Bob's Burgers: Fight at the Not Okay Chore-ral (14x01)

A fun season opener!

Cons:

I wish even more of the townsfolk could have been cast inside the Western story the family was telling. It was cool to see Jimmy Jr. and Zeke, and Mr. Fischoeder, but I would have loved to see Teddy, and various other townsfolk more prominently featured.

I felt like the conclusion to this episode was a little wishy-washy, where Linda has to admit that she got a little worked up about the chores thing because of pressure from her own mother, but at the same time... Linda is right, and the fact that the kids don't do any chores around the house is weird. I wish there had been a little more of a button on the episode where maybe the kids had helped out with a task, working with their parents and making it a family activity.

Pros:

I love the creativity of the storytelling Bob's Burgers episodes. There's the silliness of the imaginary scenarios, but even better is the way the various storytellers all want to get a hand on the ball, and the delightful chaos that causes. Bob is telling a story to calm everyone down for bed, but then Linda wants it to be a lesson about the chores, and Tina wants a super buff horse, and Louise wants to turn the parents/sheriffs into the villains, and thus the silliness just escalates and escalates. So fun!

I really liked the roles each of the characters ended up playing. Of course Louise would run the gambling and be responsible for all the window smashing, while Gene would be playing the piano in the tavern and providing all the entertainment. Tina takes her inn-running duties seriously, especially since mostly it's a hotel for horses, that has rooms for humans also.

The comedy beat of the kids making Bob-the-character say something ridiculous, cutting to real Bob being like "that's not... okay, whatever" will always makes me smile. I also loved Gene dramatically "dying" in Linda's arms, but Louise assures us he's just being dramatic.

Louise is definitely my favorite character on this show, and the interesting mother/daughter relationship between Louise and Linda is probably my favorite emotional core. So it was nice to see them touch base, and to have Linda validate and appreciate Louise for her feistiness. There's a tension that Linda is feeling, between wanting to raise good kids, and also letting her kids be who they really are. I like seeing that explored even if, as mentioned above, I could have done with a bit more of a button on this plot thread, that would tell us something new about how the kids were going to help out around the house.

So that's it! We're back with this comfortable, enjoyable show. It always makes me smile.

8/10