Review: Bob’s Burgers “Fraud of the Dead: Zombie-docu-pocalypse”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

What seems to be a mockumentary starring Louise as a skilled archer is actually a mockumentary about a zombie apocalypse!

OUR TAKE

Halloween in December?! Well, I guess this really is the 35th day of Halloween after all. But seriously, glad to see we actually did get a Halloween episode this season, as well as a Christmas episode in two weeks, presumably the last before the holidays. And it’s not a half bad one either, starting with a lot of hints as to what the episode was or could’ve been that had me guessing right away. Was this about Louise trying out for an archery competition and she needed a sympathetic story to qualify somehow? Was she trying to make some sort of archery persona of some kind to seem cooler at school or something? Then we step outside of Tina holding the camera, where I thought we would get a sense of what was actually going on…only to notice that the camera filter was still on, and it was soon revealed that Gene also had a camera that was recording. Then Teddy showed up in clear makeup which conspicuously stopped at his wrists and it all clicked into place that this was a found footage zombie movie that they were shooting for whatever reason. And that’s not a bad premise by any means, it just gave away the game a bit too early.

To be fair, Bob’s Burgers, like King of the Hill before it, is very much a more grounded and realistic show. Fantastical situations don’t happen unless they’re dreams or imagined, something that this show is much more willing to make use of with its numerous movie parodies and characters getting imaginative vignettes. Honestly, I kinda wish this episode was three Halloween vignettes that happened to follow a theme of some kind, but no animated show could just have a Halloween episode be three scary shorts! Certainly not for more than thirty years! Though if I were to name it, I guess it would be…Bob’s Burgers Grillhouse of Terror? I dunno, we’ll workshop it. My point is, I like this plot well enough, but I don’t think it works across the whole episode. It’s cute to see the kids fake defend themselves from their zombie parents and neighbors, but maybe it could’ve gone into how they were shooting the scenes or how the production was going. Because otherwise it just seemed like the characters were a bit too self-aware of their personalities for this to be a regular episode. Anyway, Happy Halloween, everybody!