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.

Too Many Stories, Not Enough Funny

American Dad, S08E02

Stan tried to assassinate a war criminal during a family vacation while keeping Francine in the dark about it.  Hayley and Jeff tried to rekindle their sex life.  Steve followed a boy to a nude beach and kept meeting dangers along the way.   Roger was dumped by an elderly man he met while he was acting out one of his widowed characters.

Stan trying to go behind Francine's back to do CIA work was just irritating until Francine was more than a little into helping him kill the man.  With her part of it, it was much better to watch, especially when Francine was hitting Joe with the racket for ruining her vacation.  And it was nice that they found a way to make the hip hop necklaces scene seem less random by it being the cause of why Francine wasn't killed by a direct shot to the chest.  I don't mind random, but sometimes things are so incredibly random (like that particular scene at first) that they are a little distracting.  But I suppose the funniest thing about this story was Stan's rivalry with the gardener who kept besting him all the way to the end when he killed their target.  I liked that because the gardener was just a nice guy who happened to be better than Stan was.  And I like seeing Stan knocked down a peg sometimes.

I feel like the Steve story was better or just simply a necessary side story because it was just bad decision after bad decision that distracted you what was going on with Stan and Francine.  I don't know why Steve was so enchanted by everything his new friend Liam suggested and went along with it like a moron, but he paid dearly for every mistake he made while Liam was left unscathed.  I guess that it was a good thing that Liam wasn't just leading him to his destruction and they did make it to where he claimed they were going, but it sucks that Steve was the only one who had suffer in the process.  My favorite line of that story was when Steve realized that Liam wasn't as smart as his accent made him sound:

You sound smart, like Hugh Grant the movie star, but you’re stupid, like Hugh Grant the person!

I'm not sure why people are so affected by particular accents, but they are.  It's interesting how the same thing said by two different accents could give off two completely different reactions just because of the sound and delivery.  I like how people are so influenced by sounds.

Roger's story was okay, but I felt like it could have been cut.  I mean, why the hell does he need to be a character while on vacation?  I shared Steve's annoyance that he was choosing to do that, especially one who was a senior citizen woman.  At least he was still true to his Roger self (who is pretty damn vindictive) and changed characters just to screw over the man who screwed over his character.  It's just weird to me what Roger chooses to do during a vacation when he could have just spent it as normal guy character just chilling at the bar.  But I suppose if he hadn't been Abigail, he would have been hanging with Steve and Steve wouldn't have needed to follow Liam around.

Jeff and Hayley's story was even more unnecessary.  It was a big ol' heap of "who gives a crap?"  There's something really gross about hearing them getting it on and I'm not really sure why that is.  I feel like I'd much rather hear Roger talking about his sex life than them.  Even grosser than their sex life itself was Steve sort of checking them out at the nude beach (or Hayley, I guess), not quite convinced he was seeing his sister.  Eww.  I know he got trampled and dragged along by a horse, dropped to the ground, and had bees stab him from the inside, but dang.  No need for the slight incest there.

Well, it wasn't a terrible episode, but it wasn't great either.  I can put this into the so-so pile without much thought.  I wouldn't bother to watch this episode again on purpose, but I wouldn't mind if it was on TV.  They would do better to have a few less stories in an episode and work on just maybe two that were actually funny.