Bob's Burgers review
Whew, been a while, hasn't it? My apologies. Oh, well, let's just get to the review.
Premise:
The show centers on the Belcher family—Bob, Linda, and their children Tina, Gene, and Louise—who run a hamburger restaurant on Ocean Avenue in an unnamed seaside community (informally known as "Seymour's Bay" among the show's writing staff).
Bob's Burgers is located in a green two-floor building that features an apartment on the second floor where Bob and his family reside. Its neighboring businesses are It's Your Funeral Home and Crematorium, which is located in a blue building to the left of the restaurant, and a storefront that is always vacant because its tenants, which have included businesses with such names as "Tire-Rhea" and "Uncle Marty's Breast Pumps", do not last very long.
Success is not easy, as Bob must compete with several other eateries for business. His biggest rival is Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria, which is located right across the street and whose owner Bob particularly dislikes. Bob's restaurant also has seen its fair share of bad luck. For example, in the show's opening, the property falls victim to a fire, an infestation of vermin, and a broken front window caused by a car knocking down a utility pole. In spite of all this, Bob does have a small but loyal group of regular customers including Mort, the owner of the funeral home, and Teddy, the local handyman.
Character bios:
Bob is the restaurant's owner and husband to fun-loving free spirit Linda. Their three children are Tina, the oldest, Gene, the only boy, and Louise, the youngest. All three kids help out around the restaurant to some extent. Louise is somewhat of a precocious menace and an instigator of many of the debacles that face the Belcher family. Gene is the more lighthearted goofball type and aspires to be a great musician. Tina is awkward, but full of heart, and muddles her way through her pubescent experiences, such as leg waxing and strong fixations on neighborhood boys.
Other Tidbits:
As with other Fox animated series such as Futurama, The Simpsons and American Dad!, the show employs the "changing element" running gag in its opening credits. The gag present on Bob's Burgers involves the store located to the right of the restaurant, which has a new, humorously named client in every episode (such as "Betty's Machetes" in "Purple Rain-Union"). Additionally, beginning with Season 2, the pest control van in the sequence has the name of a different company on each episode; the van read "Rat's all Folks! Exterminators" on all episodes of Season 1. On certain episodes, an element is changed for a special night (a flash frame saying "HAPPY HALLOWEEN" was shown during the title sequence of "Fort Night").
The credits sequence of Bob's Burgers often features the Belcher family at work. The scene is the kitchen of Bob's Burgers drawn with a black outline over a white background, with the credits off to the right hand side.
The sequence consists of Bob cooking a burger and Louise and Tina doing prep. Bob places the burger on the plate for Louise to give to Linda, who takes it from the window, and a few seconds later Gene walks through the kitchen wearing his burger costume.
Although the kitchen scene is still the main closing sequence the show uses, beginning in season two the producers began to use different elements from the show in the credits. Some examples:
In "Ear-sy Rider", the kids ride their bikes down a highway.
In "Full Bars", Bob and Linda fool around in the kitchen in their Halloween costumes.
In "An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal", Linda performs a song she came up with for Thanksgiving, and annoys Bob with it while he is trying to work.
In "Broadcast Wagstaff School News", Gene, who was given a makeover to resemble Bob, stands next to Bob at the grill. They shoot each other disapproving looks.
In "O.T.: The Outside Toilet", the family works while Gene hugs the titular toilet.
In "The Belchies", "Topsy", and "It Snakes a Village", as well as some other episodes, an extended musical ending revisiting a song or sequence from earlier closes the show.
Other times, the scene will play out as usual, but with something from the episode going on in the background, etc. For instance:
In "Moody Foodie", deli owner Reggie dances around like Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs.
In "Bad Tina" and "Seaplane!", Tina performs actions she imagined herself doing during the course of the episode.
In "Burgerboss", the entire scene is animated to look like a retro 8-bit video game.
In "Nude Beach", several customers are nudists from the aforementioned beach.
In "The Equestranauts", Bob works while wearing his Equestranaut costume, Tina plays with one of her Equestranaut toys, and the theme to the fictional television series the episode is based on plays over the end credits.
In "Best Burger", everybody except Bob has chocolate covering their faces, implying that they all went to the "hot fudge car wash" at the food festival where most of the episode took place.
Every episode features one or more "Today's Special" burgers on a chalk board on the wall behind the counter. The name of the special is usually a play on words that indicates what comes on the burger (ex.: "It's Fun to Eat at the rYe M C A Burger": Comes with Rye, Mustard, Cheese, and Avocado).
Other "Special" burgers are also mentioned by the family without being written on their chalkboard. The joke is often that the play on words is overly complex or obscure.
My thoughts:
Just to start: I love the show. It's pretty funny and entertaining, although, in my own opinion, the first four episodes weren't that great. It got a lot better after that, as they "found their comedic feet" so to say. The first 4 seasons are available on Netflix, and the entire series is available on Hulu-- And it's currently playing on Adult Swim, along with getting a DVD release of the first 4 seasons, if you're not into streaming.
If you're going to start on the series, I recommend starting with the second season, as it's my personal favorite, and it's when they started the "Changing element" running gags.
A lot of the jokes are really funny, although, when a joke falls flat in this series-- It falls. Hard. Although it's not too often, when a joke isn't funny, it usually makes you feel really awkward, or uncomfortable. But overlooking that, it's a really good show.
tl;dr: I give the show a 8.5/10. It's not perfect, but it's still pretty good.
