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Intro

Hello, child. If you’ve stumbled upon this blog, that means you’ll be delving into my first ever article talking about a normal episode! (cue the dramatic music..!)

Heh, alright, sorry for that intro. I’m trying to diversify, can you blame me? Anyway, indeed, welcome to my first ever “take” (welp, I used it, no going back now) on a comedic episode. I’ll be posing a question this time, and I’ll be trying to get to a reasonable conclusion by the end. I’ll have fun with this episode and Miss Simian, considering they’re both quite interesting, to say the very least. But enough blabbering, let’s jump right into the fray.

The Analysis of the Episode

“The Ape” is a Season 1 episode, meaning that it’s in the *weird* bunch of episodes. To our dismay, it doesn’t stand out with episodes like “The Helmet” and “The Fight” to name a few. It’s one of those episodes that made me go “Uh, what? Did they really do that?”, but sadly not in the good way that TAWoG manages to.

The actual plot revolves around Miss Simian and her apparent “sadness” as to the fact that she can’t get her award (or that nobody likes her, but that’s disproven pretty quickly.) The scenes where Darwin and Gumball try to lift up her spirits are… strange. There are some relatively good jokes, but then they’re put up with some that suffer from the inherent theme that dominates Season 1: Weird imagery. While I was still watching the show episode by episode they gave me a nice chuckle, but now, being used to the show’s genius writing, it’s kind of hard to get by some of them.

Here’s an interesting thought though. Since Season 1 was an attempt at catering to kids with juvenile comedy and naive characters (some may say dumb,) the aforementioned episodes still had that dose of creativity that would soon spark the show’s wider appeal. I’m sure that it has something to do with the placement of these few liked episodes themselves, since then the creators saw that they didn’t need to restrict their capabilities for the sake of appealing to the previously mentioned audience. And now, strangely, it’s happening again with Season 5.

But enough of that sidetracking (for now.) After the jokes we head onto the juicy stuff: the surprising reveal about Miss Simian’s betrayal (insert shocked sound effect here please.) After that comes the climax, which offers a great ordeal of action. The most striking thing is how even in Season 1, where the visuals are now deemed dated, the scene still shares the creativeness that the writers and animators put in the later seasons too. It's a perfect blend of fluid and fast-paced action along with the added bonus of snarky rhetorics between the characters (mainly Nicole and Miss Simian).

Now here the question comes into play: Did the writers go overboard with the whole thing? I’m inclined to say yes, since at first that was my general consensus, but now looking at it, they may have wanted to go for something else. In order to see it, I want to stray a bit again, in order to see if Miss Simian’s character really is definitive by “The Ape,” or if the writers had something other in mind.

Miss Simian

The thing in Miss Simian’s character that struck me the most is how through her cranky attitude, she manages to be surprisingly good at carrying episodes (“The Joy,”) and with that the writers accomplishing a niche level of comedy simply out of her bizarre and absurd actions.

But now, I’ll address two of the other episodes that work on building Miss Simian as a character. First one being “The Apology,” which is a more or less the opposite version of “The Ape” in terms of the way Miss Simian behaves, and “The Grades,” which offers an intriguing answer to the Miss Simian dilemma.

For starters, “The Apology” is not focused that much on Miss Simian, rather than it is with her obsession to get Gumball and Darwin kicked out, which, ties in neatly with the precedent that “The Ape” established for her. The thing is, though, that here we get a satisfying and funny climax at the same time, whilst in “The Ape,” due to the general theme of the season, it was only the latter that was done well (and opinions on that may vary.) Maybe, as said previously, the writers realised that they didn’t need to sacrifice character integrity for the sake of sub-par level of comedy. Overall, this episode’s message is a sort-of antithesis to the previous one, while still being able to stand on its own two feet.

And now, the most recent episode to touch on her character - “The Grades” steps in a couple of seasons after “The Apology.” It’s premise is quite interesting, managing to solidify the relationship between Miss Simian and Gumball, carried by hilarious scenes and a relatable topic. In a strange, but sweet sense you could almost feel like Miss Simian was proud of Gumball for unraveling his true potential, which would’ve been much to her Season 1 personality’s distaste. I’d feel like this is a nice send-off to her arc, per se. She started off as a hateful and bitter teacher that found true love and clarity, even with some of her students.

And so, dear readers, to answer thy question, I first want to state that in the process of writing this article my opinion on the topic has changed for the billionth of times. So, in the end, I think that no - comedy, if handled incorrectly, can be a detriment to a character, especially to one that hasn’t been explored to a varying degree first. I’d love to see people refute this claim, since I will not hide the facts that are in front of my face - I may have missed some details and have completely gotten wrong the characterisation of Miss Simian.

As a final point, I’d like to establish my opinion on this “rollercoaster” of a teacher: She's a really well-written character that struggled in the show’s inception due to its first season’s nature, but that slowly managed to get back up, accomplishing what the writers had (presumably) first intended for her. From satirising school faculties, to vain attempts at trying to stop a “happiness” disease, she's one of the most prominent side characters, albeit her being left in the shadows for the most part isn't exactly healthy, it isn't detrimental either.

Outro

Err, sorry for that one month hiatus. I want to post weekly, buuut fleshing out my thoughts, writing them in a way that makes at least a lick of sense, editing, blah, blah, blah all seems like something a lazy normal person wouldn’t do.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure about this article and the point I dragged out. So please, again, comments are always appreciated. They help me see if what I put out there has any validity to it or not.

Otherwise, expect another article at November at worst, but until then, enjoy yourself, because soon, Halloween will be upon us. Oooooooh…