“Believing their lives to be over, Gumball and Darwin tell one another secrets – things that they’ve done in the past that hurt one another – as they believe their time to confess the truth is running out. However, when they are rescued before Darwin can tell Gumball what he had done, Gumball vows to figure out what Darwin’s secret is, no matter the cost.”
It’s often said that there are no more original ideas. That is a hyperbolic statement, of course, but it holds some degree of truth. This episode of The Amazing World Of Gumball, due to the nature of its plot, suffers from the fact that it instantly brings to mind the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in which SpongeBob desperately sought to learn the contents of Patrick’s secret box. Perhaps it is unfair to make such comparisons, but the similarities were there going into this episode and only became more numerous by its ending. In both episodes, the main character believes that their best friend is hiding something and risks jeopardizing that friendship in order to find out what it is, only to discover that the secret was actually something silly, but then a twist ending occurs that reveals the secret was actually something embarrassing that the main character never found out about. I had sincerely hoped that this episode would have done something different, but that never happened.
On its own merits, the episode was alright, although it felt like the pacing could have been better. There were too many quick transitions between jokes, a problem that has plagued a few other episodes of the show. Sometimes it works best to take things slower and more gradually build up the plot. Gumball’s obsession with the secret, for example, escalated far too quickly. He barely had a moment to casually ponder it before he grew angry at Darwin; the first thing he did to try to learn the secret is torture Darwin – who he dearly loves – by feeding him hot food and then denying him water until his mouth literally caught on fire. The joke is fine, but I believe it would have made more sense if Gumball did that after he had ran out of options. I don’t see why they couldn’t have started off with the phone trick or the mind reading attempt and then gradually built up to the insanity. All in all, I still liked the episode, but it’s one of the weaker episodes of Gumball that I’ve seen.
