Review: Bob’s Burgers “Tell Me Dumb Thing Good”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When Linda walks the kids home from school one day, she comes across a neighborhood trashcan that’s always decorated with fun types of props. She adds some feet made of paper cups and calls it a day, but later on finds out the fun feature has been removed. After holding a stakeout along with the kids, it’s revealed that Logan’s mother Cynthia is the one defacing Linda’s defacing, and an all-out war spawns between the two of them, which culminates in a tension-filled meeting at the town hall as a resolution banning the decorating of trash cans comes up for a vote.

Our Take:

This week, Bob’s Burgers returns with an episode starring Linda and her special kind of chaos. There’s vandalism of public property, a viral cucumber, and even some attempted bribery of local government officials. It’s also a Mother’s Day episode that’s airing a bit late. And despite all that, it’s actually pretty subdued.

Linda’s exploits are always fun to watch. While putting some feet on a public trash bin isn’t the craziest thing she’s done, the escalating stand off between her and Cynthia is entertaining to watch. There’s not really any point to Linda insisting on decorating the trash can (she attempts to explain it by saying we need dumb fun at the end) but it creates a nice contrast between her and her family and Cynthia’s perfect little plan to sell the space to a pretzel chain.

Luckily, there’s plenty of good humor to be gained even if the plot is pretty low stakes.  Cynthia and her husband, who happens to be on the town council, are a highlight. Him standing up to her in the drama filled conclusion is great to see, and I really hope he gets to get that tattoo. (Wonder how Bob’s feeling about his these days?) Speaking of Bob, he gets a great little subplot that sees him becoming obsessed with a local social media star known as the cucumber guy who always posts interesting updates about growing cukes in his basement. It’s about as slim as a side plot can be, but seeing his increasing enthusiasm as he ropes Teddy in was awesome, and the way it came back around at the end was nice.

The kids aren’t involved too much throughout the episode, but they do keep wondering what to get Linda for Mother’s Day, and eventually come up with a way to help her win her debate against Cynthia by leveraging Bob’s social media. It’s a nice conclusion that tries to tie all of the subplots together, even if it’s not the best job of doing this that the series has done.

Between Linda’s rebellious trash can art, Bob’s cucumber obsession, and the kids’ efforts to blackmail town officials, Tell Me Dumb Thing Good is a solid episode of Bob’s Burgers. It’s not high art or expertly plotted cinema, but like the moral of the episode points out, sometimes we just need dumb fun. Also, I really hope we get a follow up because I need to know about Bob and Teddy’s visit to cucumber guy’s basement.