Bob's Burgers: What a (April) Fool Believes (13x16)

Double episode day! I'll be brief.

Cons:

Not really much to report here! I guess the one thing the episode felt like it was missing was more chaos from Louise? She was more into the idea of April Fool's Day than anybody else, which I expected, but she didn't really cause mayhem the way I was anticipating.

Pros:

I like a good family affair, where there aren't really full subplots but more just smaller moments that connect to a central story. Gene's thing this week is that he doesn't "get" pranks, and keeps suggesting things that are really tame and not at all hurtful. He can't seem to go through with the part of pranks where people are confused and alarmed. That was a sweet little characterization that feels so true to what we know of Gene as a kind-hearted, simple sort of boy.

I also liked that Tina's worry was that Jimmy Jr. might have been pranking her by asking her on a frozen yogurt date. Louise fuels her paranoia, but in the end it turns out Jimmy Jr. hadn't even known it was April Fool's. He thought it came sometime in May. Oh, Jimmy Jr.... This show is good at being funny without being meanspirited, and Tina getting to go on a simple date was a good example of that.

The main plot features the ongoing shenanigans of Mr. Fischoeder, who apparently loves to prank Bob every year on April 1st. The pranks are elaborate and mean, and Bob is sick of them. This year, however, Mr. Fischoeder requests that Bob prank him. From there, we get an escalating series of events where Bob realizes that being asked to pull a prank was part of a larger prank being pulled on him, and he goes a little crazy trying to sort out who's in on it, and who he can trust.

I loved the escalation here, and how everybody got involved in different ways. Teddy being a potential accomplice for first Fischoeder and then Bob, Felix revealing his role in events and Bob being unsure if that made it also part of the prank... I think the best scene was Bob deciding that everyone was going to betray him, except Gene, because he's too innocent (stupid) to be in on it.

So yeah, this was a fun one! I didn't know where it was going, or who would end up getting one over on who by the end. Strange that they aired this episode a few weeks before actual April Fool's, though. Maybe it's part of the joke... :)

9/10