Curmudgeon Corner

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A man asks himself, do I want a bagel?

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Bob's Burgers Ep. 4.02 "Fort Night"

With last week’s season opener in the bag, Bob’s Burgers returns with a truly skin-crawling tale…though not creepy in the way you’d assume a Halloween episode would be creepy -- this is more in the Donny Darko vein.

So it’s Halloween, apparently, even though the episode aired on October 6th, and Louise is about to get straight-up weirdo stalked. Millie Frock, dressed in full-on pink bunny regalia, has the type of unstable personality disorders that really tickle your get-the-eff-away-from-me alarm. She’s got an eye twitch, is dressed head-to-toe as a pink bunny, and is just really, weirdly, creepily obsessed with Louise.

Aziz Ansari joins the cast as Darryl -- a cool black nerdy kid dressed as Devo (cause it’s Halloween). Millie insists Louise go trick-or-treating as “Dust”, while Millie herself would, play “Bunny”…completing the awful pun. Louise of course is havin’ none of that and Millie’s descent into vindictive despair is assured.

The Belcher kids, along with Darryl and the ever-amusing duo of Ollie and Andy, abscond to an elaborate alley-fort built into a loading dock. Shit gets cray when a truck driver dressed as a belly dancer blocks the kids inside their fort. Everyone freaks out a lot. Darryl is claustrophobic, so this is pretty much his worst nightmare.

Meanwhile at the restaurant Bob and Linda rush to complete the kids’ group Halloween costume: A Chinese Dragon. It’s in pitiful shape.

Millie shows up at the fort and everyone celebrates, assuming Millie will go for help. Millie leverages the situation and coerces Louise into a series of bizarre call-and-response games. Louise can’t hold it together and flips out.

Millie’s slow change in expression from insane smile to absolute void is utterly terrifying. In an instant, her maniacal smile returns. She will not go get help. Rather, she will terrorize the trapped children by dropping fake spiders into the fort and other hijinks.

During the spider attack, Ollie and Andy have an amazing guy-stuck-in-the-gas-chamber allegory -- the brothers wish each other goodbye as only they can: with codependent and unconditional love. It’s hilarious -- a real highlight.

Bob and Linda begin to worry as the kids fail to show up and receive their truly awful dragon costume. Bob suggests that perhaps the kids are in their alley-fort. Linda learns that Bob has been allowed into the kids’ fort, while she herself has been rebuffed. A slight she takes pretty hard. They go, dragon costume in hand, to retrieve the children but Millie cuts them off and supplies a bit of misinformation. She tells the Belcher parents that their children have gone trick-or-treating without the dragon costume.

Hurt and hoping to get something out of their hard work, Bob and Linda dawn the dragon costume and attempt to trick-or-treat. At the first house, Bob feigns a funny lisp but is recognized by the homeowner. Bob and Linda slink away in shame. 

Despite Millie’s best efforts to thwart their attempts, the kids eventually escape by engaging the truck’s lift and jerry-rigging old paint cans (I don’t know, it’s plausible enough I guess). The fort is destroyed.

Relieved to be free, the children’s rejoicing is cut short when they learn that Halloween is pretty much over. Houses are going dark, nobody’s on the street. The kids have missed their window and Darryl is gonna cry about it.

The Belcher kids return home to find their parents on the couch. A perhaps-too-brief explanation and everybody’s reunited and eating candy. 

Later, Millie drops back by the fort and finds it has been crushed. Believing she’s responsible for the children’s deaths, Millie rives as Gene, Tina, and Louise speak unseen from the top of the truck that previously imprisoned them. They pretend to be their own ghosts and freak little Millie out big time. Closure enough.

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Bob's Burgers Ep. 4.01 "A River Runs Through Bob"

On the coattails of news that Loren Bouchard’s Bob’s Burgers will be renewed for a fifth season, the show’s fourth season premiered Sunday with diarrhea jokes a-plenty. “A River Runs Through Bob” pits the Belcher family against both nature and a pair of apocalypse touting whack jobs for the show’s ubiquitous and compulsory family camping trip episode. The impetus for the trip being that Tina has missed her Thundergirl (a Girl Scout euphemism) group camping trip.

In an uncharacteristic turn, Bob packs no food, let alone hamburgers, instead insisting that the family fish and forage for food and drink. Of course, Linda and the kids are havin’ none-of-that and quickly capitalize on the goodwill of a pair of nuts-o survivalist RV-campers, who provide the crew not only with sustenance, but also with a copy of their survivalist manifesto. Bob chooses to fish for his dinner and ends up with a fast case of the squirts (hence the episode’s pun-tastic title).

Once the kids retire to their tent, Bob and Linda slip off for a romantic foray to the campground’s “tepid spring.” Bob takes a misstep while attempting to find a bush behind which to relieve his diarrhea, and the couple is swept down river. 

The Belcher children awake to an empty campsite and, after finding their parents’ discarded clothing, surmise what has become of them. They swipe a set of intertubes (as well as more food) from the loco neighbors.

Bob and Linda grow desperate as it’s revealed that Bob has led them in the incorrect direction while attempting to get back to camp. The married couple fight and split up. Starving, Bob finds a stash of acorns but is thwarted by a crew of aggressive squirrels. Linda rescues him and the two find their way back to camp. They arrive to learn from the now annoyed but still crazy fellow campers that their children have gone down river. Bob begins to freak out and is lured, along with Linda, into the RV. The survivalists trap the Belcher parents under threats of being bear-maced and attempt to coerce them into joining their survivalist cause and, of course, swinging a little bit.

Meanwhile and in light of their struggle with nature, Tina, Louise, and Gene grow to adapt the survivalist manifesto with the United States Post Office and the Thundergirls serving as the objects of their institutional angst. They stumble upon a group of Thundergirls, also on a camping trip, and Tina rejects her former organization in favor of the survivalist manifesto’s tenets. Eventually the children find their way back to the campsite, and spy Linda attempting to escape the RV through an undersized vent.

Quoting a line from the survivalist manifesto, Tina drops a beehive into the RV, forcing all inside to evacuate. The Belcher family escapes, and happily returns to the city.

“A River Runs Through Bob” represents a solid kickoff for Bob’s Burgers fourth season. I am enthused by the decision to immediately get the Belcher family out of the restaurant and into unfamiliar territory. Both the show’s writing team and its cast are stacked talent, and it runs no real risk of becoming stale, but the decision to place its characters so far outside of their comfort zone as nature (perhaps the polar opposite of a burger joint) indicates that the show’s leadership is toying with bigger storylines and exciting breaks with its formula.