"Thanks, I'm desperate, but not that desperate."
Gumball is jealous that everyone in his family has a club to go to on weekends, but when he rejects the only club that offers him membership, the Reject Club, its members seek revenge.
Tropes
- All Up to You: After Darwin distracts Colin via an interpretive dance-off challenge, Gumball is left by himself to finish the job of stopping the video upload.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Anais gives one to Gumball before he can even ask to join her physics club:Anais: You know there are different types of intelligence?
Gumball: Yeah.
Anais: I don't think you have any of them. - Beware the Silly Ones: Silliness aside, the Rejects Club is efficient enough to pull off a Near-Villain Victory. It helps they have Bobert on their side.
- Big "NO!": Gumball yells one after Ocho prevents him from stopping the video upload.
- Broken-Window Warning: The Reject Club send a DVD with their message about taking revenge on Gumball through his dining room window, tied to a brick.
- Can't Stop the Signal: The Reject Club seemingly manage to upload the video despite the Wattersons' interference, but Anais later reveals that she managed to counter-route the video before it could get to anyone, therefore saving Gumball's reputation.
- Cloth Fu: Tobias and Banana Joe's role on the football "reserve team" mostly consists of whipping each other with towels, then being Hector's literal whipping boys whenever the team loses (which Hector's enormous size makes very painful).
- Continuity Nod: During his role-playing sessions, Richard wears the Cottontail Cavelier cape Nicole gave back to him at the end of "The Gi".
- Diabolus ex Machina: Gumball almost succeeds in stopping the upload, but Ocho stops him at the last second. Subverted in that they still fail to ruin Gumball's reputation anyways.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The Rejects Club tries to ruin Gumball's reputation over him refusing to join them.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- This episode shows Hector on a sports team and having fun with the other kids, even though season two's "The Colossus" states that Hector can't be exposed to anything that will set off his emotions and later episodes show or imply that Hector is too big to even be in the school building, so he's either shown outside in the playground or not shown in school at all.
- Ocho and Bobert are also in the rejects club. Later seasons have Bobert having No Social Skills but still being seen as pretty cool and Ocho is too scary to have a lot of friends.
- Even Beggars Won't Choose It: Gumball is desperate to join a club after basically all of them reject him, but turn down an invitation from the Rejects Club.
- High-Dive Hijinks: Gumball tries to join the synchronized swimming club by showing them his "Swan Dive of Eternal Beauty": a cannonball accompanied by an image of a swan floating behind him from a high dive. Which results in the club having to fish him out of the pool when the bubbles stop, and his swim trunks coming off.
- Hollywood Board Games: Richard's Saturday club is full of fantasy geeks playing a Tabletop RPG and eating snacks. This is further highlighted when Richard engages in a role-playing Wizard Duel with one of the Reject Club's members, who is a social loser and an even worse nerd.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Rejects Club's plan is foiled, and they are tied up and at the Wattersons' collective mercy.
- No, You: After Mr. Small flies through the door by Nicole:Anais: Could you guys keep it down a little?Nicole: YOU KEEP IT DOWN!!
- Off the Table: Gumball wishes there was a club just for rejects like him, but exactly such a group comes to him and he tells them "I'm desperate, but not that desperate." When they seemingly humiliate him, Gumball resigns to join them, but they then refuse him because they found out how bad his grades were, telling him "We're desperate, but not that desperate."
- Plot Tailored to the Party: All of the abilities the family members demonstrate in the first half of the episode are used to confront the Reject Club: Nicole's anger-fuel strength lets her tear down the locked library door, Richard confronts Felix in a roleplaying Wizard Duel, Anais uses her knowledge of physics to disable Bobert with static electricity, and Darwin uses his dance to distract Colin. Gumball meanwhile is unable to do a thing, as he is stopped at the last moment by Ocho, who latches onto his head when there's nobody else to counter him.
- Shameful Strip: The Wattersons are deciding how to get back at the Reject Club and settle on dropping them off naked at the mall—which said club members chose over simply being told on to their parents. That half of the club's members wear no clothes at all was quite possibly why they agreed to that one.
- Shout-Out: The Reject Club announces "To the Nerdmobile", which is just them pretending to be driving a car.
- Start My Own: After all the clubs start rejecting Gumball pre-emptively, he forms "Gumball's Club of Gumball", but he disbands it in minutes when he tries and fails a trust fall with himself.
- Synchro-Vox: The video the nerds made to ruin Gumball's reputation consists of a crudely drawn picture of his face with a live-action mouth, that is clearly not his (it's a different color and has braces), pasted on to "confess" to a bunch of embarrassing things they dug up from his personal record.
- The Rest Shall Pass: Every time the Wattersons run into a club member, one person stays behind to delay them, except Nicole, who stayed behind because she was lost in an Unstoppable Rage.
