The Girlfriend (The Amazing World of Gumball)

"The Girlfriend"
It's evident that Jamie doesn't understand the true meaning of love.
Series: The Amazing World of Gumball Part of Season: 4 Episode Number: 138 Air Date: March 30, 2016 Previous episode: The Origins: Part Two Next episode: The Advice

The Girlfriend is 22nd episode of the fourth season of The Amazing World of Gumball.

Plot

The intimidating school bully, Jamie, gets a crush on Darwin after Alan convinces her to find her sweetheart.

Why It's a Hairy Milk Carton From a Tree

1. First of all, this episode is absolutely tasteless, yet even had a great potential ruined by its ruthless nature. Just like Family Guy's Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q. episode, it represents abusive relationships in a quite hideous way, thanks to the elevate mean nature featured here, to the dumb characters' moves and the great lack of humor. The worst thing is that Courage the Cowardly Dog did this concept in a better way in the episode The Mask without being way too much mean, and that show was not so obscure than TAWOG in terms of realism. While they wanted to do things more realistic here, they went too far.
   • Unlike Brenda Q., where the person who's the molesator, Jeff, at least gets his punishment by being crushed on a tree by Quagmire on his car, Jamie here doesn't take any penality here at the end, which makes her a Karma-Houdini and things more painful.
2. From the beginning, the episode is a full lazy rehash of "The Pressure" from the first season, cause both episodes involve one girl (Masami for The Pressure, Jamie for this) who wants to make Darwin her boyfriend. However, The Pressure ironically did this kind of plot better than this, without being too offensive or too carefree and had a good moral at the end, and it comes from a season where humor and plots are weaker than the following seasons.
3. In this episode, Jamie's character reaches a new low due to excessive flanderization, as she resorts to abusing and coercing Darwin (and subsequently Gumball) into a relationship against his will. Furthermore, Jamie is never punished for her actions.
4. The episode starts off harshly, with Jamie consuming and then spitting out Banana Joe's brain, threatening Anton into eating himself, and deflating Alan over a stomach joke she fails to comprehend. Quite the intense way to kick off an episode! Though the first few seconds (probably one or two seconds) prior to Jamee opening the door were okay, only for Banana Joe's scene to ruin the episode.
5. Incredibly bad and unjust jokes about Jamie's savage status and ignorance, which is sad because Gumball is known for having lots of hilarious humor and memable scenes in. The humor here is just horrible because in every circumstance Jamie tries to ruin everybody's life by assaulting whom and acting like a gorilla. Is so bad it can easily compete with the humor in SpongeBob's One Coarse Meal . For some examples of what we're talkin' about:
   • There's a scene in which tries to have an "original humor" but it fails hard. In the scene, Gumball hides himself in a locker near Darwin and then Jamie comes with a present to be given to Darwin, Darwin opens it and founds another small present, so basically Jamie takes the present and indicates that it had always been for her in first place. Then opens it and reveals there's a perfume in it, so starts to criticize Darwin because she thinks he feels she stinks, so starts also to punch the locker where Gumball hid himself, with the result Gumball gets panned for no reasons.
   • In another scene not far from the latter, Jamie stares at Darwin with a ugly face while Gumball turns himself into a bench for the "couple". Meanwhile, Sarah arrives and greets Darwin. Somehow Jamie feels betrayed and she ends up torturing Sarah by punching her, throwing a garbage bin to her and farting on her. Then picks up a piece of Sarah's icecream head and licks off it. All this rage... for a greeting?
   • Picks up a sort of racket and fits it in Richard's head.
   • To "apologize" with Darwin for hurting his dad, knocks out many school employees (including Principal Brown) and hangs them on a wall, just to form a written which says "SORREE".
   • Changes idea about Darwin and ends up to love Gumball literally for no reason. Then, we have a ruthless scene in which she acts as a stalker when Gumball tries to escape her in a gloomy hallway. Jamie turns on candles, sings awful nursery rhymes about her love with Gumball and dresses as a evil twin from The Shining.
   • She ends up to realize her mistakes, just to punch Darwin's face when he wanted to save Gumball.
6. Neither Gumball nor Darwin seek help when dealing with Jamie's bullying and stalking; they try to manage the situation on their own. This is unwise, as it suggests that one should not speak up when being bullied and abused, and that suffering in silence is the only option. Similarly, in past episodes, Gumball and Darwin have stood up against bullying. Therefore, it should be possible to address it in this instance as well.
   • Regarding Gumball, he fails to adequately assist Darwin in handling Jamie, offering ineffective advice on how to evade Jamie, such as trying to look unattractive (which backfires), or suggesting that Darwin simply admit their love is non-existent.
7. Overall, it conveys a harmful moral that being in an abusive relationship requires no action and one should simply wait for the abuser to change.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Gumball and Darwin are likable.
2. The first two seconds were okay and tolerable at best.
3. Some of the moments may give you a bit of a chuckle.
4. Jamie does receive a bit of a comeuppance in the next episode where she slipped on the floor and fell down.

Comments

Loading comments...