Review: Bob’s Burgers “Thanks-hoarding”

It’s a Teddy-centric Thanksgiving special where Bob gets to cook the turkey dinner – twice!

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Teddy’s family is coming for Thanksgiving, so he begs the Belcher’s for some help preparing the special dinner. Once they arrive at Teddy’s house, Linda discovers a gigantic ‘storage’ room filled with odds and ends. (They’ve been to Teddy’s before, but I guess they didn’t do as much exploring.)

While Linda and the kids struggle to convince Teddy to toss the junk out, Bob struggles with preparing cooking instructions clear enough for Teddy to understand. (The improvised carrot-peeling scene between them is fun, although this kind of ad-libbed sequence seems to be becoming pretty common for the show, and might be in danger of feeling overused.)

The episode ends with the Belcher’s accepting that Teddy’s hoarding is merely a by-product of his nature. He’s a fixer, and if his hoarding isn’t hurting anyone, why try and change it? Plus, Bob gets to redeem himself by cooking a second turkey dinner – this one spatchcocked.

Our Take:

It’s neat that even eight seasons in, we’re still learning new things about the core characters that make Bob’s so great. Teddy’s addiction to hoarding is both funny and completely in-character. We even get a little backstory information to help explain why he is the way he is. (Sounds like Teddy’s parents arguing was a frequent occurrence.)

We got some solid jokes to go with the insightful character writing. When Bob learns the extent of Teddy’s hoarding problems, he quips: “Shouldn’t we call a doctor? Or a TV show?” We learn that Gene refers to gravy as ‘turkey lube’, which is what I’m going to call it from now on.

With a winning combination of revealing character quirks and funny gags, it’ll be hard to top this special holiday episode. (But the next premier will be the hour-long Christmas musical, which should also be incredible.)