Review: Bob’s Burgers “Poops!…I Didn’t Do It Again”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In a rare moment of test aptitude, Louise has gotten the highest score on a shark related quiz, allowing her to feed sharks at her school’s overnight lock-in at a local aquarium. But Louise is a home-pooper, like her father before her, which means she has anxiety about pooping anywhere else. She tries to counteract this by trying to poop the week before the overnight, but there is a disturbance in her colon’s force. Bob, having a bad feeling about this, tries getting her laxatives to force her poops out, but her being nervous about everything only makes it worse. Thus comes the night of overnight, with Louise’s poops becoming her own phantom menace, forcing her to call Bob to take her home. But a new hope arises in her, deciding to poop at the aquarium’s bathroom just in time to feed the sharks.

Also, Linda tries imitating a viral video to celebrate her parents’ 50th anniversary with pickle costumes.

OUR TAKE

For a topic that could have quite easily put the episode in the shitter, the idea of Louise having a crisis over her fecal habits turned out to be surprisingly wholesome! Part of what helps it is that the story, on a surface level at least, is pretty adorable and funny, mostly because it’s about a little girl saying poop all the time. But it’s also an episode about Louise being vulnerable and without her typical prankster girl veneer, which I’ve always found to be interesting episodes. Even better, it’s focus is on her similarities with Bob. I don’t know what it is about father-daughter episodes of shows like this, but they pretty much always tug on the heartstrings. We get to see Bob show a surprising amount of empathy regarding Louise’s condition because he’s suffered and sacrificed for it too, even sharing a story about an almost girlfriend he had that he let go because he couldn’t poop at a dance.

Because when you look beyond the fact that this involves pooping, it actually turns out to be about Bob and Louise learning to open themselves up to others, or at least other bathrooms beyond the ones at home. While I personally have never had this sort of issue, since a toilet is a toilet is a toilet, I can understand it coming from Bob, who is often a pretty emotionally closed off person unless something relates to something he’s passionate about. So unless the atmosphere is right to let his walls down, emotional or colon, it’s hard to put himself out there. Louise, I think, has a similar problem, as she’s not used to showing vulnerability either, though she expresses herself through acting out with pranks and hi-jinks than sullen silence like her father. Regardless, seeing them both take the proverbial plunge to open themselves up to other bathrooms shows them both bonding over their shared insecurities AND learning to overcome it together.

“Poops!…I Didn’t Do It Again” shows the difference between being shit and being THE shit. It’s got a lot of the ingredients of my ideal Bob’s Burgers sort of episodes. And a little bit of corn, I think? It’s definitely a solid addition to my favorite episodes of the series with a lot of fiber in it and coming out in one huge clump. Though you might have to break it up before you flush it. And it was definitely better than Rise of Skywalker.