Bob's Burgers: Season 1 (2011-2011)
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Reviews Counted: 25
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 11
A modestly immature workplace cartoon, not without potential, that needs to work on finding its rhythm.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 7
A modestly immature workplace cartoon, not without potential, that needs to work on finding its rhythm.
Season Info
This animated sitcom follows the escapades of third-generation hamburger restaurateur Bob Belcher (voice of H. Jon Benjamin), who always seems to be in a financial pickle, and his quirky family, which includes his perpetually perky missus, Linda (John Roberts), and three children. The youngest is Louise (Kristen Schaal), who sports a pink bunny-ears hat; middle child Gene (Eugene Mirman) likes to don the store's burger-and-bun mascot uniform; and eldest daughter, Tina (Dan Mintz), is a nervous
Network: FOX
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Episodes
Human Flesh
In the series premiere episode, Bob rallies the team to cook up some business, so he sends middle child Gene to push samples in the streets, eldest daughter Tina to work the grill and youngest daughter Louise to staff the counter. The day takes an unexpected turn when the health inspector pays a visit because of a little rumor Louise started during "show and tell" at school.
Crawl Space
When Bob learns that Linda's mother is coming for a visit, he wants nothing to do with it. Linda has been cracking the whip at home, making sure every shelf has been dusted and every bed has been made. When she discovers a leak in the roof, she sends Bob to fix it, but he gets stuck in a wall, leaving Linda and the kids to entertain their guests and run the restaurant.
Sacred Cow
When a controversial documentary filmmaker places a live cow outside of the family restaurant to make a statement, Bob is livid when it starts to scare away customers. However, to everyone's surprise, Bob treats the cow like a member of the family.
Sexy Dance Fighting
When Tina develops a crush on the new martial arts instructor in town, she joins the class and ends up shirking her responsibilities at the restaurant. Bob finds out what's going on and decides to take matters into his own hands.
Hamburger Dinner Theater
Bob reluctantly lets Linda and the kids stage a musical murder mystery dinner theater in the restaurant, but on opening night, an abrupt interruption changes the play's creative direction.
Sheesh! Cab, Bob?
Tina is desperate to get her first kiss at her 13th birthday party. But after Louise breaks the deep fryer, Bob takes a second job as a late-night cab driver to pay for Tina's party. Things keep getting worse for Bob when the parents of Tina's crush refuse to let their son attend the party, and Bob has to do everything in his power to save his daughter's big day.
Bed & Breakfast
With a long weekend approaching, Linda sees an opportunity to capitalize on the tourist traffic by starting a bed and breakfast. But when the reservations are filled by some shady character, Louise plants listening devices all over the house to keep an ear on what's happening.
Art Crawl
When Linda asks Bob to let her sister hang her paintings in the restaurant for Art Week, Bob finds he's forced to contend with the city's Art Council, a shady troop of intimidating old ladies who control the art exhibited around town. Meanwhile, Louise, Gene and Tina are thrilled by all the attention their own art receives in the restaurant.
Spaghetti Western and Meatballs
When Bob and Gene start watching Spaghetti Western films, they wind up alienating Louise. As Gene takes pointers from the films on how to deal with his archrival at school, Tina takes out her aggression and fights her way through a conflict-resolution program.
Burger War
When Bob's eccentric landlord, Mr. Fischoeder (guest voice Kevin Kline), pays the family a visit, he informs Bob that his rival across the street, Jimmy Pesto of Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria, wants to take over Bob's lease so that he can expand his gift shop. With little time and not enough money, the Belcher family must cook up some business or luck to save the restaurant.
Weekend at Mort's
Bob and his family are forced to spend the weekend at Mort the Mortician's (guest voice Andy Kindler) while the restaurant is being de-molded. Linda and Bob double date with Mort and a female mortician he meets online (guest voice Amy Sedaris) while Tina babysits Gene and Louise in Mort's crematorium.
Lobsterfest
After the town's annual Lobsterfest is cancelled by a storm, Bob defiantly opens his doors for a festive celebration. When he wakes the next morning, Bob finds the restaurant in disarray and that the town has spurned him, but Bob won't let that deter him from further involvement in the celebratory weekend.
Torpedo
When Bob's hero, a washed-up baseball player named Torpedo Jones (guest voice Robert Ben Garant), starts pitching for the local minor league team. Torpedo befriends Bob, but the dark underbelly of minor league baseball threatens to corrupt the Belchers.
Critic Reviews for Bob's Burgers: Season 1
Bob's Burgers arrives cold, with a touch of E. coli. Beware.
Bob's Burgers has a more sharply offbeat sensibility than its more pop-culture rooted Sunday night neighbors, veering between absurd, endearing, and crude.
Family Guy already has the vulgar stuff covered - and in a much funnier way.
Pointlessly vulgar and derivatively dull.
Apart from the fact that characters look funny, the comedy is primarily verbal: You could just as easily film the script with live actors.
Now and then it does land on something amusing, but the ratio of hit-to-miss is too low to sustain the show.
The deadpan deliveries of its principal characters can be very moderately amusing at times. But in the end, you probably won't want fries with this one.
Being tasteless doesn't mean Bob's Burgers is completely devoid of flavor, but the show too often falls on the wrong side of that entertaining/annoying divide.
The show, in its quest to deliver gags at a rapid pace, depends a bit too heavily on easy low humor.
As with any fast food, the bulk of Bob's Burgers is pleasant filler. You'll probably be too tired to switch the channel after The Simpsons, so you might as well lay there and enjoy it.
Although the show lacks the frenzied cadence of the aforementioned Archer, the depth of Bob's Burgers's relationships holds more promise.
Bob's Burgers has a lackadaisical vibe; its humor, no matter how anarchic, slides by in a deadpan monotone.
What Bob's Burgers doesn't quite have yet is a rhythm and flow of its own.
The Adult Swim aesthetic has gone prime time.
Maybe it's just that it's set in a restaurant, but when the first two jokes turned out to involve farting and crotch itch, I lost my appetite for more.
This crudely mean-spirited cringe of a show isn't even medium well-done, and here's this customer's tip: Avoid at all costs.
This animated comedy is truly well done.
I'm very impressed by how the show manages to be simultaneously weird and heart-warming without one half undercutting the others.
It's almost a non-premise sitcom, whose main attraction is how well the vocal actors bounce its digressive dialogue off each other.
Bob's Burgers might be meatier if it gave us some reason to watch these characters. The title isn't the only thing that feels generic.
There's something undeniably appealing about Bob's Burgers, even as it feels like a work in progress.
I didn't hate the show, it just didn't make me laugh, which is a bad thing for an animated comedy like this.
We've seen hundreds of workplace comedies before, but the unique twist of having young children involved is a potential comedy goldmine.
Fox may have found another great family to move in next door to the Simpsons, Hills, and Griffins.
The results are funny - very funny, actually, if you don't mind unabashed tastelessness and a lack of plot.
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