Review: Bob’s Burgers “The Quirkducers”

Nothing Quirky about this Turkey.

Spoilers Below

The kids are supposed to have a half day of school the day before Thanksgiving. Instead, Mr. Frond makes them watch a terrible Thanksgiving play every year that keeps them in school longer. Louise gets an idea that will get the Thanksgiving play shut down, giving them their desired half day.

Tina has been writing a semi-erotic fan-fiction called “The Quirky Turkey.” Recently, Jocelyn called Tina “quirky,” making Tina feel bad about herself. So she wrote a story about a quirky turkey being shunned by the prettier turkeys. Louise decides to take the story and turn it into the school’s Thanksgiving play. Somehow, she manages to talk Mr. Frond into letting them put on the play without a lot of adult supervision. Louise casts all of their friends as they are terrible performers. Gene writes the music and Tina writes the script. Wanting to ensure the failure of the play, Louise purchases some giblets from a local butcher and gets an air compressor from Teddy. She hooks everything up so that the turkey costumes will spout blood and guts everywhere at the (in)appropriate time. When Tina finds out that Louise is trying to sabotage the play, she is furious. She was expecting the other actors to be angry but, when they find out that it’s for a half day of school, they aren’t all that upset.

The play begins as planned. When the turkeys sing about being Thanksgiving dinner, Louise shoots the giblets all over the auditorium. Immediately, she regrets it. Mr. Frond storms the stage to shut down the play but Tina steps on stage to give the play a proper ending. She sings about having the guts to be different and the audience loves it. Despite Louise’s attempts to shut it down, the play is a success. Unfortunately, they have to clean up all of the blood and guts now. So they won’t be getting their half day.

Meanwhile, Linda has found a potato that looks like her dead grandfather. She insists that the potato doesn’t get cooked. Strangely, she carries the potato around, acting like it actually is her grandfather. Linda is weird.

Of all of the Thanksgiving episodes, this is my favorite. Not only did Louise learn a lesson about going too far to get what you want, Tina also learned a bit of a lesson about the awesomeness of being different. In the beginning of the episode, Tina seemed pretty upset that everyone called her ‘quirky.’ I’m not sure if she actually wrote down the ending of the play or if she did that song off the cuff, but it was obvious that she understood that being different isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes being different can save your turkey life.