Bob's Burgers: The (Raccoon) King and I (14x07)

This one was so fun! The return of Little King Trash-Mouth!

Cons:

I don't really have many complaints, other than that I thought the shenanigan-level could have been higher with the kids? When Louise realized her bid to sell a concert experience for candy wasn't going to work out as planned, I was sort of expecting her to go way more wild with it. I wanted those kids sneaking around backstage, tripping over wires, interrupting the concert, all that jazz. As it was, it was a dinky little subplot that was just fine, but nothing special or memorable.

Pros:

In the main story of the episode, Linda discovers that her favorite raccoon friend has a hurt paw, and calls Animal Control for help. Teddy then informs her that Animal Control isn't going to help Little King Trash-Mouth, but rather take him away and kill him as a pest! The rest of the episode features Linda, with help from Tina and Teddy, trying to keep their poor raccoon friend away from the Animal Control worker who is just trying to do her job. In the end, we see our raccoon friend reunite with his partner Gary, which is so heartwarming! I actually smiled with real affection when I saw them nuzzling faces like that.

This was a good use of Teddy, I feel, I liked that he was backing Linda up and trying to help but also just kind of confused about the situation. And Tina pretending to have won the lottery to provide a distraction was pretty funny.

Bob's plot thread was a quieter, more contemplative one that I really enjoyed. He's excited to see a band come through and perform on the street that had one big hit back in the day. The band is still together touring, and Bob thinks this is inspirational. That is, until the tour manager comes in and tells him that the whole group is miserable. Imagine just doing the same thing over and over and over for the rest of your life, knowing you'll never do anything new or innovative again... Bob flashes forward to the thought of growing old making burgers, and it majorly bums him out.

But then? When the band gets to their one big hit, the manager says that sometimes they have a great time: sometimes everything clicks into place and the music is flowing and the crowd is locked in, and they remember why they were passionate about this in the first place. And Bob is invigorated by this thought, that even if his life becomes a drudgery some of the time, he will have moments of passion in his chosen career. I don't know, I just found that kind of moving! It feels true to my own experience with some things in life, where I know a lot of things will be more of the same, but I'll have these shining moments of connection and joy that light up the rest of my life around it.

So that's that! A fun episode. It almost felt like the stuff with the band and the stuff with the raccoon could have been two separate A-plots in two separate episodes rather than both happening here, but for what we got, I really did enjoy it!

8.5/10