My husband and I watch it religiously. The show’s humor is very junior high school for me but after spending over a decade raising a child I suppose that’s as close as I get to sophisticated humor anymore. The Gene’s hairy mole thing last week cracked me up. It’s all very junior high school and I find that friggin funny now at least once a week.
Female, forties, married, children, working class background probably upper middle class by now, Jewish.
Seasons 2 and 3 are “Amazon On Demand”, the way they sell seasons 3 and 4 of The Cleveland Show - no special features; just the episodes.
Fox just announced that the show has been renewed for next season. Not surprising, as Fox doesn’t really have anything to take its place, especially if Bordertown joins Murder Police on the list of “animated zero-hit wonders”.
Personally, I think the kids are the stars of the show (and I’m probably not alone, considering that the Emmy-winning episode, “Mazel T’ina”, kept Bob and Linda in the background as much as possible).
Seriously, from what I understand, people enjoy Bob’s Burgers for the same reason the people who hate it, hate it. I hate it. It’s poorly animated (which I can actually look past, I don’t care so much about that), the characters never develop, the humor is designed for children despite being on Adult Swim, the character’s are poorly voiced, and the only semi-redeemable character is the girl who is voiced by a guy (I don’t know her name). I got stoned after work, drank 4 hard ciders, and gave this show a good try…I didn’t laugh once. After the third episode I decided to watch something good. I’d rather watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica on repeat for a year than watch another episode. Mainly because I feel like I’d be wasting the same amount emotional time doing either of those. I just wish my partner didn’t like Bob’s Burgers. If I could change one thing, that would be it.
I don’t care if Velma is a lesbian. She’s HOT!!! :o
Perhaps you could find something else to occupy your time during that twenty minutes?
Have you tried British comedy? I’ve been enjoying Vicious. Then again, I love Bob’s Burgers because it’s just a simple silly comedy I can watch with my 10 year old.
Wow, where to even begin:
[ul]
[li]It is ***NOT ***poorly animated, it is actually high quality animation. It just has a definite & unique (and very good) style, like South Park. [/li][li]The characters are some of the most well developed of any animated sitcom, you just haven’t given it a chance.[/li][li]The humor is ***NOT ***designed for children, it’s a very high-brow, character-driven show (with occasional low-brow elements).[/li][li]The voice acting is also one of the best in animation. Kristen Schaal’s performance as Louise alone is worth watching it for.[/li][li]All the family characters are decent, loving human beings. That’s kinda the point of the show.[/li][/ul]
No offense, but Bob’s Burgers is the antithesis of stoner humor. It has it’s roots in Dr. Katz and Home Movies, two other excellent animated series.
I’m not sure I would describe Louise as a “decent, loving human being.” She’s more of an opportunistic sociopath, although they have softened her character over time. I’ll give her credit for standing up for her family members when they come under attack from outsiders, but it’s unclear whether she does it out of love or territoriality. I think she’s a great character, though.
One thing I like about the show is that Bob is actually good at what he does. They often show characters being surprised by how tasty his burgers are. The writers haven’t fallen into the easy gag of making Bob an incompetent schmuck. Bob is a mostly normal guy who has found something he can do well, but is limited by the insanity and corruption of the people around him. In some ways, Bob is like Hank Hill.
I think the show is very good at avoiding and subverting sitcom cliches in general. They never go for the cheap joke at the expense of their characters.
I don’t think Louise is a sociopath, though she clearly can become a little unhinged at times. I think the episode where the high school kid stole her bunny ears really spelled out her personality well. When pushed too far she will definitely push back. She admitted that going to that boy’s parents was ‘tattling’ but she was out of options so she did it anyway. As far as getting the biker gang to threaten him, well, yeah, she didn’t seem to be too concerned whether they were actually going to ‘cut him’ or not, but I like to think the biker guy just knew the kid was lying and that this was the way to get him to finally give her bunny ears back.
Mostly Louise is just very mature for her age. She knows how adults think, and more importantly she knows how adults think little kids like her are supposed to think, and she uses her knowledge of this to manipulate adults (and other kids) for her own amusement. Gene is a perfect mix of Bob & Linda. He’s not as smart as Louise but he’s as constantly upbeat as Linda, so he’s the perfect foil for Louise, going along with her schemes just for the fun of it (but usually stopping short when he knows he should). Sometimes street-smart adults, like Gary Cole’s detective or the stolen toilet guy or often Kevin Kline’s Mr. Fischoeder, will immediately see thru Louise’s scams and not fall for them. In fact because Fischoeder is similarly smart & manipulative he will often scam Louise right back.
And I agree that the show shares King of the Hill’s realism in not going for sitcom or cartoon ‘schtick’, but making the humor genuine. It’s what makes both series a cut above others.
This.
I think Louise is hilarious, and the dad is a competent human being, but has the same air of “how did I end up here with these crazy people?” that my stepfather used to have sometimes.
As far as background: I watch way too many cartoons for a respectable 45-year-old, educated, middle-class woman whose undergrad degree was in English Literature.
You should have gone to Michigan State for undergrad then. I don’t know if the popular culture concentration existed for the English degree existed at the point I was there. There was a class in comics and cartoon IIRC.
The Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection existed at that point, although I’m not sure if it was named after Professor Nye yet.
Of course actual study of it then might wring some of the simple enjoyment out of it. 
I think that’s sort of the joke. Every 9 year old is a socio-path, Louise is just smarter than your average 9 year-old, so her temper tantrums take the form of complicated revenge schemes.
But in any case, there are plenty of episodes that show she’s attached to her family members, when she isn’t messing with them.
It’s also that Louise is mostly bluster. She loves and even admires her Dad intensely but does not want to admit it to him. She’d rather have had her love of holding the puppies in the pet store have stayed with just Mom. But she does not tolerate being bullied or what she sees as injustice will use her smarts to fight back no matter how stacked the odds are against her. And she is secure enough in who she is that she’d just rather not deal with school place social absurdities.
It’s on my short list of cartoons I watch regularly. Up there with Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, and Adventure Time.
Sorry for raising this zombie, but it was the most recent thread I could find about this show. I just started watching on Netflix a couple weeks ago, and I’m up to S4, Ep10. Since the OP asked and others responded: 50YO male, recently married for the first time, so no kids. And, of course, I’m a career cook, as most of you know by now.
I’m completely loving everything about this show. I’ll mention that my boss, the Executive Chef, and one of the other cooks I work with both also love the show. Both the kitchen work and the kitchen equipment are, for the most part, accurately depicted, which I like. The episode in which Hugo cited the restaurant for improper handwashing (or rather, lack of “handwashing certification”) convinced me that somebody writing the show must have extensive restaurant experience; the brief clip we saw of the handwashing training video was a wonderful mockery of the actual elaborate but impractical procedures the health code regulation writers have come up with. (Seriously, if every cook followed, to the letter, the handwashing + gloves procedures the health department prescribes, y’all would be waiting an hour for your meals in restaurants.)
Bob is great, and he’s a great example of why most restaurants fail: You might be a great, talented cook, but if you don’t have the “business sense”, it’s not going to work. This is emphasized in one episode where we see that Linda handles the books … as if she were managing a household budget, and when Bob has to temporarily handle that part, he has no clue. Like a lot of experienced cooks, I’d love to have my own restaurant, but I recognize my lack of business savvy. If I did have the resources to open my own place, I would also hire a competent manager.
I was going to say that she’s “self-actualized” at an early age. She seems to embrace the idea that she has no limits, that she can accomplish anything she sets her mind to (consequences be damned).
That, combined with the glimpses the show has given that indicate that Louise is very close to her father and truly admires him — she’s more than just “Daddy’s little girl” — it’s pretty clear that, at some point in the future, she’s going to take over the family business. While Bob is pretty much just “carrying on the tradition” passed down from his father, Louise is the one who is going to carry it on and be successful at it.
Linda, I think, is the show’s “tragic” character. To a certain extent, she seems like the type of mother who has read too many parenting books, and has a rather rigid idea of how the mother-child relationship should work, especially regarding her daughters — she thinks their childhoods should be just like hers, that they should enjoy the same things, and is frustrated that they’re not/don’t. She strikes me as somebody who has put her own hopes and dreams for herself on the back burner, and is trying to live them vicariously through her daughters … and her daughters aren’t cooperating. Louise likes Daddy better, and Tina is actually more like Bob than Linda. Linda appears completely oblivious to the fact that Gene, her son, is more like her, and is quite obviously very talented in many of the same areas she is/was/wished to be.
One thing I will say about this show is that a bit unusually it has actually gotten a bit better every season ( IMHO obviously ). It started out amusing, but only okay and I didn’t pay much attention to it. These days it is on my much watch list, even if every episode isn’t stellar. Eventually all shows tail off, but seasons 3 - 6 of this one were quite strong and so far season 7 seems to be trucking right along. The Simpsons made it 8 or 9 before starting to regress, Archer arguably far fewer, so I’m curious to see how Bob’s fares.
This is definitely part of the appeal. The Belchers are quirky as hell, but they all go beyond just loving each other to actually liking and looking out for each other, which is a nice dynamic to see.
One of my favorite moments from the show was an almost throw-away line. The parents were watching the kids perform a musical at school (maybe the DieHard/Working Girl mashup??) where Bob says, sounding astonished “Wait, did Gene write this?”
I think it was the science fair episode, where Gene wrote the duet between Thomas Edison and Topsy the Elephant.
Yeah, Gene strikes me as a borderline prodigy, but nobody notices it behind his typical 11-year-old-boy behavior. It doesn’t appear that he’s had any kind of formal art or music training, but he’s shown to have a very creative mind and the eyes & ears to know what’s good and aesthetically pleasing (like his “tablescaping”). With the music stuff, it took his having access to adults who actually had the talent to perform his music properly (Gayle and Mr. Fischoeder) instead of trying to get Tina to sing it, or singing it himself (it’s actually not unheard of for good instrumentalists/songwriters to not actually be able to sing well - Alex Lifeson of Rush is a good example). Plus, I think he’s actually being limited quite a bit by having only that toy synthesizer to work with.
This is a Good Show.
I like the characters, I like that they all like and love each other. I like Tina’s troll nature, and I love the way they show Louise coming into her sexuality - and being entranced and afraid and weirded out about it, which is pretty damn accurate IIRC. Most of the time teenage girls on sitcoms are portrayed either as Kelly-Bundy-Promiscuous-Airhead types or with the “puppy love” crushes. Louise definitely has crushes, but she’s also really into admiring/wanting to touch her crushes’ butts…and she’s also very much not ready for anything else. The parents don’t always understand their children, but they do their best to support them in their interests as best as they can.
I think you flipped Tina and Louise ( hah! I just got that! ) ;). Louise = perpetually nine year-old hellion who’s only crush so far has been Boo Boo ( which she sublimated into wanting to slap the crap out of him, appropriately enough ) and perhaps more casually and unknowingly her quasi-bestie, Regular-Sized Rudy. Tina = perpetually awkward twelve year-old who is obsessed with butts.
I think the music in the show is surprisingly good.