Review: Bob’s Burgers “Colon-ly the Dronel”

Overview

Linda agrees to drive Teddy to pick up Kathleen from her colonoscopy after he accidentally injures himself; the kids concoct a scheme to prank an overhead drone which is set to film the school from above.

Our Take

This week’s episode of Bob’s Burgers encapsulates the old adage of “too much of a good thing is a bad thing”. In this case, we’ve got way too many plot threads that kind of careen into a multi-car pile-up that probably could’ve been avoided.

On the surface, an episode written by Lindsey Stoddart that sees the kids taking on a prank, Bob getting a hold of a near-empty bottle of shampoo being thrown out by a funeral home, and Teddy picking up Kathleen all sound like great ideas for episodes that would’ve probably worked just fine on their own. I would’ve even taken any TWO of these ideas for the show’s standard”A”-plot, “B”-plot trope. But to throw in a THIRD plot into a 22-minute episode is a lot to take on and as a result there were a lot of missed opportunities that could’ve been had.

For example there’s a scene where the family comes into the restaurant and smells the shampoo that Bob is wearing that once belonged to their now departed mother and they mention the Whoopi/Demi Moore scene in Ghost. I think if this episode had went the extra mile and attempted to recreate that scene when the family is smelling his hair in some capacity, you would’ve had an episode for very serious consideration of an Emmy. Instead, a montage ensues trying to wrap all three stories, none of which were really wrapped with the exception of the prank bit. Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen the aforementioned idea or more of Kathleen’s appreciation of Teddy attempting to be a gentleman, but to just kind of let that story taper off into nothingness was a bit of a letdown.

This one hurts because I feel like we got SO close to a great episode, instead, we get a messy landing.