Review: Bob’s Burgers “The Skids in the Hall”

A.H.M.A.B. (All Hall Monitors Are Bastards

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Tina is suddenly let go from the Hall Monitors and, with Gene and Louise’s help, get to the bottom of why.

OUR TAKE

We’ve got our first Tina focused episode of the season, and her third overall focusing on her job as a Hall Monitor, after the fifth season’s Midday Run back in 2015, and the eleventh season’s Fingers-Loose back in 2021 (unless I’m missing one, which is possible, there’s over three hundred episodes now). But while those first two put her in situations where she felt tempted to overstep her authority for one reason or another, this one has her stripped of that authority rather suddenly, which she almost immediately clocks as something happening within the system. And of course Louise is eager to uncover any big scandal if she can find it, while Gene is usually just happy to be along for the ride. First they find out that there are kids doing sock races across the halls, where one of the monitors is definitely overlooking this, the reason turning out to be they’re receiving bribes with sugary snacks. However, after trying to go to the head hall monitor first, she learns this goes all the way to the top, leading to them using Rudy as a mole, and also incidentally finds out that a sock race about to happen could lead to horrible injury.

If it seems like I’m just going over the plot, well, I am, but it’s to highlight Tina has a strong sense of justice. It would be easy enough for her to just want vengeance against those who wronged her, but while she does out the ringleaders of these races and blackmail them to get her job back, she also makes the decision to get a mat to stop the sock races from hitting a wall too fast when the floor is too slippery, showing she prioritizes safety over her own gain, which is what makes her a good hall monitor. I mean, one would wonder why she would want to go back to a job where her co-workers are so easily bought and corrupted, especially since we barely see her in that job anymore, but hey, it’s part of episodic cartoons to reset where everything was at the beginning. As for the B Plot, Bob gets a chance to retake his driver’s license photo and after a mustache trimming by Gretchen, it ends up looking worse. Yeah, the Tina plot is really the star of the show here, which is good because it’s a solid one of those.