Bob’s Burgers isn’t nearly as cynical about adulthood as it could be. As “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” argues, people might give up on their youthful dreams and enthusiasm, but nothing is ever gone forever. In Esther, the episode’s Edith Cranwinkle-looking puppet theater owner, the show gives us one of the most unpleasant antagonists it has ever come up with, right up to the point it redeems her after an epic puppet battle. It’s always uniquely hard to watch when a character takes aim at Louise. She is, after all, nine years old, and the fact she so often acts as the proverbial agent of chaos is only the result of the general agreement of everyone involved—starting with Bob and Linda, who are the least-equipped to contain her. So it’s extra jarring when an adult says no to her as fully as Esther does, almost as though she’s denying a core part of the show’s reality. Then, of course, reducing Louise down to the little girl she actually is means that Esther is the kind of person who would be super mean to a kid for basically no reason at all.
Balancing out that unpleasantness is the return of Ron, who cuts a hell of a figure in the all-black garb of the puppeteers. The town’s assistant health inspector is the perfect established character to have volunteering at the theater, as his day job also depends on his being the calm, kindly voice of reason while an unreasonably petty person yells at a Belcher. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Ron—almost a year exactly, and we have to go back another full year for his next most recent appearance—so it’s extra fun to see him back, continuing to do the right thing and supporting the Belchers in their minor insurrections. The episode also gives us Dot in the soundbooth, who sure looks like she’s going to be a bundle of sad quirks until she’s just so straightforward about everything. Yes, it’s weird and gross the way she eats while essentially suffocating, and the titles of her beats are a lot to deal with, but the kids have it right: The beats themselves have their merits! Mostly, she’s just happy to be where she is, offering Louise what information and help she can because, well, why wouldn’t she? And maybe she overplays her hand slightly at the end there with how loud her mixes are and how foggy the stage gets, neither of which ends well for Esther, but it’s hard to take too much issue with such enthusiasm.
Indeed, this episode is something of a Rorschach test: Depending on how charitable you’re feeling toward its characters, people like Dot or even Ms. LaBonz on the bus represent either the crushing failure of growing older or people who are happy with their situation. Ms. LaBonz has generally been a generic annoyed teacher for much of the show’s run, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes conflate her with Ms. Schnur, the principal’s secretary. Sure, Ms. LaBonz is just sitting on the bus playing the show’s Candy Crush knockoff. But she’s made it all the way into the 540s, dammit, and she clearly counts herself among those who just kept on getting awesomer as they grew older when Louise asks her what happens to people when they become adults. Yes, the joke is at her expense—it would take a truly Herculean bit of mental gymnastics to argue that moment is somehow empowering for her or whatever—but, as is so often the case on Bob’s Burgers, she is portrayed with just enough kindness that the joke doesn’t come across as too mean-spirited. She’s bored and cynical, sure, but she’s not miserable in her situation, at least as she doesn’t miss any of those doubles.
This episode feels indebted to the likes of “Carpe Museum” and “Hawk And Chick.” The former link is strengthened because, yep, they’re both about sending the kids on a field trip, but that one also has Louise considering what her future could hold. “Hawk And Chick” is an even stronger link in that sense, as Louise’s disappointment in the lame ways adults sometimes act threatens to break her. This episode’s opening, as she struggles to maintain the usual passion as she plays with her toys, sets up a simple but effective parallel with Esther’s own disillusionment, especially when she reveals the puppets stopped talking to her. Being a kid matters to Louise in a way it doesn’t for Tina, who is obviously quite intent on maturing into a butt-obsessed young woman, or for Gene, who is mostly just concerned with farts. That means it’s easier for Louise stories to have the feel of an existential threat—if she doesn’t save Esther from herself, or at least put on a way better puppet show than that drivel about stamps, then all hope is lost, forever. That’s very true to the mindset of a nine-year-old, and the episode is happy to take Louise and her plight seriously.
Indeed, the story is focused enough on the more dramatic aspects of Louise’s situation that it doesn’t really go for too many laughs, at least not from her directly. Instead, the episode leans on all the other kids from Wagstaff to provide the laughs. Zeke is his usual boisterous, irrepressible self, and it’s a nice touch to present him and his eternal wrestling buddy Jimmy Jr. as the wizened veterans of this awful field trip. Regular-Size Rudy doesn’t get to rekindle whatever it is he and Louise have—I miss when he was seemingly the one human on the planet Louise vaguely cared about, but oh well—but he does provide some pained running commentary over the fog effects. We even have Mr. Frond being way, way too enthusiastic about the puppets, which after the last couple Mr. Frond stories is a welcome reprieve for the poor guy.
Bob’s story almost feels like it connects with what Louise is going through, though I struggle with how much I really want to argue Bob helping a ferret-owning weirdo flier for a rave is really about regaining the joy of youth. And yet, and yet… when Linda instructs him on the art of the flick and he takes such obvious pride in his newfound ability to put fliers in people’s hands, he is so damn happy about it. These Bob subplots have such a simple formula, as he finds himself talked into helping someone in some preposterous situation, much to his frustration, only to realize he’s having way more fun than he thought possible. Sure, he proves the Icarus of distributing fliers while wearing a silly hat, as he brags about his newfound skills to Jimmy Pesto just as a car drives by and he loses all of them. There, admittedly, is where Bob’s story breaks from Louise’s, as he is just content to give up on his weird passing dream and get back to work—at what, it has to be said, is his weird lifelong dream of being a burger cook. And there’s definitely no arguing that the burgers are always talking to him. Huh. Guess I can see why Louise cares so much about people and their dopey dreams after all.
Stray observations
This isn’t the first time this season that Tina and Gene realize they kind of completely left their sister hanging. Time to step up your game, Belcher siblings!
I always appreciate how spectacularly unconvincing a liar Ron is. He’s just too fundamentally decent a guy to be properly deceiving about that spider!
Thanks for being understanding about another morning review—I got back in late from a flight and thought it would be more possible than it proved to be to get this posted on something resembling on time.
61 Comments
I love how Bob and Linda skillfully slid the flyer guy over to Jimmy Pesto’s place, and that guy’s boss approved it. Yeah! Score one for Bob!
Two flyer guys! What a bonus for the Belchers.
yeah, i don’t think bob needs to win all the time but he does need some wins. i recently rewatched the episode where the family goes on the tv show to win a new car & gets nothing, even after it looks like they might be redeemed in the court show. it was so disappointing.
I loved when Zeke tried to support Mr. Frond’s excitement for the field trip. He was a little late, but damnit he’s trying.
Zeke is maybe my favorite character on the show. They do such a good job a fleshing out everyone so that they aren’t as one note as they appear at first bluch.
I wasn’t really feeling this one. I think for the Esther character to really work she needed to be at least a little sympathetic. It’s hard to care about someone who’s that nasty to children getting their happy ending.
Yes, and it’s so Bob’s Burgers formulaic to have the cantankerous old person who sounds identical to most of the other ones, who turns out to be a soft soul with a quiet secret, that the family helps with. There were like 3 or 50 ways to slightly modify that trope and make it fresh again, but they really didn’t do that. It even hit the “kids see something secret hidden from a long time ago which parents are embarrassed by, and break in to get at it” storyline which I feel like has happened more than twice before. And the distracting the grownups to get a kid out of trouble. I hardly smiled at all the whole episode.The only upside is the Bob Baker tribute (see my other comment!)
Maybe I’m alone in this…but originally I assumed Jimmy Pesto hired flier guy to prank Bob, but maybe I was giving Pesto too much credit?
I thought the same thing. Kept waiting for Pesto to be the boss.
me, too!
I was a little suprised that the guy’s boss ended up being normal, considering they were promoting a rave.
I thought that too! The eventual reveal of the guy who hired him – no one we’d ever seen before, yet has a weird faith that outside Bob’s restaurant is the best place to pick up foot traffic – was underwhelming.
I thought it would be revealed early in the episode to be Fischoeder – someone Bob would be forced to yield to, adding a new wrinkle to his dilemma.
Plus, someone who’d be nutty enough to specify which sidewalk square his employee should occupy, and check that he was obeyed.
Would’ve been funnier if it was one of the Fischeoders. Edit: Whoops didn’t see your comment there, Lydia. Great minds, et cetera.
Me too! And it was a pleasant surprise, along with Bob getting one over on Jimmy Pesto!
I noticed Jimmy Pesto’s friend is back giving Jimmy high-fives at Bob’s expense. A whole episode was spent on that just last week.
Maybe I’m mis-remembering, but didn’t he high-five Jimmy at the end of last week’s episode, thus erasing all the progress he made?
I didn’t think so, but I’ll doublecheck.
Meh episode. C+
Bob had such a penned-in childhood (working at his Dad’s diner, where his only friends were anthropomorphic garbage) that it’s no wonder his life’s ambitions are so modest.
Is it that modest? It’s generally agreed by anyone who tries one of Bob’s burgers that they are very good. He shows great creativity in what he does. Compare that to Pesto (or many of the other restaurateurs we have seen) who can’t make a decent burger, and who is known to cut corners, and Bob seems to be something truly special. If Bob’s ambition is low, it is more because he would rather do his thing other than trying to market it and dumb it down. There are worse things in life.
Modest maybe, but he makes a great burger and the names of his daily specials are nothing short of genius.
I’d have sworn that Esther was voiced by Cloris Leachman, but it was Kerri Kenney-Silver.
I’ve been waiting for her to pop up as a guest voice actor, given how many other The State alums have already appeared—Thomas Lennon’s roles as Chuck Charles and Kenny, David Wain’s work as Courtney, Joe Lo Truglio’s various one shot roles, etc. Leachman did voice Meryl, the elderly woman to whom Tina read mail in “The Secret Admiral-irer.”
Kerri actually voiced other characters before Esther – the aquarium owner and the mom who ran a Great Gatsby-themed birthday party for her son.
My wife thought the same thing.
Who else is going to look for a bulletin board in the restaurant with the flyer about a rave posted on it in future episodes?
By the way, did anyone else think that “Family Guy” was the funniest (and possibly best) episode of the night? Having the episode be the recording of the DVD commentary track on an episode (that looked like it could have been good enough to stand on its own), and then having the voice actors come in and break the ‘fourth wall’!
I thought Family Guy was the weakest, personally. The Simpsons actually felt like the strongest of the night, which is weird. Bob’s Burgers felt like someone put a bunch of previous episodes in a blender (Louise’s anxiety about growing up, cantankerous and/or creepy old person is really nice, the family helps someone find their passion again, etc.).
Family Guy just felt like a mess to me, especially when they decided to try a Gainax ending with the action voice-actors showing up to tell the family they’re not real. Also, the plot is basically an America Dad joke from 14 years ago stretched into an entire episode. I did like Sarah Paulson bragging about her Emmy win/noms though.
That Simpsons episode was written by Megan Amram, so that checks out
To be honest, Bob’s Burgers is the only one I watch anymore. I drifted away from the Simpsons, and Family Guy is just awful anymore – the characters, the jokes, the writing, all awful. It lost its heart a long time ago, and you can tell that by rewatching any of the first two seasons’ episodes. American Dad is still great, but no longer Sundays on FX. [BTW – was anyone else dissapointed with the lack of an American Dad Christmas episode this year?]
“You bet your ass its a triple dip”
Bob’s Burgers is amazing. It gets better and better every year and last night’s ep was more proof-positive. How many other shows do that?
“It’s always uniquely hard to watch when a character takes aim at Louise. She is, after all, nine years old, and the fact she so often acts as the proverbial agent of chaos is only the result of the general agreement of everyone involved—starting with Bob and Linda, who are the least-equipped to contain her. So it’s extra jarring when an adult says no to her as fully as Esther does.”This is my only problem with the Belchers and the show in that they offer their children no discipline or any type of boundaries at all and everyone on the show just goes along with it. Hate to bring real world issues into what is essentially an adult’s cartoon but I’ve been around too many adults that now raise their children as if they are their equals or dare I say sometimes their own superiors. This new parenting keeps me at uneasy feeling so whenever I watch Louise talk down and mistreat adults on the show as if they were idiots and nobody checks her on it always sets my inner parenting alarms off.
I recognize that it must be near-impossible to keep the magic going after nine seasons, but the last handful of Bob’s Burgers episodes has been pretty lackluster. This one is another that feels like it’s a bunch of elements from earlier episodes spackled together into a new-ish configuration, which is maybe not bad but is also not that exciting. I guess that’s why other long-running animated shows get increasingly divorced from reality as they go on. I love these characters, but if they never get older or change appreciably, what else is there to say about them that we haven’t already heard?
I hear you, and agree to a point: when you have a family that does not age, as is the norm in all cartoons, then you have to run into the problem of keeping it fresh while keeping everyone the same. But I think BB still has the magic, as with last week’s episode “What About Blob.” We saw the continuing growth of Gene, as well as the rest in a very thoughtful outing.
Of course the standard will always be The Simpsons, and I believe that by their 9th season, a lot of what made the show great was beginning to stagnate, but I still see fresh perspectives and innovative scripts coming from Bob’s Burgers. No doubt they have learned some of the lessons about keeping such a tightly-restricted premise going.I always look forward to a new Bob’s Burgers episode. I can’t say that about any other animated show on the air now, except maybe Disenchanted, for which I am anxiously awaiting season two!
Who else got sad when they shouted for the music to be turned down, I was totally getting into Progressive techno dub trance puppet battles!
Awww. Some of you guys are much harder on this episode than I am. I really enjoyed this one and this review too. I could have done without Linda’s flicking technique backstory, but I really like episodes that have Louise clinging to childhood. I even may have almost teared up at the scene where they were showing the close up of Esther’s blank-face puppet interacting with her old, awesome puppet as she was working through why she stopped playing with him. It was sweet, damn it.
Yeah, I’m surprised at the vitriol for an episode that’s a bit on the fluffy side. I thought it was fine, I liked/related to the lost childhood aspect but I’m in my mid-40s and still desperately clinging to the voices of my stuffed animals in my head.
I am also in my 40s and I still cannot bring myself to purge my stuffed animals that are packed away. I think we’re the target audience here.
Just turned 50. Can confirm.
I thought this episode was very sweet. Bob’s Burgers does sweet better than any other show in my opinion.
Goddammit Trent, you were supposed to remember your high five avoidance training!
Yeah, I was waiting to see if he’d backslide and dammit, he did!
– I really felt for Louise as she tried to get into her game.- “There’s your beautiful bride.” “Eh, you get what you get.” Which reminds me, what I would love to get is more flashbacks to Bob and Linda’s courtship.- Add sheer, overwhelming boredom to the list of Zeke’s excuses to tackle someone.- Oh hi, Tom Kenny!
– The Wagstaff students know their musicals! Though I can’t imagine Les Mis is one of Jimmy Jr.’s favorites – barely any dancing at all!
– I dunno, when you put it that way, Ms. LaBonz being confident in the quality of her adulthood is its own kind of success.- “Guess I can see why Louise cares so much about people and their dopey dreams after all.” Aww! : )
Wait. Who was Tom Kenny in the episode?!
The guy handing out the flyers (he’s even listed in the credits as “Guy”)!
I completely missed that!
I guess I’m entirely alone in laughing so hard at Linda’s booger-flicking backstory. “my mom taught me” is such a great line I cried.
“Mad Libs? More like SAD Libs!”
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I thought it was so-so. It didn’t hit a lot of funny highs but it had a sweet enough ending. Another nice episode where Loosie- erm Louise has her concerns about growing up while also inspiring an old crank.Also the visual of Bob in a pink vest and a multicolored dreadlock wig was great.“So let your imagination run wild!- within the boundaries we’ve set for you.”“Vladicus winked at me. Whoa! He did it again.” “We gave her drugs.”
I’m so glad they said they gave her drugs. For a second, I thought they were going down the dementia road, and that just would have been too sad to get past.
Jocelyn’s totally serious, “Are they gonna make out?” hit at the perfect moment too. It was allllmost getting too sentimental between the two puppets.
I sort of want to hear an episode of “The Tech Booth with Dot” now.
“It made me want to stop supporting the arts and start actively working against them.” I swear, this line had me laughing so hard I had to pause the episode until I was done.I’m a sucker for any episode that has Louise worried about her loss of childhood wonder – ‘Hawk and Chick’ got me real choked up – so I was all the way in on this one.
That was a lovely, perceptive review, Alasdair. Happy to see another fan
connecting this new episode with “Hawk and Chick” – I took great
comfort in seeing Louise discover how to rekindle the dragon’s voice for
Esther. —RISING HAWK (yes, it really *IS* me bwaahahahahaha)
I posted in a thread, I thought this episode was really nothing particularly new and I had seen every single beat (ha) of it before, but one very nice upside to it is, I suspect it was a tribute to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater which just recently closed down after 66 years. The interior and exterior both looked inspired by it — and the Bob Baker crew and fans think so, too: facebook.com/BobBakerMarionetteTheater/posts/2109760799113001
I don’t know what it is about this show and its innate ability to make every old lady character so gut-bustingly hilarious, but I’m glad it’s a thing.
yes, it is so easy to confuse ms. labonz & ms. schnur. also, as a technical note, theaters use special smoke that does not make you cough. why would you use a product that could harm your actors?