Review: Bob’s Burgers “The Handyman Can”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
When Teddy accidentally burns down a gazebo with a poor wiring job, he finds himself losing motivation to help Bob with his walk-in light. To help cheer him up (and to make it so they can go to a trampoline park), Tina, Gene, and Louise tell Teddy three amazing stories of how he helps the Belchers fix their house into awesome stuff, like a boat, a hot air balloon, and even a giant robot.

OUR TAKE
Bob’s Burgers returns to the anthology style format, which actually used to be a bit of a tradition between Seasons 4 and 7. I’ve always been pretty fond of this sort of story style in animation, such as Futurama’s “Tales of Interest” series and I’ve liked this show’s stabs at it, though some more than others. The thing they all have in common is that the framing device typically involves the Belcher children being in a situation that requires them to each tell a story to pacify the recipient of those stories, with Tina’s being more romantic and/or horny, Gene’s being a lot more whimsical, and Louise’s referencing pop culture and being more cynical.

What I’ve appreciated here is how each framing device has been different and been pretty clever at that, but I guess the writers here were running a bit late and had to rush, since this episode is a quite blatant repeat of “The Gayle Tales” from Season 5, where the kids try to cheer up Gayle like they do here with Teddy by making him the hero in all of the stories. They even repeat the same sort of “how is Louise referencing things from movies and shows she’s too young to watch” joke, something they could have easily avoided to stall comparisons, but there it is. Though that’s not to say that these stories weren’t fun or funny, since they were. Of the three, I’d probably Gene’s since it involves giant monsters and robots in a super goofy way like I like.

Out of the show’s five total anthology episodes, however, I’d probably place it near the bottom for lack of originality. I might place it above the Gayle episode though, since Teddy seems a more active protagonist in his stories than Gayle did in hers, plus I’ve got my soft spot for buildings turning to giant vehicles or robots. For the record, my favorite out of the five would probably be “Sliding Bobs” since it goes the alternate history route and is probably the most novel version of this sort of episode in this show. That all said, even with my issues here, I would still like to see the anthology episode come back once each season like it used to. I personally have a really fun time with it just about every time and it gives the cast and crew a chance to take these characters to the weird and wacky scenarios they can’t in this kind of show! That seems like a pretty golden opportunity for an already fine show.