Television

The Millie-churian Candidate – “Bob’s Burgers”

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In an effort to derail her campaign, Louise decides to run against Millie herself!

This week we have another kid-centric episode from a season full of kid-centric episodes. IF this were another show this would be a complaint but with Bob’s Burgers the kids are our window into the increasingly weird lives of the Belcher children and rest of the gang at Wagstaff Elementary.  “The Millie-churian Candidate” or as I like to call it “House of Burgers” (even though this week the adults and burgers are pushed way into the background) starts with Louise insulting Jimmy Jr.’s class president campaign against the always welcome Henry, who inadvertently sets Millie (Louise’s Nemesis from previous episodes) on the path towards the little White House with an excellent little speech about how he controlled people in order to help them.  Of course, Millie takes away that if she wins she will be able to control the students of Wagstaff.  Specifically by starting a “bestie” system that will allow the school to assign students by alphabetical order (and as Louise and Millie come after each other they would be matched up).  This leads to us seeing a Louise we don’t often get to when she is among children her own age, here her usual calm and scheming demeanor is put on the ropes basically through her own fault.  She immediately commandeers Jimmy’s campaign and with every step tanks his run further and further into the ground.  By the end Jimmy leaves the race when Millie offers song choices at dances, which was the original reason he wanted to run (“I want ten fast songs, then ten slow songs!”).  This causes Louise to throw her hat in the race, after a sarcastic comment from Henry, she eventually causes such a scene that she gets her and Millie thrown out of the runnings leaving only Henry. It turns out that Henry is a young sarcastic and dry Frank Underwood, realizing he couldn’t win through the usual means so he ends up playing everyone against themselves.  First, he put Millie in the race knowing Louise would overtake Jimmy’s campaign and ruin it with her intense negative feelings towards Millie. Then once Jimmy was out he set Millie against Louise to cancel each other out; leaving just one person left in the running. 

The reason this episode is getting a B+ rather than an A+ is the secondary storyline involving the adult characters of the show.  This story provides a decent amount of laughs but not a whole lot of substance.  Teddy and Bob end up in a pissing match revolving around their favorite toys and which is better in a way that you can’t truly measure, Bob’s new ultra-expensive knife or Teddy’s hammer.  Linda steps in to create the Knife/Hammer Olympics which provides a good amount of jokes based around how half-baked and pointless it is.  The final round involves Bob trying to destroy Teddy’s hammer with his knife and Teddy trying to destroy Bob’s knife with his hammer.  It ends very predictably with Bob’s knife being destroyed and Teddy’s hammer becoming the new apple of Bob’s eye.  The best part of this plotline was how the adults switched places with the kids and ended up acting like childish, petty, self-destructive children.  Also Bob’s high pitched anthropomorphic voice for his knife which gets me every time.  Bob, please never change.

Grade: B+

John Loren
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