“When Miss Simian believes that Darwin and Gumball aren’t telling the truth about their father eating their homework, she sends them to Mr. Small in order to learn a lesson about honesty. However, things quickly go from bad to worse when they take his lessons too literally.”
One of the many things that I have enjoyed about this series is its many side characters. They don’t show up often enough, but when they do show up, it’s always a delightful experience. Mr. Small, the school guidance counselor who is entirely unfit to do his job, last had a prominent role in “The Painting” where he attempted to reform Darwin and Gumball at the request of Principal Brown. In this episode, he attempts to teach the boys a valuable lesson about honesty at the request of Miss Simian. Suffice it to say, that doesn’t go very well. I really enjoy Mr. Small as a character. Even though ineffectual guidance counselors are far more commonplace than they should be, I find everything about him to be hilarious. He’s a hippie with some serious anger issues and no understanding of how children think or will react to his lessons. The voice actor nailed every line he was asked to deliver. This episode used Mr. Small's established humorous traits and built upon those with things like the “hippity-rap”, all of which make me look forward to his next appearance.
While Mr. Small contributed greatly to the episode, I would have liked to see Darwin and Gumball contribute more themselves. I understand that they couldn’t talk during the final portions of the episode because they were scared silent by the silence snake, but I think there was more humor to be had by them being brutally honest. We only got to hear their raw thoughts about several characters, after all. Still, the boys did set up a lot of great jokes even with their limited participation – the joke where Principal Brown jumps out of a window because he thinks Miss Simian is trapped in a well, and then the follow up where Miss Simian jumps out of a window because she thinks she is trapped in a well, was brilliantly delivered. The follow-up joke with Rocky spontaneously jumping out of a window despite the fact that he perfectly understood everything that the boys were trying to say through their charades was genius. It’s things like that which make this such a fun show to watch and this episode was full of such moments. Because of that, I believe this is one of the best episodes of the show to date.
