You Wanna Help These Kids? Get Them Therapy

Bob's Burgers, S02E03

Bob learned in this episode that Linda has been doing homework for the children for a while (maybe forever?).  They kids, drunk on their ability to manipulate their mother, convinced Mr. Frond that they should be allowed to do an independent study as alternative to going to P.E.  It bit them in the butt when the superintendent and the rest of the school board came to view their progress, and they had spent their time simply fooling around, but they were lucky that Linda loved them too much to watch them fail on their own.  At least, since the kids weren't really taught a lesson, their plan to escape their hated P.E. was a failure.

Sometimes I think that Linda is a real airhead.  Clearly, her children are smart enough to do their own homework (because they have the intelligence to fool adults with ease), but are just too damned lazy.  Then again, I'm not sure if they are as dumb as they look because Bob had to actually teach them how to fill the cones with the soft serve.  They might have been pretending not to understand how to do it just so they wouldn't have to work harder in the restaurant.  I may have to support the latter theory, as I've started to see how lazy the three of them are.

As much as I thought that Bob's kids deserved to fail, I sort of hate Mr. Frond for using the kids to make himself look good, but trying to punish them if they made him look like a fool.  No matter how sneaky the three were being, it was up to him to ensure that they properly participated in the studies that they proposed.  You can't give children free range to do something, and then get angry when they don't bring results like you imagined.  Please.  I'm glad that the superintendent was giving Mr. Frond shit while Louise kept trying to delay their unprepared swimming.  It was gross that she went as far to poop in the pool, though.  It was crazy that Mr. Frond insisted on having them do their routine in an empty pool just to prove his point.  Get over, yourself, sir.  You failed.

I think what worked best for me in this episode was the scene when the kids were fooling around during their first "independent study" time and went to places like the arcade and  a nail salon.  They tried to pay the nail salon in game tickets and were chased away.  That was pretty good.  It was also pretty good when Bob made Teddy eat a piece of sponge.  Moron.

I was probably more annoyed by the antics of the children and their too eager guidance counselor than I was amused by anything in particular.  Since we didn't get to enjoy Family Guy or The Simpsons yesterday, this show didn't really make up for their absence.  Not that it ever could, but it failed to even distract me a little bit from the missing chunk in the Sunday night lineup.  It's stories like this that make me wonder why it was picked up for another season, and other shows that are much more consistently on point disappear quickly.