Bob's Burgers: Smellbound (16x15)

Truly goofy, I loved it!

Cons:

I don't think I have a single complaint at this time, honestly!

Pros:

I love it when this show becomes like a giant group project where everybody is involved and then they succeed lol. Such a simple desire and this show is so good at fulfilling it! We have a goofy problem, that the beach has been overrun with dead fish, and the smell is bad enough to cancel a beloved yearly holiday. The kids, Louise especially, are really disappointed, so they decide the only way to fix it is to find a way to clean up the fish. How? Build a giant catapult! But without the funds to do that, they are reduced to asking Mr. Fischoeder to help move one of the rides from the wharf and use that as a giant trebuchet. This plan works only when Bob agrees to ride with the fish and pull the lever at the right moment to release them all into the ocean.

Bob's Burgers: Stuck in the Middle with Hu(go) (16x14)

Going to rapid-fire review this because we have two new episodes to talk about!

Cons:

Bathroom humor isn't really my thing so the stuff about Teddy needing to poop was just kinda... eh... I also in general could have used a greater degree of shenanigans regarding the lost ring. They jump to Teddy eating the ring as the explanation so quickly, but it would have been fun to do more of a scavenger hunt and upend the restaurant looking for it. As it is, Linda just kinda finds it at the last second, anticlimactically.

Bob's Burgers: Driving Miss Ragey (16x13)

A really cute one!

Cons:

Often with this show I don't have any real complaints I just have a note for a missed opportunity... this week it's that I wanted something to happen in the restaurant that Teddy would have to be "in charge" of. Or even better, nothing happens until he leaves to go help with the broken door, and then the rando customer is sitting there and a whole crowd of people comes in and he takes up the mantle to run things in Bob and Teddy's absence. I don't know, could have been funny to see something come of all that.

Bob's Burgers: Children of the Carn (16x12)

This was a really cute main plot!

Cons:

I wasn't really that invested in the subplot, about Teddy seeing his therapist at the restaurant and having a crisis about her being a weird eater. There just wasn't a lot of meat here. I feel like I'm split straight down the middle when it comes to Teddy plots, sometimes they're extra fun and sometimes they don't really offer me anything.

Pros:

There was one joke I liked, which was Teddy saying that the therapist was his closest friend that he paid in order to talk to, and Bob was like... "well..." lol. That made me chuckle.

Bob's Burgers: The Keyboard Kid (16x11)

This was cute, welcome back to this comfort show!

Cons:

This is an insane thing to say but it did bother me a little bit that nobody figured out that typing "properly" is actually faster than hunt and peck lol. Like, no judgment, people should do whatever they want forever, but eventually I feel like you hit a ceiling just using a couple of fingers to type. Also, they never brought accuracy into it when they were grading the contest. Probably just ignore me.

Bob's Burgers: Heist Things Are Heist (16x10)

Cute!

Cons:

I felt like Linda's adventures in being bra-less could have been a little sillier, although I liked what we got just fine. Could have been more, though!

Bob's Burgers: It's a Stunterful Life (16x09)

This was such a cute and fun episode!

Cons:

My least favorite of the plot threads, which was still fine but just nothing special, was Linda trying to save the Christmas trees that were destined to be made into mulch. This is a plot thread from an episode of Friends like 30 years ago. It's not that there's anything bad about it, I just saw Linda getting weirdly sentimental over dead trees and thought, yeah, yeah, I get it. I know where this is going. And there was nothing more really going on to challenge that.

Bob's Burgers: Les Lizárdables (16x08)

The rare Gene-centric episode, I love it!

Cons: 

To be honest, I felt a little let down by the whole subplot in this one. Linda's sister Gayle comes to visit, and brings her cats, which makes Bob's allergies act up. Also, Gayle is using Tina's room for massages, and the family thinks she's a sex worker? But then she isn't? Obviously? It felt like the setups didn't have punchlines that actually landed in any sort of significant way. I usually love a visit from Gayle, but this one just maybe didn't go hard enough.

Bob's Burgers: Tube for Tina (16x07)

Awww, look at Linda being so supportive of her daughter. We love to see it.

Cons:

I don't think I have anything to complain about other than that I would have loved to see some of the Boyz 4 Now movie, that would have been a hoot.

Pros:

The subplot on this one involves an unfortunate bird that slams into the window of the restaurant and dies shortly after. Louise, Gene, and Bob go to Teddy's to bury it in his backyard, and then they find out that the bird was someone's pet, so they have to go with her to dig up the remains. One thing I liked about this one was how relatively few twists there actually were in the story? Like, I kind of expected once the lady saw the dead bird she'd be like, "oh, that isn't Zeus" and the whole thing would be for naught, or that the guy who knows about birds would show up and cause shenanigans or try to claim that this rare bird deserved to be in a museum or I don't know what else. Sometimes full chaos levels are fun, other times it's nice when a story takes the trajectory you more or less expect from it. Poor Phyllis having her conversation with Zeus at the end... I know it's meant to be funny but I got genuinely sad thinking about dead pets. :(

Bob's Burgers: Get Her to the Zeke (16x06)

Aww, I loved this one!

Cons:

I don't have an actual complaint about this episode, but I will say there was a brief moment when I thought that this episode would finally address the fact that Zeke and Jimmy Jr. have gay crushes on each other and then felt a little let down that that didn't happen lol. I'm mostly joking but only mostly.

Pros:

Let's start with the subplot with Bob, Linda, Louise and Gene - there's a big scary rat that has been seen out in the alley behind the restaurant, and Hugo and Ron show up with an exterminator named Roxy the Rat Queen to try and deal with the situation. The Belchers end up letting the rat go by the end of the episode, because they're too sad about the thought of Roxy killing him after they've spent several days invested in his fate. I love the moments where the whole family comes together and ends up doing something a little naughty but in collaboration, the kids and the adults all on the same page.

There was a fun dynamic in this subplot too, where Hugo does his normal thing of being mean to Bob, but at the same time he's playing really sycophantic to Roxy, so he keeps flip-flopping to agree with Roxy even if it means walking back his insults to Bob. That was fun! And the super rat was kinda cute, not gonna lie!

Bob's Burgers: The Secret Guardin' (16x05)

This one was fun! 

Cons:

I don't think I have any complaints!

Pros:

The Teddy subplot was just the right amount of ridiculous. I like that Kathleen was understanding in the end and had the riff about picking up the wrong little old Irish lady herself in the past. The idea that Teddy could get all the way back from the airport without realizing his mistake is so funny and on point for him. He gets in his head and his single-minded focus can cause some problems for him.

I also liked how easy it was for Teddy to bond with the wrong old lady by uniting in a dislike of Bob; Teddy is very willing to use Bob for his own goals in whatever form that takes. Also shout-out to the joke about Teddy leaving with the coffee mug and insulting it as a bad to-go coffee cup. 

Bob's Burgers: The Skids in the Hall (16x04)

I love episodes where the kids are in school!

Cons:

It is weird scheduling-wise that this isn't the Halloween episode, though. I feel like they deployed that one a week too early for some reason.

The subplot with Bob's mustache shenanigans didn't really do much for me, to be honest. I was expecting wackier shenanigans, maybe Bob having some sort of identity crisis as he doesn't know who he is when his mustache looks so different. Or just wilder designs as the modeling continued. There was nothing wrong here, but it didn't really get a chuckle out of me either.

Bob's Burgers: The Twinnening (16x03)

A cute Halloween-themed episode!

Cons:

I know the premise of the subplot was that Bob and Linda couldn't get into the "Cakes" show but I still would have loved to see a bit of the performance of it. I think it's so funny, this concept of a touring Patty-Cake based act that is wildly popular and hard to get into. I want to go to one in real life, tbh.

Pros:

Sticking with the subplot for a moment, I liked seeing Bob at his enthusiastic best. It's always fun to see him getting swept up in a fandom or genuine love of something strange and specific. It's the counterpoint to his sort of mopey demeanor and saves him from being just this one-note miserable put-upon character type. There's this specific type of excited that Bob can get, where he's just overwhelmed to be in the presence of someone from this show, and the comedy comes in part from the fact that this is objectively not that big of a deal and Bob is acting like he's meeting an angel or something. And Linda reporting to us that Bob failed on the high five was really funny too! They didn't get to see the show, but I still think the Belchers had a lovely date night.

Bob's Burgers: Til Death Do Us Art (16x02)

This one was quite fun!

Cons:

I honestly could have used more shenanigans from the kids inside of the art show. It was funny to watch Louise play with the dart gun and miss the point of the art, but Gene and Tina just kind of wandered around and were weirded out by some of the odd displays. They could have gotten into some more mischief, I think!

Bob's Burgers: Grand Pre-Pre-Pre-Opening (16x01)

This was so freakin' cute!

Cons: 

I honestly have no complaints!

Pros:

This felt so old-school Bob's Burgers in this really fun meta way because obviously the kids on this show are in this perpetual state of being the ages they are, but the show itself started in 2011, 14 years ago, and then here we get this flashback episode about Bob and Linda opening the restaurant 14 years ago... so fun!

I'll confess I don't really remember what the lore has been in the show up to this point, about the origins of the restaurant, so if we've heard some of this stuff before in bits and pieces, or if this contradicts anything, I'm unaware of it. The story is basically that Linda decides to use her savings to help open the restaurant, even though she'd been saving to buy a condo, and that right around the same time they start things going, Linda also finds out she's pregnant with Tina. So despite the huge risk and all the chaos of life changing so rapidly, they decide to go ahead with opening the restaurant at the same time they're growing their family! Linda ends up going into labor on the day of their first grand opening, starting the tradition of chaos always coming for the family when they try to get the restaurant going.

Bob's Burgers: InsomniBob (15x22)

This was a really, really fun episode! I loved it.

Cons: 

Honestly can't think of any. This was a Bob-centric episode so we spent less time on the kids and Linda, but that was just as it should be. 

Pros: 

This is going to be a short review because honestly I think just listing things that made me smile is silly, and that's all this review is going to be.

Bob's Burgers: Mr. Safebody (15x21)

Another cute episode!

Cons:

I feel like I've been saying this a lot about the subplots on this show of late, but there always seems to be a lack of climactic joke... like, in this one, a car is blasting annoying loud music, Bob is annoyed, then he recognizes one of the songs, and gets annoyed when the police finally shut the music off just as he's getting into it. And then they put the music back on, and the plot thread ends? I was kind of hoping there would be more with whatever the crime was, or something. Nothing wrong with what we got, just wish there had been a bit more.

Pros:

That said, in the subplot I did really like the trajectory of sad sack Bob being turned around and getting into something that was previously bumming him out, that always makes me smile, when he winds up being enthusiastic.

Our main plot features Louise's classmate Arnold wanting to get into the body-guarding business now that he's a green belt who can smash wood boards with his feet. In typical Louise fashion, she takes his initial pitch of her helping him with promo and escalates it to an absurd degree, leading to her and her siblings, along with Arnold and Rudy, sneaking into an abandoned old high school and then getting into conflict with real scary high school boys.

I suppose this is one of those episodes where I don't have a ton to say; I had a fun time as always. Maybe my favorite comedy beat was Louise telling her folks that they were going to a safe location for school reasons, and Bob wondering why she felt the need to emphasize they were going somewhere safe... that whole exchange made me chuckle! Having Louise for a daughter would be a fun challenge, I think.

8/10 

Bob's Burgers: Dad-urday Kite Fever (15x20)

Not sure why two episodes aired in the same week, but I'm not complaining!

Cons:

I feel like I say this a lot on this show, but could have used a bit of resolution on the subplot! Teddy figures out a way to say "lawnmower" by imitating Linda's voice, which was funny, but I wanted to hear him actually say it for the play!

Pros:

This was a Bob episode, and we got to dive into a bit of his psyche here. His father shows up with a kite that was bought after Bob's mom died, but that they never actually flew together. Time to correct that record with the kids! But when they go out to fly a kite, it gets away from Bob and sends him on a grand adventure, where he ends up teaming up with various bikers from the community that are helping him on his journey.

Bob's Burgers: The Dead Bo-ats Society (15x19)

This was a super fun and inventive episode!

Cons:

I can't think of anything to complain about, honestly, I just want more of the vibes this episode was giving!

Pros:

Starting with the subplot briefly, we see Teddy taking care of butterflies in their chrysalises. He misses their hatching because he's in the bathroom, and then has a really hard time saying goodbye and letting them go. He eventually lets them fly free! This was just some good old fashioned Teddy goofiness. He gets weirdly invested in some bizarre thing, brings his personal life into the restaurant, ropes Bob and Linda into paying attention to it too. I liked that the drama/conflict of this subplot was focused entirely on Teddy's emotional turmoil. The butterflies were fine, nothing dramatic happened, but Teddy was Going Through It.

Bob's Burgers: Don't Worry, Be Hoopy (15x18)

Another Tina-centric episode! Interesting to have two in a row.

Cons:

I could have used a punchline to Teddy's involvement in the episode. He's afraid of how steep and high up the bleachers are, and I kept waiting for him to fall, or for him to bravely descend the steps and make a big deal about not falling, or something. But instead, nothing really came of it? He stood up to wave his foam finger and then sat down because he was too scared. Not much going on there.

Pros:

I love the episodes where we go into each of the character's minds and get a different version of the story, they're always so fun. This one's theme was anxiety, about parenting and about doing hard things and being brave. It felt very realistic to me that while Bob and Linda were both stressing out that their bad pep talks had gotten into Tina's head, the reality was that she hadn't even really been listening to them at all, and her own stresses tied back to an earlier instance with ballet from when she was little.