"The DVD"

"The DVD" is the first episode of Season 1 in The Amazing World of Gumball.

Synopsis
Gumball and Darwin go to extreme lengths to avoid paying a DVD fine.

Plot
Nicole asks Gumball to return the DVD of Alligators on a Train back to Laser Video. However, Gumball doesn't want to, and talks back to his mother. He changes his mind when she punches a hole in the door in anger. Slightly shaken by his mother's outburst, he goes to the kitchen to ask Darwin if he has seen the DVD, and is shocked to see him using it as a pizza cutter. Gumball grabs it from him and starts cleaning it with the wrong side of the "scrubby" sponge. Darwin points this out, and Gumball realizes that the DVD is horribly scratched. Gumball screams and the DVD is flung into the air, landing in the waste disposal and getting torn into pieces. They flip out for a moment, but then Gumball decides they need to find a way to replace the DVD without their mom finding out, ignoring Darwin's suggestion to "tell the truth and face the consequences of their actions" throughout the episode.

Gumball replaces the DVD with a cardboard cutout and returns it, but Darwin thinks that Larry won't be fooled, which is true. Later, Gumball and Darwin receive a red envelope with red writing on it. It turns out that they knew the DVD was fake, and they want the real one. Now they must pay the DVD fee of $25, and Gumball tries again to make a new plan. Two days later, Gumball and Darwin decide to get money by pretending to be beggars on the streets, which gets them $3. A real hobo asks them whether they're begging just to pay off a DVD replacement fee. Gumball admits they are, so the hobo switches the hat containing Gumball's money with his empty one. Every time Gumball reaches his hand out for his hat, the hobo growls at him, so Darwin starts beat-boxing and Gumball reaches for his hat rhythmically. A man walks down the street and pays Gumball and Darwin a dollar, but the hobo steals it and heads inside the store. Gumball tells Darwin that their begging plan was wrong, since the hobo clearly needs the money more than they do. They feel sorry for him until he buys a winning scratch ticket and gets a million dollars. Gumball asks for his $4 back, but the hobo says he does not have any money, even though his pockets are full of it.

Later, Gumball and Darwin try to find jobs in the newspaper. They reject many jobs, as they aren't skilled enough. (Ironically, Darwin turns down a job which he is suited for when Gumball asks him if he can speak Chinese, explaining in fluent Chinese that it is a difficult language.) They finally find a job in cosmetics for make-up testing. As they test inside a customized photo booth, the boys have to look at a red dot and make a face, and then makeup is splatted at them. Darwin focuses the dot all the way through, giving him perfect results. However, Gumball yelped and lost focus when the blush was splatted on, and he also gets an allergic reaction, deforming his face. When he wipes off the makeup, his eye stretches, making him look at the floor. They only make $5, which isn't even enough for the bus ride home.

Gumball and Darwin find many more letters from Laser Video in their home, before hearing the telephone ring. Answering, he discovers his mom is on the other line and is suspicious, claiming she can "smell trouble" with her mother senses. He states that everything is fine, but she is unconvinced. Believing that Gumball is lying, she tells him that she's coming home. When Darwin hears this, he once more suggests they face the consequences of their actions, but Gumball instead thinks that they should download a copy the film. Darwin points out that it is illegal to do so, quoting an anti-piracy commercial, and comes up with a better plan, one that Gumball already assumes is stupid, desperate, very unlikely to save them, and above all humiliating, but decides to go along with it.

Nicole discovers one of the letters as she arrives home. Gumball and Darwin take out a replacement DVD and start running away, and Nicole chases them to find out what they did. They jump many fences until Nicole face-plants on the ground, and is even more furious. The boys escape a ferocious pet dog, leaving Nicole to fight the dog while Darwin worries that Nicole is getting hurt. The fighting stops, and they fear for Nicole's life until she smashes through the fence, riding the dog after them. She chases them until she hits a brick wall, knocking her out, giving Gumball and Darwin the advantage.

Gumball and Darwin arrive at the DVD store and hand over the disc, which turns out to be a homemade version of Alligators on a Train. Unfortunately, Larry sees that it is fake. The movie is of poor quality, is five seconds long, and has only Darwin's and Gumball's names on the credits. They break down and tell him what happened and beg him not to tell their mom, who turns out to be right behind them. So she pays the $25 for the lost DVD, shocked that she went through all that trouble for this, and tells Gumball and Darwin about how she's not mad, but that she still loves them no matter what happens. After the speech, Larry tells her that she must pay the late fee which totals to $700. She calmly tells the boys that "sometimes in life, you have to face the consequences of your actions, and sometimes you just... RUN!". The episode ends with a freeze frame of the family running away while Larry tries to chase them.

Main Characters

 * Gumball (debut)
 * Darwin (debut)
 * Nicole (debut)

Supporting Characters

 * Larry (debut)

Minor Characters

 * Hobo (debut)
 * Cupcake Woman (debut)
 * Penny's Sister (debut)
 * Patrick (debut)
 * Jackie (debut)
 * Exercise Bacon (debut)
 * Cube Dog (debut)
 * Gary (debut)
 * The Internet (debut)

Trivia

 * This episode has a DVD named after it.
 * Nicole is the first character to speak in this episode, making her the first character to speak in the entire series. If one counts the early reel, Gumball is the first character to speak.


 * Nicole and Gumball are also the first characters to appear in this episode, making them the first characters to appear in the entire series as well.
 * Gumball is allergic to make-up, as shown when his face was severely swollen during the scene where they try to get money from doing a make-up test.
 * A full version of Alligators on a Train credit song will play on the real credits, that is, if this episode is the last session airing.
 * Assuming 30 days to a month, a late fee of $700 over three months and three days means that it costs around $7.50 a day to rent from Laser Video.
 * A preview of the episode aired on May 3, 2011, and gathered 2.120 million viewers. When the episode aired on May 9, 2011, it gathered 1.937 million viewers.
 * Though this episode aired in the US as the series premiere, it was actually the final episode of Season 1 to be produced.

Continuity

 * Laser Video is the first store Larry is seen working in, though he works in many other stores in Elmore.

Cultural References

 * Darwin quotes an infamous anti-piracy video when Gumball suggests burning an illegal copy of the DVD.
 * Alligators on a Train is a spoof of Snakes on a Plane.
 * Nicole's line "I wasn't the one who watched Alligators on a Train seventy-two times" is a reference to "seen Star Wars twenty-seven times," a phrase that originated in Freaks and Geeks.
 * When Nicole jumps on Penny's Sister in the pool, it makes a sound effect from the original Donkey Kong arcade game.
 * The Russian title of the episode, "Run, Mom, Run" ("Беги, мама, беги"), is a reference to the line "Run, Forrest, run!" from Forrest Gump.
 * When Darwin uses the DVD as a pizza cutter, a logo saying "HD DVD" can clearly be seen on it. HD DVDs were manufactured by Toshiba, and were the main high definition DVD format before the Blu-Ray format was released.
 * DVD players aren't normally able to play HD DVDs, meaning that the Wattersons' DVD player may be a rare model.

Goofs/Errors

 * When Gumball was watching tv, the Laser Video letters were not on the floor, then when Darwin enters the room saying they received another letter from Laser Video, Gumball says to put them in the pile of letters that now appear on the floor. Then the letters disappear again when the camera zooms out.
 * When both Gumball and Darwin wink, Darwin's eyelashes disappear. This also occurred when they were out on the streets to get money to pay for the DVD fine they owe Larry.
 * When Gumball and Darwin are running from Nicole, Gumball's whiskers disappear for a split-second.
 * Patrick is seen living in the same neighborhood as the Wattersons, but in "The Knights," he is seen living in a different neighborhood, even voicing his displeasure of the Wattersons' neighborhood. It is possible that he moved to a different neighborhood.
 * When Nicole face plants, Darwin's shadow and eyelashes disappear.
 * Despite the fact Gumball being allergic to makeup in this episode, he has no reaction with make-up in "The Procrastinators."
 * Although Gumball and Darwin didn't have much money when they were out on the streets, when the hobo takes their money, Gumball asks him if he could have $3 back, even though Gumball and Darwin didn't have $3 in the first place.
 * Gumball asks Darwin if he speaks Chinese, but there are actually many types of Chinese, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.
 * After Larry watches the fake Alligators on a Train, he says that the video is 5 seconds long. If timing it, it's duration is actually 37 seconds long.