User blog comment:ThatGuy456/A Guy's Thoughts: Season 5 Review/@comment-31194372-20171120064126

Let's do the cool thing and post a long comment that isn't worth the effort of responding to, but you'll do it anyway because you're an exceptional person, but more importantly because it's practically ritualistic.

The Dark Comedy:

The Amazing World of Gumball is textbook juxtaposition. It's not a show that's dark for the sake of being dark - the beauty of its logic lay in the drastic differentiation the show's humor makes in contrast with its colorful, kiddy aesthetic. Obviously, as you mentioned, "The Vision" is the prototypical example for the season, and its effectiveness lay in both its satirical bite and, more importantly, how that ties into the show itself by subverting Alan's previously-altruistic character. But there's also episodes like "The Vase" and "The Box" (looking most specifically at Nicole's sequence) that take advantage of how relatively innocuous they are at face value to sucker-punch the audience with dark twist after dark twist. It's rare to find dark humor that actually works and that actually understands how dark humor should work, but TAWOG's been on a roll.

The Visuals:

In my expectedly writer-oriented snobbiness, I neglected to discuss neither the show's visuals, but if there's something to be said of the show in Season 5, it's that upgrading the director to Antoine Perez has made the show an absolute treat, somehow moreso than it already was. It's interesting, too, how you point out the show's heightened sense of cinematography; while previous seasons have certainly used that for its episodes mocking specific genres, TAWOG's since adopted it as a conveyor of emotions across the board. I specifically recall Cassuto pointing out the changing visual quality during the montage in "The Choices" and how it reflects the changing of time and increasing clarity for Nicole and Richard - that's the sort of dedication put into crafting the show that puts me in complete awe.

The Variety:

I will admit that Season 5 has, for the most part, been delightful in pursuing a lot of interesting routes across different episodes. While I do think that, for every brilliant idea, there's a murky, homogeneous one that contributes nothing to the show - think "The Deal" or "The Sorcerer" - Season 5 has had some of the show's most excitingly far-out ideas. They brought puppets in. They brought in children to animate a portion of the show. They did a fully live-action satirical news broadcast (in theory). Success or failure aside of each endeavor, it would be ridiculous to say that the show's given up, because they're going just as strong as ever in pursuit of the wildest ideas you can sustain in an 11-minute children's cartoon.

That's also not ignoring the show's low-key affairs either, all of which I hold to disproportionately high regard - as somebody who nerds out over comedy writing, seeing the show at such fine form without some gimmick propping the show up goes to show how insanely well-crafted the show is. They don't have to always be firing on all cylinders, and episodes like "The List" and "The Petals," I'd argue, are equally as successful.

The Characters:

Considering that I agree with 100% of your claims, and my reinforcement merely adds on seconds that you probably don't have in reading this comment, I'll just point out a few things specifically:

-I don't usually have an issue with Gumball's constant flip-flopping, but Season 5 has indeed been a bit frustrating, especially in how multiple episodes create weird stratification where some facets of his behavior carry over in a bunch of episodes (his dim-witted naivety in "The Potato," "The Sorcerer," and "The Heist," for instance, is the most obvious); for one, there's no consistency, but he's also not committed to being an all-encompassing team player, either. He's had specific, contradictory niches carved out, and it's not particularly good.

-When we're looking at episodes like "The Deal," even disregarding how blatantly forgettable they are, you have to consider that the kids, and even Nicole to a certain degree, exist exclusively as soulless assets to aid in Richard's development. Is that a good thing? No. But you can't condemn the show for failing at something it wasn't trying to do. I'd argue more for the weakness in how limited the show realized the potential of its premise than anything else.

-We've been through the wringer with "The Ex." Let's hold off on that for another time. And no, not public debate; it's just an interesting topic.

The Topical Humor:

Again, all agreeable points. For the most part.

-I don't exactly get how "The Line" and its Star Wars references boiling down to "Jar Jar Binks. He exists," and "Trash Compactor. Wordplay," really make all that much of a difference compared to how references deter in "The Uncle" and "The Sorcerer." I suppose it boils down to the ability of the rest of the episode's narrative to make up for its general clumsiness - which, for the record, is the saving grace of "The Uncle" - but to each his own.

-Is the show renowned for fast-paced humor? I get that it's sort of mentioned in passing, but stretching out a joke long beyond its expiration date isn't something I'd put above the show - see the news report on nothing from "The News" or any number of slow, methodical episodes like "The Detective" or "The Vision." The failure of the joke in "The Sorcerer" lay more in the disproportion of the ratio between time of delivery and the extent of its comedic weight. It's slow and not good, so the two compound, whereas the show should aim for heightening one while lessening the other.

-At this point, you're making a conscious effort to bait with eager Season 4 praise, why

Either way, great article all around. Happy one-year writing anniversary, dude! If I've learned anything, things are only getting started.