Review: Bob’s Burgers “Zero Larp Thirty”

This week’s episode is anything but a zero.

Spoilers Below

Linda has the best news ever! Do you know what that means? Yep, you guessed it – she won a contest to participate in a live-action role-playing version of her favorite TV show, Winthorpe Manor! This is also great news for the kids, as it means they get to spend some quality time with Teddy, aka the pushover-est of all pushover babysitters. So let’s get into how this episode is an awesome time for everybody involved!

Winthorpe Manor is basically the American Downton Abbey (Gene thought that was Mike and Molly), making it an odd candidate for LARP-ing. Although among the oddballs that populate Bob’s Burgers, this is positively par for the course. Accordingly, this crew is fully enthusiastic to recreate a bygone era that was rigidly defined along class divisions. Linda buddies up with fellow contest winner Nancy (Jessica St. Clair) – all the other participants have paid an exorbitant sum – and it seems like they have got a good thing going. Even when Nancy ends up drawing Mrs. Winthorpe as her character and Linda gets Mrs. Winthorpe’s maid, they promise to stick together.

But in a twist straight out of the Stanford prison experiment, the LARP-ers playing the upstairs characters almost immediately start abusing their power. This ultimately leads to a bona fide uprising from the downstairs LARP-ers. In a twist within the twist, Bob (as Oliver the footman) manages to curry favor with the upstairs crew by simply speaking up and questioning the status quo. He probably feels emboldened to do so by virtue of being the only one who doesn’t watch the show. The uprising works thanks to Bob’s quasi-insider status, thus demonstrating the old saw that real institutional change must come from an outsider working within the system.

As per usual for Bob’s, the conflict is not resolved 100% amicably. In fact, it is not really resolved amicably at all. Generally on this show, some sort of truce is brokered, thus my preparation for a détente to settle the standoff over the seven-layer parfait flambé. So when instead every LARP-er just has it out over the dessert, I think, “What fun!” Sure, bridges are burned, but at least the lesson to not romanticize the past is well-heeded.

The kids’ time with Teddy does not go exactly as planned, as Teddy pretty much immediately throws out his back, leaving him motionless on the floor for the whole weekend. While this may not exactly be the game plan, it does not ruin things either, at least not for the kids. Because now the biggest pushover is also a “fall over!” Even when Tina, Gene, and Louise start showing some sympathy and devise a pulley system to get Teddy to his chiropractor, it still fits the DIY style of their childhood. There may be a lot of strife along the way, but by the end of “Zero Larp Thirty,” everyone is happy. And that makes me happy.

Memorable Lines and Obs-burg-vations of the Day:

– LARP director Mr. Perkins is voiced by occasional Bob’s Burgers guest John Michael Higgins, who is the perfect choice to embody a quirky excursion’s authority figure.

-“I guess they didn’t have kids in 1901.”

-“We do separate LARPs. It works for us.”

-“How’s your syphilis?”

-“Ugh, we just got rid of all our gurneys.”

-“A worker uprising just seems so impolite.”

-“No one’s looked this good on a door since Kate Winslet in Titanic.”