Review: Bob’s Burgers ‘A River Runs Through It’

Spoilers Below

The Belchers are goin’ camping! The ranger tries to tell the gang to mind their manners when parking, but he doesn’t help in terms of putting minds at ease. The crew gets to their settlement, but Bob’s the only one who wants to live the TRUE camping life style. The rest of the peeps run into this family with an RV that has packed like they are on a trip, not like Bob who has packed…well…nothing. While the rest of the Belchers eat delicious chili, Bob gets a stubborn fish meal. Later that night, Bob coerces Linda into skinny dipping in the river but he gets sick and tries to go to the bathroom but instead he slips and sends both him and his wife running down the river.

With the kids back at camp, Bob and Linda are flowing down the river really, really fast but they eventually find land where Bob shits. The duo end up taking the walk back to their camp and get back to the kids whom are wondering where their parents are. To try and find them, Louise, Gene, and Tina grab river tubes and start floating. Bob and Linda are now officially lost but its OK because we have a sing-a-long montage. Afterwards, the parents are going nuts and the ids are trying to consult different books so that they can survive in the wilderness. In any case, the kids actually look to be doing a better job at going than anything the parents are doing but not for long!

The kids run into another Thundergirl troupe, but Louise and Tina start talking shit instead of asking for help. The counselor seems to be trying to convince them to stay regardless, but Tina renounces her association with the troupe. Meanwhile, Bob’s getting sick as shit so Linda takes over as ‘Nature Master’ , but a disagreement takes place and the two split. Bob goes off and gets eaten by squirrels while Linda finds Mt. Wang.

Linda comes and saves Bob, but its cool they get back to camp where the RV peeps are pissed that the kids took their tubes. The one guy gets pissed and throws up some Bear mace. The two try to create a diversion to escape a ritual to join them in living in the woods, but they can’t but the kids are back and they break up the weirdness with…BEES!!! BEES EVERYWHERE!!!!

I was a little worried that this episode was going to be all about dad trying to look macho for his family in the woods which has been done a thousand times over. Some of that did indeed show up in the episode and the obligatory ‘the wife was right the whole time’ definitely shows up, but Louise, Gene, and Tina are the best at working together as it usually leads to pretty awesome results. I love John Michael Higgins and I thought he was great as the RV guy as the character definitely adds to the list of weird guys that John has played in his career.