Since the start of its hiatus in Dec. 2024, I have been going insane for Bob’s Burgers. The show has been running for over a decade and has truly become a staple on TV. Unlike series like Family Guy and The Simpsons, the show tries to push against the stereotypes that have been pushed: the modern family has to hate each other. This show thrives on the connection that this family has with not only themselves but the community around them. While there are some more obvious episodes like “The Amazing Rudy” and “The Plight Before Christmas”, these episodes don’t often get the recognition they deserve.
“Lindapendent Woman” (Season 3, Episode 14)
In this episode, Linda gets herself a second job to help the family with costs, a typical sitcom trope. Unlike other sitcoms, Bob’s frustration is not truly rooted in his frustration with his wife having a job, but that he misses her and makes working at the restaurant better. Their conflict comes from Bob not being able to communicate this, and I think that’s important to show. Marriages like theirs look perfect, but they take work. They take learning how to tell your partner your needs. Bob is not emotionally available, but by the end, he is able to tell Linda how much he appreciates her. On Linda’s side, she has to learn not to let her people pleasing take over. She tries to make everyone happy and ends up making herself miserable.
“Best Burger” (Season 5, Episode 5)
This one might be a surprise, but I think this is a moment for Gene. The family has coined dropping the ball as pulling a Gene. This episode shows Gene’s struggle to prove his family wrong, and Bob is confronted with his own reality of his projection onto Gene. That he might be marking Gene as the one who messes up, so that he doesn’t have to confront his own failures. This father-son dynamic reflects their differences and allows Bob to see how his actions affect his son. He doesn’t want to do what his father did to him to Gene. When Gene laments about letting his father down, Bob reassures him that he didn’t and ends up apologizing for setting him up to fail to make himself feel better.
“Sheesh! Cab, Bob?” (Season 1, Episode 6)
When is pride too much? This episode shows the extent to which Bob will go to make his family happy. Similar to “Lindapendent”, Bob picks up a second job driving a cab to help afford Tina’s dream birthday party. The only problem is Tina’s crush, the son of Bob’s nemesis, can’t come unless Bob shaves off his signature stache. Bob initinally refuses, but decides to suck up his pride to give his daughter the best birthday. Tina also goes through a journey to appreciate all the work her father has done, and capture the message about sacrifice between everyone in a family. In the end, Bob gets the last laugh by embarrassing Jimmy Pesto back, and Tina gets her slow dance. It’s a first-season episode that shows the heart from early on.
“Mommy Boy” (Season 11, Episode 9)
“Being a mom is amazing, and being your mom is even more amazing, and I’ll tell you something. I felt guilty about going to these meetings at first. I thought I needed permission to do this, but really, I just needed to give myself permission,” wise words from Linda. I remember realizing my mom was a person, because you think of your mom as, well, your mom. In this episode, Gene is upset when Linda joins a women in business club that meets during their spa time. He fabricates plans to crash the meetings, as Bob tells his son that Linda needs time to be her own person. At the end, Gene is able to understand that his mom is not just mom, she is Linda, and that doesn’t make her love him any less. She reassures him that even if she takes this time for herself, that’s okay, and he accepts that he can’t force his mom to only be mom.
The Terminalator II: Terminals of Endearment (Season 11, Episode 8)
This one, I will just briefly touch on. There’s a moment after Bob confronts Linda’s mom for stealing a phone charger. Linda’s upset he brought it up, and he says he’s bothered because Linda isn’t. She does everything for her parents and drops everything for them, only to be shafted. He wants her to stand up for herself, and she should get recognition for all that she does for her parents. Linda finds it sweet, but says she does it cause she loves them. He apologizes to her mother, but it’s a sweet moment that I had to at least call out.
“They Slug Horses, Don’t They?” (Season 15, Episode 8)
“Who even knows if we’d even be friends if we weren’t in the same family,” a line towards the end of this episode, that is the age of sitcom question when it comes to younger siblings with their older siblings. Tina and Lousie conflict over their vast differences throughout the episode, but in the fourth chapter of the episode, Aunt Gayle tells them the story of her and Linda’s childhood through a collage. Gayle’s line fits the theme of the episode more: “Being sisters can be weird to be so close but sometimes feel a million miles away from each other. Just try not to drift too far, okay?”. Having the girls go back into their room to have Louise illustrate the girls blasting off into space in different rockets, as she shows Tina her drawing of them as sisters. The girls fight the chains and bring their rockets back together, which melts into the ending credits (which everyone should watch). The girls have each other, and even if they are going into two different paths, they will always come back to each other.
The show is able to show the dynamics and feel-good moments that just make you forget they aren’t a real family. Hopefully, the rumors are true and we get the rest of season 15 this spring. If not, the show isn’t going anywhere. It got renewed for another four seasons as of April. I am excited to see what the team does next, because they’ve truly set themselves apart from the rest of the animated sitcoms.