While shopping for bargain-basement groceries, Nicole bumps into her estranged parents, Daniel and Mary Senicourt (last seen on "The Choices") and brings them home to reconcile with them.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: The strained relationship between Nicole and her parents ends up embodying the idea of not letting yourself be bogged down by hate and looking for someone to blame, but being willing to start over fresh for the sake of everyone, but most importantly yourself. Nicole and her parents have been doing horrible stuff to each other for so long that neither can remember who even started it anymore, focusing more on the pain they felt. And while there is legitimate grievances between them, in particular the abuse Nicole was subjected to, stewing in hatred against those you still love on some level just hurts yourself. If it's too hard to forgive though, just give them another chance, both so they can prove they've changed, and so you don't have any regrets.
- Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: When Nicole's parents walk out on her, Gumball sings a song telling all three to "give if you can't forgive", which coincides with (or possibly causes) them coming back together. When Anais congratulates Gumball, he explains the point of the song was reminding his grandparents they owed him Christmas presents.
- Call-Back: Nicole mentions that Mary and Daniel weren't at Nicole's wedding to Richard (which was seen in the montage of Nicole's and Richard's life together in "The Choices"). We were left to assume they had flat-out disowned her, but this episode explained that Mary and Daniel did try to come to the wedding, but they thought "RSVP" was the location of the wedding and ended up in a desolate town in Eastern Europe.
- Continuity Nod: A flashback shows Yuki as Nicole's opponent in a karate match, as was shown to be a regular occurrence in "The Fury".
- Cutaway Gag: The majority of the episode is a series of cutaway flashbacks illustrating Nicole and her parents' attempt to play the Blame Game.
- Cycle of Revenge: Nicole and her parents' most recent history is a series of petty schemes to spite each other, and neither side can remember how it started.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Daniel and Mary.
- Dope Slap: After Gumball explains he sang his heartwarming song to try and get presents out of his grandparents, Darwin smacks his head into the window.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: For Nicole. After Gumball finished singing his song, Nicole and her parents had finally reconciled with each other after several years.
- Education Mama: Deconstructed. Nicole's parents wanted Nicole to be as successful as possible, but their expectations of her were so unrealistically high that she could never live up to them, causing her to grow up resentful of both of them.Mary: We gave you every possible chance to succeed!
Nicole: Yeah! All at the same time! - Embarrassing First Name: Nicole reveals she's actually been on a Middle Name Basis with everyone, as her parents actually gave her the first name "Doctor".
- Everything Except Most Things: Nicole finds some incredibly cheap packaged meat from the 1960s, and concludes that life was nice back then, so long as you weren't a woman, a minority, or afraid of nuclear war. Even then the family winces since not much has changed between then and now.
- Extracurricular Enthusiast: Parodied; Nicole was enrolled in every extracurricular activity, but only because her parents made her, and she had to do them simultaneously. Though displaying incredible ability at all of them, she inevitably failed after mistaking her drama club classmate for her karate match opponent.
- Flashback Twist: Daniel says a young Nicole was so violent she "landed a kid in the hospital". Cut to a flashback of a screaming Harold Wilson flying through the air and crashing through the window of a hospital. Cut back to Daniel specifying that he was being literal. Then the same happens again immediately afterwards when he mentions a teenage Nicole taking Richard on a joyride which "landed them in court".
- Heinousness Retcon: In "The Choices", Nicole's parents appear to be straight up Abusive Parents with no redeeming qualities. Mary, in particular, seems to relish her daughter's success for selfish reasons. It's also implied they disown Nicole for getting together with Richard. However, in this episode, they come off more as Parents as People, as it's shown that they pushed Nicole because they wanted the best for her. It's also revealed that they did try to go to Nicole's wedding, but they got the directions wrong. They also actually tried to contact their daughter, to no avail.
- Insane Troll Logic: When Nicole needed a blood transfusion, her father gave her the wrong blood type on the grounds that she shouldn't settle for B- when she could have A+ blood.
- It's All About Me: Gumball reveals at the end of the episode the real reason why he wanted his mother to reconciled with her parents so they can give him his long overdue presents. He is shown to be just as selfish and spoiled and only did it for selfish reasons. He inherited his grandparents' selfishness. This act caused Darwin to hit him.
- Literal Metaphor:
- Nicole says her job "pays peanuts", then opens her purse to show she isn't kidding.
- As Nicole and her parents are staring at each other at the table while the rest of the Wattersons wait in the kitchen, Gumball says the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife. However, it comes out muffled, and Gumball has to actually cut a square into the atmosphere in order to speak clearly.
- No. Just... No: As mentioned above, the point of Gumball's song was not to help Nicole and her parents reconcile, but to hopefully remind the latter of owed Christmas presents. Cut to everyone else visibly annoyed with this, even Richard.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Nicole misunderstands Richard talking to a can of meat for him talking her into giving reconciliation with her parents a chance. Richard just goes with it when she thanks him.
- Prodigal Family: Nicole reacts with astonishment at stumbling upon her parents in Elmore Shopping and then with annoyance when her kids invite them home. Previously, it had been shown that she ran away due to their constant disapproval of her life choices.
- Retcon: In Season One's "The End", Nicole tells Gumball his grandfather lived to be 102. This episode and the earlier Season 4 episode "The Signature" show that both Gumball's grandfathers are still alive and only appear to only be somewhere in the sixties.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Nicole says that people in the 1960s had to be "comfortable with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation", which the rest of her family don't think was that different than today. This episode was written early in the Trump administration, when negotiations with a nuclear North Korea were especially confrontational.
