Review: Bob’s Burgers “The Grand Mama-pest Hotel”

We checked out.

Spoilers Below

Linda volunteers to chaperone Tina’s school overnight trip to a heroine conference. She is planning on having some Mommy/Tina time while they are away. When they arrive at the hotel, Tina meets a girl from another school and the two hit it off. Instead of rooming with Linda, Tina wants to room with her new friend, Dillon. Linda ends up rooming with Dillon’s mom, Amy. Amy tells Linda parental horror stories about Dillon not wanting to spend time with her anymore. Of course, Linda freaks out and rushes off to spend time with the girls. Trying to be the “cool mom,” Linda takes the girls on a walk around the hotel after curfew. When they come across a housekeeping cart, Linda decides it would be fun to pour shampoo into the hotel fountain. She is quickly discovered and thrown out of the hotel. Bob has to drive two hours to pick her up.

While Linda and Tina are away, Gene and Louise decide to throw Bob a “Dad-chelor” party since he never had a bachelor party. Louise even invites Teddy over to make it a real party. They are doing apple juice shots and dancing around to loud music when Linda calls with the bad news that she has to go home. Once they pick Linda up, the kids want to stay to continue the Dad-chelor party. But Linda isn’t allowed to stay at the hotel. So they stay at a cheap motel across the street.

The next morning, Linda wants to sneak back into the hotel in order to see Tina ask the keynote speaker, Bernadette Baker, a question. She buys a disguise from a gas station/tourist spot and manages to get back inside the hotel. Inside the hotel, Linda tracks down Bernadette. She asks the former astronaut to answer Tina’s question (“Who inspired you to go into space?”) with a response about her mother. When Bernadette answers truthfully, Linda and Tina have a back-and-forth argument at the microphones. Eventually, they talk out their troubles and become friends again. But Linda still allows Tina to stay at the conference with her friend.

Despite the fact that there wasn’t a lot of humor in this episode, it was rather touching. Linda and Tina have always valued their closeness and this is the first time that Linda realizes that they might not be this close forever. At some point, Tina isn’t going to want to spend as much time with her mom. It happens to every mother-daughter relationship. Considering they managed to talk things through, I don’t see their relationship changing anytime soon but now we all know that it might.