Comics Review: Bob’s Burgers Ongoing #4

Spoilers Below:

“Tina’s Erotic Friend Fiction Presents: Tinablanca”

This story was basically Casablanca, but with Tina in Humphrey Bogart’s role, Jimmy Jr. in Ingrid Bergman’s role, and Zeke in Paul Henreid’s. If you don’t know what any of that means, you should really just watch the film.

“Bizarre Bazaar”

While shopping at the local farmers market, Louise and Bob bought some magic pineapples from a mysterious vendor. They incorporated them into a Burger of the Day, but when the demand soared and the supply dwindled, customers began to get angry. Luckily, the day ended, the spell was broken, and Bob’s went back to barely having enough customers to pay the rent.

“Gene’s Rhymey Rhymes That Could One Day Be Songs: Genederella Part II”

The conclusion of Part 1. Genederella fled at her 9:00 curfew, and the prince spent the next day looking for her by matching a forgotten keyboard with its owner.

Best Bits:

1) Tina’s honest café was called Tina’s – An Honest Café.

2) “Arrests are crazy, am I right?”

3) Zeke: “Hey, cool story. I’m just gonna finish listening to it over here.” I gotta use that line.

4) Burger of the Day: You’ll Pine-Apple for this Burger.

5) Bob: “We did it! Everyone’s leaving!” / Gene: “Just the way we like it!”

If you can’t tell by the brevity of my summary, I really dig Casablanca. There are plenty of intriguing and likable characters (Peter Lorre is one of my favorites of the whole era) and it’s a sweet but sad story about love and life in WWII. Flipping the genders and replacing Rick with Tina and Ilsa with J-Ju is a brilliant move. The writers easily could have turned Rick into Jimmy Jr., but giving Tina the bigger and more powerful role was the correct call.

The one drawback of Casablanca is the dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic in the film, but it has those old school, obviously-scripted lines that work for the tale, but not in real life. Bob’s took the opportunity to exploit this by mimicking lines, and then correcting them to add some humorous realism not found in the original. This was easily the best segment of Issue #4.

The second was pretty solid as well, and if it wasn’t for the magical elements, could probably have made a good TV episode. Perhaps if they did an explanation that proved why the pineapple burgers were actually so popular, it could be adapted.

The writing situation was interesting with this one. It was good, but it didn’t quite come alive on the page. It would succeed on TV though, because there were so many characters involved, who happen to be voiced by an extremely talented cast. So while it didn’t play exceptionally well, it was still true to the Bob’s Burgers name.

As for the last segment, I really could have done without it. I found the Cinderella story with Gene as an amusing idea, but it could have been wrapped up in a single issue – there was no need to make this one a two-parter.

I’m really debating whether or not this was a step up from last week, or just as good. The middle and last segments were about on par with each other, but I suppose I’d give a slight edge to this issue’s first segment. Maybe I’m just a sucker for Casablanca, but I thought it really worked.