Review: Bob’s Burgers ‘The Unnatural’

Spoilers Below

Gene’s getting ready to play baseball for the first time in a rec league while Bob buys an espresso machine for the restaurant that Tina seems to get addicted to right away and causes her to go crazy. Speaking of crazy, it was probably nuts to let Gene try baseball because he is a mess! He can’t hit, catch, throw, and soon he starts to hate it.  Gene wants to quit, but Linda won’t let him and as such she volunteers Bob to teach him. First lesson, a friendly father-son catch turns into a garbage throwing affair. To help, Linda opts to sign Gene up to this really awesome baseball camp. Its SO awesome its ran by a guy named Deuce that charges $500 for the sessions.  Bob doesn’t have the money, so Linda tries to sell her nick knacks, but the pawn broker wants nothing to do with him. So what does she do? She steals Bob’s new espresso machine and decides to sell that instead!

Thanks to his mom, Gene starts his first day at baseball camp, but this guy doesn’t seem right.  Tina isn’t feeling right either due to the fact that Linda sold the espresso machine, but when Bob finds out that its gone he freaks out.  Tina does, too! So much so she rips into Jimmy Jr of whom tells all about the baseball camp.  Speaking of the camp Deuce gets a phone call and has to bring the kids to yell at his land lord.  Thankfully, Bob gets the full story from Linda, but when they go to the baseball field none of the kids nor Deuce are around.  Bob shows up to the motel with the rest of the Belchers, and he means business!! Bob challenges Deuce to a hit contest where if Gene misses, Deuce has to give the money back, if he hits it Bob loses his cash. Well of course, Gene hits the first pitch and Deuce takes off despite Bob trying to argue the call. The family realizes Gene got better, and with no espresso machine Tina can’t get her fix…or can she??

Tina’s plot was every addiction story ever, but with the way these writers interweave the importance of her addiction with the underlying main story line it makes even generic stories seam important. Bob’s Burgers may have the best writing staff in animated television save for maybe Regular Show, and it shows. Baseball plots?? Been there, done that! But, again instead of having the main protagonist hit the winning home run or learn some sort of silly lesson, the writers come up with a wildly original way of presenting pretty standard plot devices. This show always seems to get awesome guest voices too, and that again lends itself this week with Rob Huebel checking in as Deuce. Its ironic this episode is called ‘The Unnatural’, because the cast, writers, animators, and crew make this show seem pretty natural after three seasons. We will go into more detail next week with a Season Review and see if we thought Season 3 comes off scoring better than the second season.