The Promise is the most persistent in leaving a bad taste in your mouth. The episode wasn't written for warm, fuzzy feelings inside but to present you with the characters as bleakly and cynically as possible, and it was an important step to take for them to be able to move on and develop the characters further (even if it was toned down quite a bit for future seasons- I think the radical shift was a way of distancing themselves from Season 1). Say what you will about it, but I'd take it over another spin on "We're dumb and don't know what we're doing and now Gumball's naked for no good reason because comedy!"



        With all that being said, feedback is greatly appreciated! Feel free to voice your own opinions in the comments if you want to engage in some light debate or suggest any other episodes for me to tackle. Keep in mind that I'm fully aware that the odds of making your dissenting opinions do a complete 360 (or, I guess more appropriately, a 180. A 360 would revert back to the initial opinion) are blatantly improbable. At the very least, I want to show that not everything is overtly terrible and hopefully you'll come out of it with a slightly more open mind.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;">

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;">        Anyway, thanks for wasting a solid five minutes on my pedantry! Next time I'll be voicing my opinion about "The Extras". See you then.