>>149792936
I liked his dynamic with Gumball in season 2, I found a lot of their almost constant bickering and physical violence funny.
There’s a lot a kick to Darwin that shows he’s just not going to put up with Gumball’s stupidity immediately and vice versa, and I think that friction between them is what made me like them so much there and not anywhere else. I especially loved the self-destruct bit in The Bet because despite the prospect of them both dying horribly, they’re still fucking arguing and being rather irrational with each other until the very end, and despite everything Gumball just goes back to wanting to mess around with Bobert some more. I just love their contrast too much because it feels like another Saturday to them in their wacky world. That was the magic that dragged me in all those years back and I didn’t even know it at the time until recently.
And then I felt like it all kinda stops with season 3 and it never goes back to that dynamic for the two ever. They still argue and stuff but it’s not on the same level like it was before. I think that The Safety is emblematic on this since Darwin is the threat of the town by not actually being a threat at all. Darwin has total control through pacification and while I’m aware that this is the joke, it just has no draw for me. He’s not really interacting with Gumball at all because he’s trying to not do so in the first place. Darwin is there but not as an actual entity, and his influence is negligible to Gumball. That to me just speaks on their dynamic for the remainder of the show. He’s there and he does things but the magic is gone. The episode is a bit of an exaggeration but I think it gets my point across.
Of course you get things like The Advice or when he’s abusive and jealous of Penny in those string of season 3 episodes but it’s so infrequent that I’m not going to count it for much.
