Bob’s Burgers: “Glued: Where’s My Bob”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Ah. “Glued: Where’s My Bob” was the injection of adrenaline I was wanting. Usually, I don’t like double-header episodes—networks have been doing too much of those lately, just ask Agent Carter—but “Glued” ended the week on a fun note.

This episode started off in the oddest way possible. The intro music didn’t play and the storefront next to Bob’s Burgers had a tenant: The 100 cent Store. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an actual store next to Bob’s Burgers, besides the ones in the opening scene. These clues let us know that we were in for a different kind of episode, and “Glued: Where’s My Bob” delivered. It’ll be difficult to go into details without ruining the episode, so consider this a spoiler alert.

The kids begin with a goop war: grab sticky food stuff and slather it on objects to goop your siblings. This led to some goop puns like “goop, there it is” and “Goopsuit riot.” Bob becomes a victim of one of these pranks: gluing the toilet seat. Cue a popular dining magazine wanting to cover Bob in an article, and one of the best original Bob’s Burgers songs in a while “Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom.”

“Glued: Where’s My Bob” may have devolved into potty humor but it’s wonderfully absurd potty humor. The guest stars were on point (Gretchen, Marshmallow, and Ken Jeong as Doctor Yapp), and the one liners made me bust a gut.

Gretchen: Like this isn’t the first time I’ve done someone’s hair while they’re on the toilet.

The thong wearing roller skate dude: We’re all glued to a toilet called Earth.

Gene (in response to Coasters magazine walking in on Bob glued on the toilet): Um, his eyes are up here.

The second half of Bob’s Burgers’ doubleheader reminded us of one of the many reasons we watch the show: it’s fun.

Thanks for reading.

Bob’s Burgers: “Secret Admiral-irer”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Secret Admiral-irer” had all the trappings of a great Bob’s Burgers episode: a hopelessly romantic Tina, a cynical Louise, Bob trying to please new friends, chuckles throughout, and the episode’s three stories converging in a satisfying way. But the show’s lacked something. I can’t put my finger on it but if I had to guess, it’d be Tina’s stand-in love interest.

Tina gets ignored by Jimmy Junior early this episode and spent the rest of the show trying to make romance happen for a 90-year-old woman. The elderly woman’s love story had its moments but I couldn’t help but question whether or not this romance was a faux-mance or a pale replacement for Tina and J Ju. There’s even a moment when Tina reads the lady’s mail, mentions a free gym membership, and the lady says that she doesn’t know any Jims. That was a little on the nose. Or perhaps we need to introduce the lady to our Jim.

I don’t know if Jimmy and Tina will ever happen—or if they should happen—and the elderly woman, her nephew, and her admiral would-be-lover provided enough giggles, but Tina stories have dominated this season and the story was contrived. You could say all sit-com stories are contrived, so I’ll let that go, but this coupled with Bob trying to please the wrong people—again—made for a solid, if not forgettable, episode.

“Secret Admiral-irer” is another good episode that shows that adds to an already solid season of Bob’s Burgers and yet it lacks in originality. I love Tina as a character–she’s one of Bob’s Burgers’ best–but she’s been over-exposed this season and I’d like to see a solid story for some of the other characters.

Thanks for reading.

Preacher Review: “Pilot”

Jim’s Review

Let me start by saying I liked the Preacher debut. Let me add, however, that I had to take a second shot at watching it to get to that conclusion. The problem is that it started slow, and very spastic in its story-telling approach. It’s been some time since I’ve read the comics (on which the series is based), so I may not be a great judge, but I don’t think having read the comics would’ve done much to make the first part of the pilot episode sit right. The series is starting off at a different point, and not really giving us much of an intro to the characters, so it’s jarring for anyone who doesn’t know the source material, and just sort of disengaging for viewers who do.

I will say the story finds traction in the back half. Preacher definitely has a sense of humor to it. There’s a huge element of parody that’s present in the comics, but I can’t help but feel the show needs to balance its tone a little better. The funny moments, such as the news report about Tom Cruise exploding, sort of come out of nowhere, and it makes them hard to land.

The episode doesn’t do much to dive into the overarching story of Preacher, but it sets the scene. If you’re a fan of the comics, give the show a chance. It won’t be a one-for-one translation, but if you don’t expect it to be, I think you’ll be reasonably happy with the result. If you aren’t familiar with the comics, go in expecting something bloody and irreverent, and I think you’ll be entertained.

Arrow Review: “Lost in the Flood”

Jim’s Thoughts

I’ll keep this short. There wasn’t a single positive thing for me to explore about this week’s episode of Arrow. It was a chore to watch, broken up only occasionally by unintentional comedy. The problems are all the same as the ones Kyle and I have been pointing to for weeks now, only they’ve been magnified.

This has become the Felicity show. Do you need proof of that? This episode had Felicity (and her dad) going up against Damien Darhk while Ollie and Diggle went side-questing. Just to be safe, Darhk dug up Felicity’s ex-boyfriend to do his super-hacking just to make sure he could be talking about Felicity during those unfortunate moments when Felicity herself couldn’t be on screen.

When they weren’t serving up cringe-worthy family drama amidst the backdrop of nuclear annihilation, Felicity and company were bombarding us with techno-magic. The techno-magic has always been a part of the show, and I can forgive it when it’s a minor plot-point, but two weeks running it’s been the absolute focus of the show. Adding sparks flying from computer monitors doesn’t make it more exciting. It just makes it cartoonish.

I could go on, but I promised to keep this short. There’s only one episode left of the season, so I’ll watch it, but if the showrunners don’t make some serious policy changes, and set the ship right early next season, I may lose hope that Arrow can ever recapture what it had in Season 2, and I may quit subjecting myself to the series.

Kyle’s Take

I’m sure the episode’s name “Lost in the Flood” refers to something else, but Arrow has been lost in a flood of Felicity for the past few weeks, if not the last year. Oddly enough there was a time when Felicity was an interesting and likeable character. Now she’s insufferable. Ollie has no agency in his own show, and there are some characters—like Curtis—who were only in the episode to spoon feed the audience how horrible a childhood Felicity must have had to come from a broken home. When someone’s on the show to “make” the audience care about your past, you’re an insufferable character.

Jim and I are most likely in the minority with disliking Olicity/Felicity, but the Magical Computer Tour has taken center stage and it’s waving off the cues for other characters. On one hand, I like how Arrow has listened to its audience—or at least a certain demographic of its audience. Ollie and Felicity were a relationship concocted by popular fan fiction; there was nothing in the show to suggest they’d ever get together (sure, Felicity made googly eyes at Ollie, but Ollie saying he cared most for Felicity the first time he said it had less emotion than Stephen Hawking’s speech-generating device). On the other hand, Olicity, and later Felicity sans Ollie, have hijacked the show. Arrow is no longer a TV show about a vigilante or super hero.

Arrow will force Felicity to equal the Green Arrow. Felicity and Ollie will get back together, because they’re “destined” to be together; let’s forget about all the other “loves” in Ollie’s life. Their relationship failed because Ollie didn’t tell her the truth about his son; let’s forget that the two have little in common, never had to work at finding common ground, or never had to work at their relationship at all. Olicity worked because it worked? Yeah, right. Let’s also forget that Ollie forfeited his relationship with Felicity for the possibility to visit his son, even though he never visited his son. It’s great when your daddy uses you as a plot device and an excuse for artificial tension between your dad and a chick he’s banging who isn’t your mom. Each layer of crap adds another layer of dislike.

How can I like a character who would begrudge a child the same childhood she was denied? I don’t know why Ollie had to make that deal with his baby momma (of not telling anyone about his kid, including his fiancée Felicity) because that made no sense, but I also don’t know why Felicity had to dump Ollie for wanting to have a relationship with his son—if we can call what Ollie did “wanting” a relationship with his son—by any means, even if that meant hiding his son’s existence. That didn’t make sense. This whole scenario was something those two could’ve—and should’ve—worked through. But that was too much work.

For the last few weeks, Arrow hasn’t been about a vigilante or super hero and what it has been about is a nonsensical, insufferable character. Overwatch is so over, and Arrow needs a change for the better. That change shouldn’t include Olicity 2.0.

Thanks for reading.

Flash Review: “Invincible”

Jim’s Thoughts

This week’s episode of The Flash is pretty hard to discuss without getting into spoilers, so rather than being overly-ambiguous I’ll start things off with a SPOILER WARNING.

Getting an appearance from “Black Siren,” AKA Earth-2 Laurel Lance might have been more of a treat if they’d waited a little longer for the body to cool off. She hasn’t been dead all that long, and the Flash crew didn’t seem to know her all that well, so the trauma of having to fight her doppelganger struck me as unearned. I wasn’t particularly fond of Arrow’s version of Laurel Lance, so I can’t say I cared much about this one, but I can imagine some people who grew fond of Black Canary enjoyed seeing Katie Cassidy portray a very different version of the character. If nothing else, Cisco and Caitlin’s confrontation served to tease one more step toward us getting a proper version of the Vibe character, and given Cisco’s character arc, I can get excited for that.

The whole subplot of Barry trying to talk Wally down at Joe’s request didn’t add up. Joe seemed upset at Barry’s failure to convince Wally to stand down, and I can’t imagine why Joe would feel that way. I know why he’d want his son to play it safe, but why be mad at Barry? You can’t talk him down, why would you assume Barry could? Barry’s chip-off-the-old-block line, saying Wally has too much of Joe in him to talk the kid out of being a hero was also problematic. Some people would call nature over nurture, but Joe has only just formed a relationship with the kid. How much influence could he really have over him? If one good thing came of the Wally subplot, at least Wally now knows Barry is The Flash. As with Iris learning the truth, It seemed like an inevitability that was best to get done with.

Zoom’s confrontation with Barry should have been more dynamic, and it would have had Zoom not been unmasked as the lovelorn Jay. I also couldn’t buy into Jay’s insistence on making Barry “just like” him. Where did that come from? When did Zoom become “Single White Female”? Google that reference, young people.

Zoom killing Barry’s dad served to end the episode on a serious note, but I don’t think the show needed that, and I don’t think it upped the stakes the way the writers assumed it would. Barry is out of parents to kill now, so unless Gorilla Grodd is going to start hunting down Barry’s cousins, they’re going to have to find something else to trouble him with in season 3.

This season really did go awry when Zoom was unmasked, and they’re losing the chance to right the ship. I don’t know that this season will finish strong, but they have set up some future storylines that could have a pretty satisfying payoff.

Kyle’s Take

Most of The Flash’s problems this season—and there are too many problems to name—stem from the inclusion of Earth-2 so soon in the series. Jim and I have repeatedly said that Earth-2 provides a spare of each character and that deflates tension and the threat of true death, but the biggest issue Earth-2 presents is another basic writing issue. Flash had scratched the surface of what it meant to be a citizen of Central City on Earth-1 before it introduced Earth-2. If we don’t know enough about Earth-1 and its citizens, how could we learn enough about Earth-2 and its citizens in four or five episodes to know what makes them tick or make us care about them? The Flash could only paint Earth-2 characters in broad strokes. Cisco is just like his counterpart, only reverse. Or every Earth-2 metahuman is psycho because Hunter/Jay’s mom died. That last one should only explain Jay/Hunter, but we haven’t been given any other character motivations, so the only line to draw is Jay/Hunter’s mom’s death affected everyone on that Earth.

I don’t believe—or can’t believe—that there are no super powered Earth-2 heroes. Atlantis exists (Earth-2 Barry and Iris are there), so Aquaman has to exist. The Flash has teased the Justice Society, so there has to be at least a handful of other heroes. And now all the evil Earth-2 metahumans are imprisoned on Earth-1. That should cause a power vacuum that should make beating Zoom easy. This same power vacuum might be what we’re seeing in Cisco’s visions. I’m not sure. I’m not sure about this season of The Flash.

I’m also not sure if The Flash was going for the heartstrings by killing Henry Allen as much as pruning the cast. After being locked up most of Barry’s life, Pa went fishin’ for a year. He wasn’t a present father, even when freed. Detective West is Barry’s real dad, and now, Henry’s out of the way.

Henry wasn’t even the one who brought Barry back from the Speed Force. That’d be Iris, and Baris begins in earnest. Unfortunately, Iris only like-likes Barry because of their Earth-2 counterparts. If they’re married, why aren’t we? I’m going to need more on-screen development to believe that romance.

Speaking of off-screen development, Wally West has developed off-screen all year. There might have been some kind of bond formed between him and his father, but we missed it, and I agree with the nurture versus nature argument Jim presented. If we’re to believe Wally West will act like his father after just meeting him, we have to be militantly in the nature camp.

Black Siren didn’t work for me. At least we had to wait a year for Sara to come back from the dead, and I’m not a big Laurel Lance fan either.

There’s not much else to say about “Invincible” except that I agree with Jim that this might be a lost season. But I’m hopeful for the future. About the only free Flash villain left is Gorilla Grodd.

Thanks for reading.

Bob’s Burgers: “The Horse Rider-er”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Tina took center stage again but instead of Bob’s Burgers mining teenage angst, it explored what would happen if Tina came into contact with her greatest obsession: horses. I’m torn with “The Horse Rider-er.” On one hand, I’m glad Bob’s Burgers is treating Tina as something more than an allegory for teenage awkwardness; she behaves as only Tina can or will. On the other hand, Tina comes off as selfish and that’s odd. A selfish Tina isn’t completely out of character, but it’s in the vicinity.

The girl who usually moans whenever she’s coaxed into lying or doing anything else against her strong moral code groans because she doesn’t get to go to horse camp. That’s a little out of character, but I’ll let it slide because Tina loves horses. But she hates horse camp. The camp counselor and her campmates pick on her because she knows too much about horses, but Tina refuses to quit, even though Bob could get reimbursed. Again, that’s on the selfish side for Tina, but I get it. Many of us don’t realize what getting what we want could entail and we’re reluctant to admit that what we want doesn’t live up to our expectations. And that’s where “The Horse Rider-er” shines. I’m willing to overlook most of Tina’s incongruent behavior because this episode does a great job of illustrating the adage “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.”

The rest of the cast was paired well and their side stories spiraled off from Tina’s main story in satisfying ways. I like it when Bob’s Burgers does that. Since Tina’s horse camp is expensive, Bob can’t repair the deep fryer. This causes the restaurant to quit serving fries. That doesn’t sit well with Teddy. This turns into a pleasant ongoing gag.

On another front, Linda feels guilty for spending so much money on Tina and creates a restaurant day camp for Gene and Louise. Gene and Louise view the restaurant camp as a way to get out of work—they’re not Tina, they don’t like to work—and shenanigans ensue. Feelings get hurt, Gene and Louise learn something about themselves, and even the Pestos get involved.

The individual parts of “The Horse Rider-er” work, but they don’t quite fit. Tina is selfish enough in this episode to make me question her character, while the rest of the characters are caught in roles we’ve seen before, but the reasoning these characters fall into these roles has more subtext. This is—perhaps—the first time I’ve seen Linda fully embrace comforting her children. But that makes Linda a little out of character; she always makes a situation about herself. “The Horse Rider-er” has the parts for a great Bob’s Burgers episode, but it’s just a little off.

Thanks for reading.

Arrow Review: “Monument Point”

Jim’s Thoughts

As with The Flash, this week’s episode of Arrow wasn’t really bad. It just wasn’t all that great, either. Weirdly, there was some overlap in the designs of the episodes. By that I mean Arrow also gave us blasts from the past, so to speak.

It was the return of Brick and Anarky this week. Darhk hired Brick to go get Felicity’s dad. They may have explained why they needed Brick to do that, but I didn’t catch it, and I’m not invested enough in Brick or Daddy Dearest to wonder.

If you want to know what was wrong with the episode, just circle everything to do with Anarky. He’s never been a compelling villain for the show, and having him break into HIVE’s safe zone didn’t do anything for the episode except make us question how seriously we’re meant to take this Truman Show-esque dome seriously.

At this point, pretty much any story involving a nuclear weapons crisis is a cliche. It’s the go-to doomsday scenario we’ve been spoon-fed since The Twilight Zone (no, I’m not putting The Twilight Zone down). I took it all as an excuse to make Felicity even more of a focus. The over-reliance on techno-babble is usually something you just take as a necessary evil, but this week the entire plot hung on the audience not having any understanding of how anything really works. Computers don’t work that way. Targeting systems don’t work that way. GPS satellites don’t work that way. No to every single bit of that contrived plot device.

The good in this episode came at the end. I don’t care about Felicity’s guilt, partly because I’ve turned on her character, but also because I don’t buy any of that story. The end did put Ollie and Diggle into what may be a confrontation with Darhk, and that’s when this season is at its best. Here’s hoping they’re finally done stalling, and getting back to the point.

Kyle’s Take

Like The Flash this week, I won’t be covering Arrow: graduation time. I’ll get caught up soon and be back to reviewing our shows next week.

I will add that I expected to see Anarky and Brick again. I can’t say I was excited for it but I knew it was inevitable. “Monument Point” sounded okay enough until I saw that the focus was put on Felicity. Should we start a petition for Free Green Arrow?

The Flash Review: “The Runaway Dinosaur”

Jim’s Thoughts

This week’s episode wasn’t bad. It wasn’t terrific, either, and given that it was a Kevin Smith episode, that sort of balances out to a little disappointing.

The episode didn’t do much of anything, but it did serve to get us where we all knew we were going. Barry got his powers back. As I’ve been griping, that definitely needed to happen, but the episode mostly offered looks into the “Speed Force,” and I feel like it answered a lot of questions I doubt anyone was asking. The segments where Barry spoke to the Speed Force personified as familiar faces came off as a cross between A Christmas Carol and the parts of The Matrix trilogy no one likes to think about.

The Flash has had some pretty good emotional moments in its first couple of seasons, but this week it felt like they were trying too hard. On the other end of things, The Zombie-Girder story was forgettable, and only served to provide cheap tension for the team that Zoom and his plans should have been used for. Since being unmasked, Zoom has lost just about all of his credibility, and when the show shifts focus away from him to give air-time to a zombified former villain of the week, they’re not doing the character any favors.

As with most romances on The CW, I don’t care about Barry and Iris’ story, so I was disappointed to see the episode lean so heavily on that, and I worry about it going forward.

While this episode felt like an exaggerated bombardier turn, the end result seems to be that they’re pointed in a better direction. Let’s get back to Barry being The Flash, and while Zoom has been gutted, it looks like he could be introducing quite a few new villains from the DC multiverse. Better days may be ahead.

Kyle’s Take

I have yet to watch The Flash or Arrow. My daughter’s graduating this week and I’m taking a week off from our weekly shows.

I will say that The Flash has lost a lot of steam after they shackled Zoom into a whiny, crazy-for-Caitlin loon. I’ve been looking forward to some new blood, specifically new Flash villains, and it sounds like there may be hope for this season yet.

Also, I wasn’t that excited about a Kevin Smith directed episode. He’s done some great things in the past, but he was aggressive with promoting Batman v Superman just before it was released, even though he had seen a pre-screening. Not cool, dude.

Bob’s Burgers: “Bye Bye Boo Boo”

Kyle’s Thoughts

I like it when Louise shows vulnerability and age, and this happens whenever there’s a Boys 4 Now episode, and “Bye Bye Boo Boo” is such an episode. I liked it well enough. I get that Louise doesn’t want to show anyone that she has crush on Boo Boo, and the episode did feature a patented, awkward Tina pearl of wisdom (don’t be afraid to show off your swampy pits), but Louise grated on my nerves.

As usual Louise takes things to extremes. She drags Gene into her Boo Boo obsession. She knows that Tina is part of a Boys 4 Now fan club and that the fan club hates Boo Boo because he broke up the band, and she doesn’t care that she causes Tina to become ostracized by her friends. Louise only thinks of herself. I’m okay when she does this and she realizes she’s done something wrong and apologizes. Typically, Bob’s Burgers works in a Louise apology, too, but they didn’t even hint at one during “Bye Bye Boo Boo.” You’re on your own, Tina.

The other half of “Bye Bye Boo Boo” featured another Bob not liking any kind of change to his restaurant. Again, I get why Bob wouldn’t want a historical plaque showcasing a gruesome murder in his greasy spoon during Prohibition, but even someone who doesn’t know anything about business should know that you could draw a crowd with such a slice of history. Jimmy Pesto takes the plaque Bob discards and uses it as a ploy to bring in business. This all tracks with what we know about the characters. It even makes sense that Bob wants his plaque back when he sees it bring in customers, but what doesn’t make complete sense is Bob letting Jimmy off the hook because Jimmy looks happy. Maybe it’s petty to not let Jimmy have his moment, but those two hate each other. Bob is a nice person, but I’m not sure he’s that nice of a person.

Still, this week’s episode had a lot of laughs. The swampy pits made me cringe in a good way, and I couldn’t stop singing “I’m tall enough to ride your heart.” That’s some killer imagery, even if Jen told me to shut up with that stupid song.

Thanks for reading.

Arrow Review: “Genesis”

Jim’s Thoughts

I may be in the minority this week, but I think Arrow outdid The Flash. We finally got a little forward momentum on the Darhk storyline, and after a week spent memorializing Laurel, the show really needed it.

It wasn’t all great. The forward momentum I mentioned came pretty easily, and rather suddenly. It also begged the question as to why it took so long for Oliver to reach out to Constantine for help on how to combat magical forces. We’ve waited far too long for the obvious solution to be the right one.

I really could have done without Felicity being the “happy place” that gets Oliver to embrace the nebulous “power of light” that helped him repel Darhk. If that’s the price we have to pay, though, for something other than Darhk “Darth Vader-ing” Ollie around the room, I’ll call it a wash.

Diggle’s finally confrontation with Andy was pretty well acted on John’s part. I’d say he pretty much carried those scenes.

Thea being locked in the “Hunger Games” sort of dome seems a little like forcing the tension. Her relationship with Mr. Politico never sat well with me, and after he went to Ruve’s camp, it became impossible to justify. Plot devices can be necessary evil in television, but they should at least make an effort not to shine the spotlight on them.

Kyle’s Take

Arrow did outdo The Flash this week. I don’t know whether or not it’s us against the world, Jim, or we’re in the majority, but “Genesis” was leaps and bounds better than the Laurel clip show last week. That doesn’t mean that this week’s episode was great.

I’ll start by saying the one consistent from last week to this week was David Ramsey (John Diggle). He’s put in back-to-back solid performances. Kudos!

So many of the show’s other elements are bittersweet—and not in the pleasant but tinged in sadness fashion. They’re bittersweet because the show ended in a good place but the reason why little of the progression made sense is due to the several things that have happened this season that leave me bitter.

Felicity being Oliver’s “happy place” reminds me of Olicity, and the toll it’s taken on Arrow’s narrative. Oliver refusing to ask Constantine for help until now conjures images of when Ollie asked Constantine to help with Sara’s soul. Constantine could’ve done more than just be the vehicle to get Legends of Tomorrow—another blight on this season—off the ground. And the show has dropped storylines for months and returned to them out of the blue, and that’s what we got with Thea going on vacation with Mr. Politico.

Despite all that, we’re left with Darhk kidnapping Thea and the final showdown is set, so everything’s looking pretty sweet. “Genesis” had more pimples than a teenager working in a fast food restaurant, but it generated momentum for the series. I hope Arrow maintains this momentum through the season finale.

Thanks for reading.