Review: Bob’s Burgers “The Taking of Funtime One Two Three”

An extra hour in the ball pit.

Overview (Spoilers!)

Louise desperately wants to win the grand prize at Family Funtime: a real live dune buggy. The kids head home to ask their parents for more quarters, but Mr. Fischoeder is already in the restaurant, hitting up the Belchers for rent money. Mr. Fischoeder gives Louise a tip on how to win more tickets from her favorite game, but as soon as she starts racking up the points, management unplugs it.

The kids find Mr. Fischoeder at the Wonder Wharf, and he shows them how the grand prize (the so-called “wheely mammoth,” a life-size plushie of a wooly mammoth with roller skates) is winnable, but only if you know the right tricks. The kids recruit their friends—Jimmy Jr., Zeke, Darryl, Ollie and Andy—and head for Mr. Fischoeder’s secret warehouse of retired arcade games, where he teaches them how to win at each one. They plan an elaborate scheme to cheat enough to win the dune buggy.

The night before their plan takes effect, Louise heads to Family Funtime one last time to make sure everything is in order, but she’s caught sneaking behind the prize counter and gets banned from the arcade. The others determine to carry out their plan without her, but they too get caught after amassing an enormous number of tickets.

Out of the shadows steps… Mr. Fischoeder, who conveniently forgot to mention that he’s one of the owners of Family Funtime. Using their misbehavior as an excuse to remove the dune buggy from the prize counter, he pretends he had nothing to do with the kids’ plan—until Louise shows up and reveals that her friends were running a scheme of their own. Knowing that Mr. Fischoeder was setting her up, Louise went to the Wonder Wharf and used his own tricks against him—to win the wheely mammoth.

In the B plot, Teddy gifts Bob and Linda a chicken so that they can have fresh eggs every day. When the chicken fails to lay any, Bob and Linda try every method they can think of—mostly singing—to no avail. Eventually, they start fantasizing about cooking and eating the chicken instead. Sitting on the mammoth’s belly in the final scene, the chicken finally lays a single egg.

Our Take 

I have to hand it to them—this episode is pretty darn funny. After such a huge, hilarious season premiere, I wasn’t sure the rest of season 9 would be able to maintain that same momentum, but “The Taking of Funtime One Two Three” absolutely does not disappoint.

I mean, who hasn’t played arcade games and wanted to scream at their seemingly unwinnable nature? Who hasn’t dreamed of somehow scoring the grand prize, just to spite that smug arcade and beat it at its own game? When it comes to relatable plotlines that draw humor from real, everyday situations, this episode has hit the jackpot.

The snappy dialogue that Bob’s Burgers is known for is on point this week, too. When Jimmy Jr. says it smells weird in the warehouse, Mr. Fischoeder tells him, “It smells weird everywhere, sir. That’s how you know you’re alive.” When Louise claims that “kids love curtains” as a cover for her scheme, the security guard fondly replies, “Sure, sure. Back in my day, it was blinds.” My personal favorite is when the nine-year-old Louise tells Mr. Fischoeder that she’s been playing her favorite arcade game for “twenty years.”

I’m also glad that this show didn’t fall back on plots they’ve used before. It would have been so easy to turn this plan into a conflict between Tina and Louise, with Tina claiming it’s not morally acceptable to cheat the system and Louise insisting she doesn’t care about morality, but we’re fortunately allowed to skip that conversation and focus on the comedy. I do wish Gene had a bit more to do—this episode is pretty Louise-centric, but Tina takes the helm of their scheme when Louise gets banned—but that’s a complaint I often have about Bob’s Burgers, considering he’s my favorite character and so rarely gets episodes dedicated to him. Ah well. Maybe next time.

The B plot, though, fell flat for me this week. Maybe it’s because it felt too similar in concept to the season premiere’s B plot: last week, Bob and Linda were nursing a baby rat in the restaurant, and this week, they’re raising a chicken. Plus, this episode spends so much time on the A plot that it fails to flesh out the B plot in any meaningful way; the comedic highlight is supposed to be Linda and Bob singing to the chicken, and it doesn’t strike me as all that clever. It is kind of nice to see the two storylines come together in the end, though.

After such a clever, original episode, I’m excited to laugh again this time next week!