Season 5 has seen the focus of Bob’s Burgers shift from an adult perspective to parent Bob and Linda. While these changes have resulted in many good episodes, this is not one of them. Not bad at all, it is clearly far from the best 22 minutes produced. My main criticism of this episode is the disconnect between the kids’s storyline and Bob and Linda’s date night storyline (even although it provides one of the ending’s biggest credits, “Date Night”). This season really started to remind later episodes of Futurama, where it turned into the excuse for plenty of low hanging fruit jokes, fortunately through the power of comedy this episode was far from a disaster.
We started the evening with Bob and Linda going to their aforementioned Date Night (when did we get our Bob’s Burgers album ????) and Tina showing a little growth asking for money in exchange for her services as babysitter. They slowly but certainly let the children on this show grow up, although not too fast. Tina, at all times a beta, has to interrupt Louse and Gene; so two steps forward and one step back (hey, that’s progress at least).
Louise is in command of her class Chinchilla for the night, Princess Little-Pittle, and predictably loses her pet virtually instantly when Wayne (Chess’ brother and voiced by the always-amazing Andy Richter) comes in and leaves the front door open. Wayne is another strong individual like Louise and at first they bicker but as the adventure progresses they realize they’re more similar to each apart from they thought. This is obviously never said out loud but is underscored by actions and conversations over the years. My personal favourite is their discussion of how fourth graders shouldn’t be assigned to name a class pet or determine the sex of the animal, thanks for giving me the term “ass”, I will cherish this until the end of my days.
My biggest problem with this episode is that the kids’s plot feels like an excuse to carry the children from one scenario to the next. First, they end up in an arcade and then they’ve to go to Tammy’s, which leads them to a highschool party (I did not understand how funny it was to fart through the window until this episode) and eventually a roller rink where Louise and Wayne put themselves in harm’s way to save Princess Little-Pittle. In the end, Louise grew up a bit and realized her needs did not at all times come first and ended up letting Wayne take care of Chinchilla.
Bob and Linda’s date night predictably goes awry when Bob chooses an especially difficult bar trivia contest. They end up getting drunk and Linda steals the answer sheet so “Date Night at the Round Table” can win. If this is not the first time you have turned on the TV, you possibly understand how it is going to end. They would get caught and one of them would go on to a speech how it did not matter that they lost because they loved one another and had so much fun. Again it isn’t the worst episode but it starts to show a crack in season 5’s main formula.
