Review: Bob’s Burgers “Boywatch”

“If sand was sugar, I’d know it.”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Tina sets out to become a junior lifeguard after finding out that their training involves a perfect combination of cute, shirtless boys, sunscreen application, and rolling around on top of each other in the sand. Much to the dismay of the other trainees, though, Tina is clearly not focused on becoming a junior lifeguard for the right reasons. In order to clear her guilty conscience, she’ll have to take her training more seriously.

Back at the restaurant, the rest of the Belcher clan is dealing with their decision to start advertising free Wi-Fi. (It’s really just from their personal family router upstairs. Bob is initially reluctant, but can’t stop Linda from giving out the slightly embarrassing password.) When the complimentary Internet attracts a criminal hacker, Sergeant Bosco stops by to do some undercover work.

Our Take:

One of my favorite things about this week’s episode was how willing it was to allow Tina to fill the role of the ‘villain’, so to speak. As one of the most-beloved standout characters from the show, Tina often is the voice of reason – the moral compass for her siblings. It was refreshing to see her being impulsive, lustful, and straight up selfish. By showing us her progression from merely wanting to become a lifeguard because of the eye-candy, to wanting to redeem herself by earning the trust of her teammates, the writers really let Tina to grow.

Boywatch had a bunch of fun moments on top of Tina’s interesting character development. The scene between Tina, her coach, and the ‘wrinkly old man’ is a highlight for sure. Deciding to quit with her original plan of quitting is funny enough, and once you throw in the anti-pep-talk from the elderly onlooker, it only got better. While there were lots of wonderful comedic moments like this in Tina’s storyline, I think a lot of my other favorite bits were in the B-plot. Despite initially seeming like a boring ‘why are all the millennials staring at their screens’ gag, it quickly morphed into something more surprising once Bosco showed up to conduct his ‘undercover’ surveillance. Everything from his T-shirt reading ‘POLICE’ to Louise’s methods of investigation (“Are you my mommy?”) had me in stitches.

All in all, this was a pretty solid episode of one of the most consistently funny shows on TV right now. Tina’s storyline allowed her to grow and change from beginning to end, while the computer hacking subplot brought plenty of jokes to the table. Even if it won’t go down in history as the best episode of season 8, Boywatch was still a pleasure to watch!