Review: Bob’s Burgers “Yurty Rotten Scoundrels”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers):

Aunt Gayle is starting up an art workshop called ‘Art Your Engines’. After Linda invests the money to rent a yurt, she feels obliged to sign up for the class. Tina and her pretend not to be related to Gayle to help impress the one other customer. 

But as the class continues, Linda discovers that the unknown customer is an online reviewer of terrible courses. Though, when she tries to sabotage her, she realizes that her intentions were pure.

Meanwhile, Louise and Gene want to help find a missing cat to cash in on the reward. Unfortunately, with Linda and Tina gone, the kids must help out at the restaurant. Enlisting the help of their friends, they manage to chase the cat down in the back alley.  However, when they go to receive their reward, the real cat was already found, and they had wasted their day.

 

Our Take:

Animation Domination did not make any acknowledgement to the fact that it was International Women’s Day.  Besides a couch gag on The Simpsons referencing daylight savings time, you wouldn’t think there was anything special about the Sunday. Though, Bob’s Burgers may have offered one of the best messages of them all. That women need to support one another instead of trying to bring each other down. And, Linda plays the part perfectly of a woman with the best intentions, even when her execution may need some work.

You know you are in for a good episode when Aunt Gayle arrives. Multiple times in the series history has Gayle, played by Megan Mullally, stolen the show. And, this episode was no different. This time, initiating her next scheme of hosting an art workshop, Art Your Engines. 

Of course, she would, she does know “more about art than anyone else in the world”. And, what a workshop it was. Some of her methods include spit painting, and creative block, which involves Gayle as the block chasing poor Tina around the woods as she tries to draw a horse. If Gayle was in every Bob’s Burgers episode, no one would ever complain.

Speaking of Tina, she is as brilliant as ever in this episode. Besides her desperate need to draw a horse right, she also gets to go undercover to Gayle’s workshop. And, what name would Tina choose, Lina Bellina, a real prankster who loves to pull pranks. Beyond that, she has some of the best one-liners in the episode like “what do we do? Call the president… of the internet?” The show really was showing off its girl power in this episode.

Meanwhile, we get the pleasure of watching Louise and Gene help maintain the restaurant. Having them be distracted by trying to find a missing cat is one thing but watching Bob stress about how much work was getting done was an even better B-plot. If you ever need a laugh, I recommend watching Gene serve a table and embarrassingly say “looks like someone was hungry” before they start their meal. I could have watched these two work a full 8-hour shift and been pleased. Maybe that’s what the upcoming movie should be about.

After a couple of average episodes to kick-off the midseason, it is nice to see the series hit a home run.  Bringing in a few different dynamics like this helps to remind fans what is so lovable about these individual characters. Bob, who usually carries a heavy load of humour was almost invisible throughout the episode, and it was okay. And, to be fair, Aunt Gayle really does have a tendency to steal the show. But this was an unexpectedly great episode in all corners.