The best show you are not watching is Bob’s Burgers. I can honestly say that there is not a show on televison that makes me laugh as hard as The Belcher Family makes me laugh. I do have to say Archer is a close second but the voice actor who does the voice for Bob Belcher and Sterling Archer is the same fellow, H. Jon Benjamin. I’ll share with you a little about Bob’s Burgers and myself; I’m a 20-year-old college student and I watch this show EVERY Sunday with my mom, who is 61 years old. We both laugh hysterically at this show.
The show is set up similar to say, The Simpsons, except it’s a more “functional” family. The family consist of Bob the father, Linda the mother, Tina the oldest daughter who is going through awkwardly going through puberty, Gene the middle child and only son, and finally Louise the youngest and most entertaining Belcher. The family all works together at a burger joint that’s not all that successful.
I think the dynamic between the characters is the best part of this show, each character brings something different, yet hilarious to the table. Bob is your typical T.V. father, he’s not the brightest guy but he really tries his best to hold this family together. He loves his dive restaurant and will do anything to keep it running. One of my personal favorite Bob moments was when he decided to get a Food Truck and get Bob’s Burgers mobile. It was NOT as successful as it sounds. My absolute favorite quote from this show was actually one from Bob, “Listen, you’re my children and I love you but you’re all terrible at what you do here and I feel like I should tell you, I’d fire all of you if I could.”
Linda is also your typical mother figure. She’s sweet and she truly loves her family. She’ll do anything for them and she makes that known through out the show. Linda is also a very creative character from running a terrible dinner theater in the restaurant, to having some serious road rage. Linda is such a giving character, she once asked Bob to have a “pretend affair” with her sister Gayle just to be able to raise Gail’s self esteem. One of my favorite Linda quotes has got to be “Well, I may have slipped a penis pill in your casserole. Surprise!”
Tina is our next character in the family tree, and she’s a little weird. She’s your typical thirteen-year-old girl but puberty isn’t exactly being her friend. Tina lacks A LOT of emotion, but she makes up for that with her extremely high sexual drive. She kind of has a thing for zombies, after all she does write erotic zombie fan fiction, and yes, it’s as awkward as it sounds. Besides her fetish for zombies, she is really into butts. It’s all she can think about most of the time. My favorite Tina quote is a reoccurring one when she becomes nervous or frightened “uhhhhhhhhhhhh” and it’s very monotone.
My favorite character is Gene, who also just happens to be the most annoying person on the show, which is similar to any other eleven year old you know in real life. Gene just happens to be an aspiring musician who lives to drive everyone around him crazy with the use of an electronic keyboard or a megaphone. Most of the time his music consists of entertaining fart sounds accompanied by prerecorded piano riffs. One of my favorite Gene moments is when he dates the most annoying girl at Wagstaff Middle School, he then plans on breaking up with her, until he learns that her father is a successful song-jingle writer and could springboard Gene’s own career. (Another great episode is when Gene starts dressing and acting like Bob because he wants to embrace his destiny.) Gene actually has two quotes that crack me up every time I think about them, the first being “Channel Six News, they’ll finger anything with a pulse!” and the second being “There’s nothing wieners hate more than hot sauce. I learned that the hard way.” In every episode there is at least one quote from Gene that is a goldmine of laughter.
The final character, and the show wouldn’t be the same with out her, is the “delightful” Louise. Louise just happens to be an odd little nine year old. Now, I don’t have kids so I don’t know how accurate this show is, but I imagine all nine year olds are pretty odd little people. Louise is always wearing her punk bunny ears hat (we never see her without it on, except in the episode that it’s stolen; but she wears a hoodie until she gets it back. She also uses a biker gang to terrorize the bully who stole it) and Louise is always into mischief. Louise spends most of her time trying to get her siblings to do her bidding and just annoying her father Bob. Louise and Linda have a fairly sweet mother-daughter dynamic, though they are complete opposite personalities. A fun little fact about the show is that Louise is the only main character on the show to NOT be voiced by a man.
Along side of Gene, I think Louise has some of the best quotes of the show, just a few of them being “I hope they’re using protection because I am not taking care of that baby”, “She’s so boring if she was a spice, she would be flour. And if she was a book, she’d be two books!” and a quote between both Louise and Gene,
Louise: “Running this restaurant should be easier. We watched mom and dad fail at running this restaurant for years.”
Gene: “They make failing look so easy.”
The show also consists of a running gag of different named burgers in each episode. In one episode, the family thinks a child molester is eating in the restaurant and Louise drops this little quote, “Hello and welcome to Bob’s Burgers. The burger of the day is the child molester, it comes with candy.”
Besides the family, some of the secondary characters are hilarious. You have the families neighbor Mort who is a mortician who owns a crematorium next door to the restaurant, not very appetizing is it? Bob’s best friend, named Teddy, frequents the restaurant and is a plumber that tries to be an uncle to the kids every chance he gets. There are tons of other characters that are hilarious (one is voiced by Aziz Ansari and others by Laura and Sarah Silverman), but you should watch the show for yourself on FOX, Sundays at 7/6c!