Worse Than Hugo

Bob's Burgers, S03E11

Bob thought he had it made when Hugo quit his job to join the nudist community on the new nude beach until the new health inspector was threatening to shut him down unless he let him play his terrible music at his restaurant.  Louise, Tina, Gene, and Darryl worked together to sell kids from school looks at the nude beach from afar.

Once I saw that Hugo was going to be in this episode, I was ready to be really annoyed throughout.  Instead, I was happy to see Hugo get off Bob's ass and go find a new hobby besides nitpicking on Bob's restaurant.  Unfortunately, they only hire crazy people to work at the health department, I guess.  Tommy, with his horrible and sexual songs and pockets full of bagged rat crap was far worse than Hugo ever could be.  Sure Hugo needs to be punched in the face for making Bob take a seminar on how to clean his hands (count to a thousand while washing your hands?? Ridiculous!), but at least he didn't blackmail Bob.  It made me realize that Hugo is an ass, but at least he's an ass who respects the job he's doing.  In that respect, I guess I can't hate him as much anymore.  I still hate any story where he's going to keep coming around--he just won't get over his rivalry with Bob.

I did like that Tommy was played by Fred Armisen.  When he was singing those gross songs, it was slightly funnier in his voice than if it had been someone I didn't recognize.  However, I think that Fred's expressions and body language are a big part of his comedic genius, so as just a voice he wasn't as half as funny as he would have been.  But this is a cartoon, so what can you do?

Another thing that I liked was when Mort come to the restaurant, opened the door and heard Tommy for like a second, and then immediately closed the door and walked away.  I loved that he was that terrible that someone didn't even need to listen to him long enough to understand what the hell he was singing about.

I hated that there was a nude beach in this story because Bob got naked--eww!  I could overlook his weird-shaped body if he wasn't so damn hairy everywhere!  It made it worse that he was doing a bunch of different kind of events that were awkward to do like the human wheel barrel.   I guess it really shows how much Bob wanted to stay in business and get rid of Tommy if he was willing to push a guy around while having a close up view of his business like that.  The naked sumo match between him and Hugo was equally disgusting.  It was a good place for Bob to lose and throw in the towel.  No one should have to have that guy naked on top of them.

As for the kids, there's not much to say about their peeking business.  It's just nice that they didn't get in trouble for it and were able to keep kids interested in looking despite that all the people at the beach were old people that they initially didn't want to see.  It was also cool to have Aziz Ansari back on the show as Darryl, even if he didn't have a crucial part.  It lets me know that he can possibly pop up again for an additional appearance down the road.  I like the idea of him contributing to the shenanigans of Louise and company.

I would say that this episode was good in showing a different side of Hugo, but that side was his bare behind and I could live not seeing that again.  That goes double for Bob and his hairy ass.  The best thing about this episode was that there was minimum Linda.  There were a couple of guest stars, but they didn't really enhance the story that much.  However, I am hopeful now that we've seen Darryl for the second time that he'll be joining the kids again soon.  Any excuse to throw Aziz into the mix sounds good to me.

When You Need Something Done, Get A Kid

Bob's Burgers S02E04

Bob became obsessed with beating Jimmy's score on a video game machine he leased for a few days before Linda sent it away.  He continued to play when he found it at a children's arcade, despite that he was getting carpal tunnel and was lying to his wife about it.  I can see how Bob wouldn't want Jimmy to get away with locking "BOB SUX" into a machine forever, but I couldn't ignore the idea that Bob was working harder and not smarter.  I guess Bob really does value his pride above most other things.

I don't know if Bob is just too old to realize or what, but the score Jimmy got on Burger Boss was likely to be beaten by a kid in no time, especially if it was taken to some Chuck E. Cheese knock-off.  I would estimate like a week at best before someone came along and wiped that score out of existence.  Also, Bob is such a terrible player, I don't know why he would want to spend time doing it himself (how satisfied could he be bragging to Jimmy a month later that he took off his score?).

I do like that a kid named Darryl came to help Bob play the game better.  What was even better about him was that his voice actor was Aziz Ansari (one of my favorites).  What's funny about the little geek that he played was Darryl reminded me of Kevin G from Mean Girls, a movie I happened to see like a day after this episode.  I hadn't seen that movie in many, many years, so I had forgotten Kevin, but when I saw it again, I had a Darryl flashback.  I wished that Darryl's training could have been a little funnier (I think the best was when he was trying to make Bob stop popping pills and questioned whether he was high).  It was like the more I watched Bob train, the more I wanted him to just give up.

It wasn't until Bob had hallucinated that Darryl's bully was a video game character and his kids had ratted out his "sailing lessons" scheme that finally Bob gave up.  And by giving up I mean that he gave Darryl some money to erase Jimmy's high score.  Well, duh, Bob!  He knew Darryl was a superstar when it came to playing video games--why not just use the kid in the first place??  I know they have to fill up the story, but I'm still gonna point it out.  Maybe if I was enjoying Bob's ride down obsession and deception, I might have ignored reason.

I was disappointed the kids didn't have much of a role in this story, besides crashing other children's birthday parties.  I think it would have been better if they were discovered to be uninvited guests rather than them simply getting bored with the endless birthday cakes and sneaking into a yacht club.  I'm not going to get into how stupid Linda is for believing that they were all taking sailing lessons at night.  It was a bit her own fault that she was embarrassed like that in the end.

Pretty disappointed that an episode with Aziz didn't turn out to be funnier.  He is so hilarious, but I guess being on this show, I couldn't expect miracles.  It might have been better if Darryl had somehow interacted with the kids (those crazies with him might have been a good formula for comedy).  I will say that the 8-bit version of the theme song was the only time that I liked the theme (semi-video game geek myself).  Wish it could always be like that.