Bob’s Burgers came back this week at a new time, after switching time slots with Mulaney. Bob’s now airs at 9:30, following Family Guy, and Mulaney, which has been lacking in ratings, was moved to 7:30.
With this fifth season of Bob’s Burgers, it feels as if it isn’t starting off as strong as many watchers of the show would hope. The first episode, though it included all of what makes Bob’s Burgers wacky and fun, was lackluster in the plot. The second episode was a little bit more exciting (then again, what Tina-centered episode isn’t?) but still didn’t deliver anything wildly funny. The third episode of season 5, “Friends With Burger-fits,” while better than the season’s opening episode, still lacked in the excitement and funny moments that have made the show a big hit since it premiered in 2011.
This episode features the Belcher kids doing what they do best: coming up with crazy ideas, which starts off with attempting to freeze one of Gene’s farts in a jar. When stashing the jar in the basement’s walk-in freezer doesn’t yield the results the kids hoped for (a “fart-sicle”), they come up with the idea to turn down the freezer’s temperature and dump a bunch of water on to the ground and freeze it. They invite their neighborhood kids over, and begin fighting one another before Linda finds the kids pushing one another in the walk-in, Linda and the kids plan a “Freezerdome,” whose prize is a crudely made champion belt.
Louise makes it to the final round against Zeke after easily pushing “regular-sized” Rudy down and cheating against Gene, convincing Gene to sit on the ground without them having to actually having to push one another around. This is where we see the classic “in the end, family is everything” sentiment of Bob’s Burgers when Gene helps Louise cheat by opening the fart jar in Zeke’s face and saying, “You might have beaten me Louise, but blood is thicker than ice- but not actually”, disorienting Zeke and allowing Louise to easily push Zeke to the ground and win the Freezerdome.
What makes this so funny is how willing Linda is to participate in her kid’s shenanigans. Her unconditional devotion to her family is even expressed earlier in the episode when Bob wakes up from a dream, saying, “I’m killing Teddy!” and Linda, in her half-asleep stupor thinks Bob means he’s literally going to kill Teddy, and immediately begins plotting how the family is going to go on the run. Bob responds with, “Good god Linda, you had all that ready?” and Linda responds with, “What? I’m just being supportive,” before falling back to sleep. It’s one of those little things that stands out in the episode- something that mixes sweet and strange together.
What the episode is centered around, however, is Bob and Teddy’s relationship. A little less than a minute in to the episode, we see Teddy come in to the family restaurant, saying that he just came from a doctor’s appointment. His doctor tells him that, unless he changes his eating habits, he’ll die. Concerned about Teddy’s health, Bob ends up at a stuntman boot camp, trying to get Teddy back in to shape after Bob has decided that he can’t feed Teddy his burgers anymore. It’s one of those typical “friend trying to help a friend” episodes, although Bob claims that Teddy isn't really his best friend, but his best customer.
Like most Bob’s Burgers episodes, “Friend With Burger-fits” gives the watcher at least one lesson to be learned. Whether it be that you shouldn’t willingly contribute to a friend’s destruction, or that sometimes you should be willing to do whatever you can to help a friend out, you be the judge, but both are definitely main themes in the episode. Bob is conflicted between losing his best customer, or contributing to a friend’s poor health and perhaps eventual death. Obviously, Bob ends up choosing the latter. Right when the watcher thinks that Bob and Teddy’s friendship might be over when Teddy decides to make a different burger joint his new favorite place to eat, Bob comes back for Teddy to convince him not to eat the “belt buckle belly buster” - a 5 pound burger eating challenge.
After being thrown out of the establishment by the owner, Teddy goes outside to help Bob, telling him that what Bob did was the nicest things anyone has ever done for him. Bob admits that Teddy is his best friend, and the episode ends with the Belcher family and Teddy nursing Bob’s wounds on the homemade ice rink.
Again, “Friends With Burger-fits” wasn’t much of a stand out. It was classic Bob’s Burgers, but I’ll be the first to admit that, although this fifth season is only three episodes in, it’s lacking a little bit in plots. None of the episodes have really had me giggling at the ridiculousness of it. But, as someone that absolutely loves Bob’s Burgers, I know that this season can only get better, and can’t wait to see what the rest of this season has in store.
Image courtesy of INFevents.com.