Bob’s Burgers Review: “Sacred Couch”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Sacred Couch” was a good, but out of place, episode. Sure, the Belchers have owned the same couch for five or six seasons, but their couch doesn’t hold the same significance as The Simpsons’ couch. Marry this incongruity with the fact that Bob struggled with his burger puns last week, which is something Bob’s Burgers is known for, and you get an episode that belongs on another show.

Besides the focus of this episode being a family couch, the rest of the episode went off without a hitch. You had one family member, Linda, who loved the couch and didn’t want to see it go, another who destroyed the couch, Louise, who then had a change of heart, and Bob worrying about money. Throw in a side story for the other two kids, Gene and Tina, and you get the recipe for a fun episode. But no amount of developing the Belchers’ couch into a legitimate member of the family could replace the fact that this story fits more with The Simpsons than Bob’s Burgers, and I was hoping for an episode that didn’t play on nostalgia, since we received a heavy dose of that last week with “Sexy Dance Healing.”

Still, “Sacred Couch” is a good episode. The show did a good enough job setting up the loss of the couch as a blow for the family. I’m just looking for something a little different next week.

Thanks for reading.

Grimm Review: “Key Moves”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Nick and Monroe visiting the Black Hills worked better than I thought, but I still question why Grimm more than doubled its number of secret Grimm keys in one week after not mentioning them in three years. The ending of “Key Moves” shed some light on that subject, citing that the story will continue in episode 100, but Grimm dropped the ball on this story arc and watching the flashbacks this season only shinned a light on how out of place this story is. Not all the flashbacks revolved around the keys. The ones with Nick and Adalind worked to illustrate how complicated their relationship is and why they would want to take it slow. I liked those flashbacks.

And I liked the Grimm keys story too, I just don’t know why Grimm took three years to get back to them. It had been so long that I had forgotten Renard wanted the keys for himself. I remembered as soon as Nick refused to tell his boss what he was looking for, and that was an aha moment for me, but I’m not certain anyone who hadn’t watched Grimm’s previous seasons recently would’ve gotten that reference without scouring their memory banks.

Speaking of Renard, I’m still not sure about his side story. It looks as if another faction of royals may have wanted him dead, but the assassin killed the wrong man. Now it looks as if Renard will take up the position of Portland’s mayor for some reason. Either way, Renard won’t be assuming the throne any time soon and that may have been the goal all along. Again, I’m not sure. In terms of that story arc Grimm has a firm grip on its blinders.

Grimm has also kept the window open on Adalind returning to her witchy ways. That doesn’t mean Nick will get back with Juliette. The show’s done a good job of severing that relationship. I just wouldn’t be surprised if Adalind became a hexenbiest.

I’m interested in the Black Hills conclusion. It’s a fun story but it’s a story that should’ve been explored a year or two ago and that got me to thinking of the Nick-Juliette-Adalind triangle. Grimm had to drop that web in order to get to something that was working for the series two seasons ago. Now that the series has gotten back to an interesting story, I hope they don’t rush its conclusion.

Agent Carter Review: “Hollywood Ending”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Hollywood Ending” tied up a lot of loose ends, while still finishing with a cliffhanger. The Peggy-Sousa-Wilkes love triangle got dropped. You could see Peggy choosing Sousa, and Wilkes fading into obscurity; figuratively, not literally. Thankfully, Agent Carter took little time to resolve the triangle in the manner they choreographed from the opening season’s minutes. The Whitney Frost story got wrapped up real quick, too, and I’m not sure I buy that the zero matter just left Frost and Wilkes’s bodies with little to no ill effects. That was too easy.

Frost did end up in an asylum at episode’s end, but Agent Carter introduced a substance in zero matter that could destroy all of existence, and it disappeared in less than an episode. That rang false to me. I didn’t want anyone to die, necessarily, but you’d think there’d be more repercussions. As a result, Agent Carter did an okay job setting up the concept of zero matter, but I’m not sure it set up the upcoming Doctor Strange film as much as I would’ve liked. We’ll have to wait and see.

The season (or series?) finale also showcased some clunky dialogue exchanges. Agent Carter has always been a tad off with its dialogue, but it was more pronounced in “Hollywood Ending.” The line deliveries exacerbated this flaw, too. I’m okay with humor but the actor who would make a joke, specifically Howard Stark, waited a beat for a rim shot that didn’t come. The result was something alien.

The closing minutes of “Hollywood Ending” ended with a cliffhanger, of sorts. I won’t spoil it here, but I’m not sure if it’s enough of a cliffhanger to get viewers clamoring for a third season. While “Hollywood Ending” wasn’t the best Agent Carter this season, I’d say the season, as a whole, was pretty good.

I’m worried that the fourth episode this season (“The Atomic Job”), where a Three Stooges episode broke out in the middle of Agent Carter, damaged the show’s chances for renewal. Agent Carter lost half a million viewers after “The Atomic Job,” and the show never fully recovered.

Don’t judge Agent Carter’s second season by “The Atomic Job,” ABC. The rest of the season was solid, even if the ending left me wanting.

Thanks for reading.

Blindspot Review: “Cease Forcing Enemy”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Blindspot started off pretty good with its mid-season return episode “Cease Forcing Enemy.” It picked up with Jane Doe coming to terms that she mind wiped herself, but then the show spiraled back into certain things that didn’t make sense. Most notably is how they handled Agent Patterson.

I have a history in military intelligence, and Patterson brought home classified information, which resulted in the death of her civilian boyfriend. “Cease Forcing Enemy” started with Patterson getting reamed and then suspended, which I liked because that’s what should’ve happened. And then the show let her off the hook. It floored me that Patterson rejected her fate of suspension. If Blindspot was based in any kind of reality, Patterson should be worried that she’d be making small rocks out of little rocks, and no, just because your commanding officer says that you stay, doesn’t mean that the intelligence oversight agency loses its authority. If they handcuff you, you’re going to jail.

In fact, there wasn’t a truthful bone to be found in Patterson proving her value to the team. Director Mayfair knew that a distress call was using Morse Code, and Patterson was the only one who could translate it. Really? Is Blindspot really asking us to believe that no one in the FBI can write down a series of dots and dashes and then look up what they mean in Morse Code after conducting a Google search? My fifteen-year-old son could translate that if he wanted to. You didn’t even have to write down the message because even a Morse Code layman could hear dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot, which is the famous SOS, and the message accompanied Agent Weller’s last known location. Methinks Weller’s in trouble.

The rest of the show was spent in a malaise of people blaming themselves for things, when perhaps they shouldn’t. But in the case of Patterson, yes, she is at fault. We even received confirmation that Jane is in fact Taylor Shaw, the girl from Agent Weller’s past. I’m not sure what the end game for the “Is she Taylor or isn’t she” thread was supposed to be, but it was resolved too soon for my taste. I guess Blindspot gains renewed focus on why Taylor did this to herself and which side of the fence is she on. And is there even a different side to the fence?

The new questions Blindspot asks should carry it to the season finale, but it needs to be grounded more in reality to hold my interest. I only hope that Chief Inspector Fischer (John Hodgman) throws the book at Director Mayfair and Patterson.

Arrow Review: “Taken”

Jim’s Thoughts

Arrow started much stronger than it finished this week. Overall it was an okay episode. Darhk was front and center. The show really needed that, and it mostly paid off. I liked that they finally moved beyond the formula of Ollie shows up, Darhk uses “not the force” to choke him out and leaves grinning. The show needed that, too.

The confrontation with Felicity over Ollie’s son has been a long time coming. There wasn’t anything surprising there, and the focus on that point for the episode exhausted me. I’m to the point where I simply dislike Felicity, and being that I never bought Ollie’s reason for withholding the information from her (how would Samantha know if Felicity knew?), I had no one to side with in the argument.

On the other side, I rolled my eyes at the heart-to-heart Samantha had with Felicity. In that moment, there is no way Samantha’s prime concern is smoothing out Ollie’s relationship for him. That conversation was unnatural, and a little odd. Laurel, who has been unusually tolerable of late, bugged me this week. How could she be broken up about Oliver cheating on her when they were together? How could she even be surprised? Does no one remember that he cheated on her with her own sister? Lack of attention to continuity has been a problem for this show, and the disproportionate attention to dull romantic angles has been another.

Vixen’s role in the show was done as well as could have been expected. What’s more, there seems to be a tie to the events in the flashback segments. I can’t say the flashbacks are winning me over at all, but at least they seem to be going somewhere.

It seems the ending of this episode is where it came down hard on the Felicity involvement. That left a bad taste in my mouth, and may cause me to be harder on the show than is warranted. It fizzled, but a little more of what worked in the beginning of this episode, and at least a little less of what came in the end will work wonders toward a strong finish to the season as we move forward.

Kyle’s Take

Jim mentioned the solid opening, but I couldn’t remember anything from that except for Felicity’s struggle to walk. That was okay (at least she wasn’t dancing a jig immediately after the chip was implanted) and so was Darhk’s confrontation with Ollie and Felicity in the rehab center’s dark parking lot (that was down-right creepy), but it took a grand total of six minutes before Arrow devolved into Olicity. I agree that Darhk was too strong, and he went to the “not-the-Force” choke far too often, but Arrow didn’t have to away all of Darhk’s powers. That was a cheat.

Unfortunately, I was wrong a second time with Arrow. I had thought The League was this season’s Brick, but Arrow showed me that Darhk would factor into this stretch of the season in last week’s episode. Since “Taken” took Darhk from the venomous snake that he his and turned him into a belt, Olicity and the Merlyn-Thea daddy issues took center stage as this season’s Brick. I’m sure we’ll have villains of the week, but Arrow looked to tie a couple of bricks to this season and dump this year into the bay.

I don’t believe in the moment when Samantha smoothed things over with Felicity. What did she have to gain from that and why would she take time out from worrying about her son to do that? That shows you how little Arrow’s writers understand parenthood and how much they’re promoting Olicity. I don’t even know if I’d believe Samantha offering comfort to Felicity if Felicity approached her instead of the other way around. Samantha should be focused on her son. But what would you expect? Her and Ollie’s son is nothing but a plot device.

Laurel was as ridiculous as ever. I can’t tell if it’s more poor acting or writing for the character. There are too many examples of Ollie as an incestuous yo-yo between Laurel and Sara that Laurel should be immune to Ollie’s sleeping around. How is Laurel upset that some random woman slept with Ollie? I’d believe her—on some level—if she lamented the fact that there was a time when she thought she’d be the mother of Ollie’s children, a kind of path not taken thing, but that didn’t happen.

Then, there was Vixen. She worked as the unnecessary stand-in for John Constantine. Let’s throw in another magic user. Why not? If Arrow really needed another magician, why not go with the fan-favorite Zatanna? Actually, Vixen was another plot device. If Arrow had enlisted Constantine or Zatanna, either of those two and Darhk would’ve fought to a stalemate and the team wouldn’t think of targeting Darhk’s totem. Yawn.

I hope I’m wrong a third time about the presence of a Brick or two this season, but I don’t see Arrow spending too much time showing us Darhk’s struggle to regain his powers. Actually, that might be interesting to watch if it happens. But the clock is showing Olicity-o-clock.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page. Thanks for reading.

Agent Carter Review: “A Little Song and Dance”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Typically, I don’t like dream sequences but the one that kicked off “A Little Song and Dance” worked well. It didn’t slow down the narrative too much or pull us out of what was going on (that could be because this episode was the second part of a doubleheader, but I’m going to overlook that), and we received insight with Peggy. I wasn’t sold on Peggy’s love triangle with Sousa and Wilkes, and I’m still on the fence, but the little song and dance number in her dream warmed me to the possibility.

The rest of the episode had your prerequisite spy double-crosses and triple-crosses, but the misdirection kept me guessing and wasn’t forced. Character motivations collided at the episode’s end and there wasn’t a false action made by anyone. The antagonists had a shared goal but they wanted to use different means to obtain those goals, and our group of heroes also had a shared goal and they couldn’t coordinate how they’d accomplish it. This whirlwind led to a nice chain of events, and we’re left with an explosive conclusion.

Whitney’s story appears to be done and her hunger for zero matter drove the central conflict. I’m sure we’ll see the fallout from happened this episode, and perhaps we’ll even see the dissolution of the SSR and the beginning of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Or at least the organization that will become S.H.I.E.L.D.. I don’t know how Agent Carter will top “A Little Song and Dance,” and I don’t think it can or if it should even try. This season was more of a new beginning rather than an end. And “A Little Song and Dance” ended with a bang.

The Flash Review: “King Shark”

Jim’s Thoughts

The Flash continues to impress me. Although the second part of the Earth-2 excursion wasn’t as solid as the first, it was still good. I would call this week’s episode the second homerun in three weeks, and I’m hoping that signifies an upward trend as we head into the final leg of Season 2.

I was surprised we got as much of King Shark as we did. This show has a history of using the “Villain of the Week” format, and that’s what we got here, but it wasn’t as unsatisfying as it’s been in the past. There wasn’t really any character development for King Shark. They explained his origin, which was fine, but nothing much beyond that. What the show did do, and where I think the pay-off came in, was that they let King Shark be a stand-in for Zoom. Zoom is unreachable to Barry now, and King Shark represents the last of Earth-2 that can be dealt with. They went so far as to say as much in the episode, which takes away from what subtlety could have offered, but it worked more than not.

Speaking of character development, I’m pretty taken with Grant Gustin’s performance this season. He’s been pretty good from the start, but he’s shown some real chops here, and where it would have been easy to get carried away in portraying Barry’s guilt over what’s happened since he opened the breach, I think he found the sweet spot. He managed to be withdrawn without brooding, and that fits the character. Though Diggle mentioned Barry looking like Oliver carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, I think Gustin portrayed Barry’s burden in a way that was very much in keeping with what separates him from Oliver Queen. I also have to give a nod to Carlos Valdes (Cisco) and Danielle Panabaker (Caitlin) for their performances. As Cisco gets closer to his superhero potential, I think we see the character evolving, coping with inner conflict (again, without brooding), and that’s bringing him up to something beyond comic relief. While Caitlin has been relegated to the grieving widow role far too often, I think she’s done it as well as it can be done. Her light-hearted exchanged with Cisco in the end also helped breathe some life into the character.

I still don’t care about the West family drama. I like that they’re trying to do something with Wally, but it feels like his development is all off screen. If they’ve established before that he’s a gifted engineering student, I must have missed it. Since I’ve mostly tuned out those segments, I may very well have missed it, but it still feels odd for him to go from drag racing to applying to engineering school overnight, especially when he’s apparently been developing an elaborate project for it all along. While, I understand his resentment for Barry, and I can even believe it, I feel as though that element of the story is, at best, overshadowed.

If you’re a reader of The Flash comics, and you were paying attention to the Hunter Zolomon sighting in the park some weeks ago, this episode’s big reveal at the end shouldn’t have shocked you, but if you’re just a casual fan of the show, it was probably pretty exciting. Regardless of whether you saw it coming, it’s an interesting development, and if the show continues at the level it’s reached, I think there’s good reason to look forward to next week and beyond.

Kyle’s Take

While I love many of The Flash’s characters, I didn’t like “King Shark” as a story. The beginning of Jim’s last paragraph says it all “If you’re a reader of The Flash comics,” the ending made sense. If you’re a fan of the show and not a reader of the comics, you were left scratching your head. The Flash TV show didn’t develop Hunter Zolomon and that’s why I thought Zolomon sitting on a park bench over a month ago was just an Easter Egg for comic book fans. The biggest reason why Zoom made Wizard’s Top 100 super villains of all-time list is because of his relationship to The Flash. Hunter’s Zoom is to Wally West’s Flash what Bucky’s Winter Soldier is to Steve Rodgers’ Captain America. And TV’s Jay Garrick is nothing to Barry besides some dude he met this season. Before Jay could step in as the new Harrison Wells, Earth-2 Harry came into the picture. The two didn’t even become good friends because after Earth-2 Harry showed up, Jay transitioned to playing footsie with Caitlin, so you can’t even develop Zolomon as a villain by proxy.

You also can’t assume that every viewer has read The Flash comics. Jim’s right for dinging the show for developing Wally West off-camera (there’s more going behind the scenes with him than just his being a gifted engineer, and that’s got to change), but at least fans of the show who don’t read the comic know who Wally is. If you didn’t know who Hunter Zolomon was from the comics, you’d think he was related to Rip Hunter and belongs on Legends of Tomorrow or he once resolved an argument by suggesting someone saw a baby in half. It’s one thing to lean on the source material for inspiration. It’s another to depend on the source material to tell your story for you.

I’m sure the show will catch up non-2001-03 Geoff Johns, comic book readers in the coming weeks, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for The Flash writers as storytellers. Not only did they drop the Zolomon bomb, which opens up so many cans of worms it isn’t even funny (more on that later), the fact that Wally doesn’t directly tie into Zoom—except through some convoluted way—means that the West family story is a colossal waste of time. The Flash wants to collect speedsters like Arrow hoards archers (Merlyn, Arsenal, and Speedy) and tech-specialists (Felicity, The Calculator, The Atom, and Mr. Terrific). I’m going to need something more than Wally turning speedster, or being a speedster on Earth-MST3K, to care about the West melodrama.

Then we get to the fact that we’ve encountered at least three Jays. The hero in the mask has to be a Jay Garrick from some other earth and/or time—most likely Earth-1. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like a big deal but it means that Zoom has been to more than two earths and/or he’s traveling through time and exists in a Speed Force bubble. One of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue, critics had of 1978’s Superman was the scene where Superman turns back time to save Lois. Yeah, that’s a typical Tuesday morning for The Flash.

The Flash has established that Barry can travel through time and to other dimensions, so the fact that DC has said multiple times that Arrow and The Flash don’t exist in the same universe as the characters in the new DC films, shouldn’t prevent a crossover for this show and the movies. Heck, Barry could be superimposed with Adam West on Batman, followed by twirling with Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, and he can finish up by helping Christopher Reeve catch Margot Kidder by the Eiffel Tower. Before you think that any of that’s ridiculous, The Flash, with the abilities it’s already shown, has the power to do exactly what I just said. Come on, Barry, zip into Batman: the Animated Series. We’re rapidly approaching ludicrous speed. I can do plaid.

I know this sounds like sour grapes, but I’ve seen the WB/CW do this with Charmed. The sisters in that show defeated the source of all evil in their third season and had nowhere but down to go from there. It was this unbalance of power that forced the WB to make a rule for Smallville: no capes; no flight. Now waiting ten years to see Superman fly was silly, but The Flash should’ve made a rule of no time travel and no Earth-2 until season four or five. Gorilla Grodd is originally from Earth-1 and was sent to Earth-2. If you were going to do Earth-2 King Shark now (those were fantastic graphics by the way), why didn’t you stick with Earth-1 Grodd? It’s too late to contract this universe but man, is it way too big and unruly.

I agree with Jim about the characters. Gustin’s amazing as Barry. Cisco and Caitlin have done a lot with what they’ve been given, and this week, their characters grew. That moment between Cisco and Caitlin toward the end of “King Shark” was fantastic. This episode was at its best when it went the route of a Barry, Caitlin, or Cisco character study, but the other elements tanked.

Despite all these issues, “King Shark” was an entertaining episode, and I’m hopeful for an enjoyable Flash season finale. The Supergirl crossover—don’t get me started with how Supergirl’s presence on Flash directly links the show to the DC cinematic universe—happens either March 15^th or 22^nd, just in time for March Madness. That sounds about right.

One random point: I’m not sure that I buy Earth-2 residents’ acceptance of Earth-1 citizens naming their world Earth-2. Sure, Harry and Jessie chuckled at Cisco for telling them that no one from Earth-2 was allowed to talk, but if some Kyle from another reality told me that I was the Kyle of Earth-2, I’d correct him as many times as it took for him to get that he was Earth-2 Kyle. And that’s exactly what I tell other Kyle every time I see him. Isn’t that right, other Kyle?

Damn straight.

Want more Flash? Zoom to our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

iZombie Review: “Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind”

Kyle’s Thoughts

Dang. I heard iZombie was going to take a short hiatus—it’ll be off until March 22^nd—and that’s torture. Last week’s mystery of the week preceded another show, “Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind,” that packed as much as it could into an hour.

Ravi discovered that not all tainted Utopium is the same and that there may be your typical brain-dead zombies in the world, and that freaked the natives—it’s only a matter of time before Max Rager’s secret would shake loose, and now they may have to do a little damage control. Liv discovered that her roommate was the one who sexted Major while the two of them were together and she threw her out—Max Rager will take action and perhaps we’ll see them sic another mole on Liv. Major was ready to tell Liv that he’s the Chaos Killer. We knew Drake was tangled up in a mess a dangerous and thick as Medusa’s hair, but this episode showed just how complex and multi-layered his story is—I would’ve never guessed he was working with the police, but that makes me happy knowing that he’s not just a street thug. And we saw a newly re-zombified Blaine claw his way out of a shallow grave. I may have missed something and that was all in the show’s final ten minutes.

I’m not even sure I’ve processed everything that happened and that’s crazy considering how loaded iZombie was with plots and subplots before this week. Unlike some CW shows, you trust there will be a good payoff for most, if not all, of what’s going on. The characters intertwine nicely and even though iZombie is based on a comic, they changed enough of the original source material to keep things fresh and they don’t rely on the source material to build its characters.

It wasn’t all sunshine this week. The weekly mystery was a snooze but there was a nice twist to the ending: the guilty party got away with murder. This was particularly bad, considering that the victim was characterized as the kindest woman on the planet. Her daughter wanted her inheritance and dropped an air conditioner on her head. That’s a horrible way to go, but it least it wasn’t a toilet. That was in bad taste, and I apologize and I’m sure the victim just forgave me because that’s what she would’ve done. She would’ve even given her daughter the money if she asked. That ending ticked me off but that was the point.

Liv being subject to someone notorious for handing out second-chances was also the point of this episode. Her new beau Drake has a complicated past but he’s trying to make amends. Somehow, I don’t see a re-zombified Blaine giving Mr. Boss that same chance. Heads will roll when iZombie returns and I’ll try to wrap my head around what else happened this episode. “Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind” is easily one of the best iZombie episodes this season.

Thanks for reading.

Agent Carter Review: “The Edge of Mystery”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“The Edge of Mystery” could be one of the few episodes of Agent Carter when every character had a moment to shine, even Chief Thompson. Whitney reopened the rift, Wilkes gave into Zero Matter’s call, Jarvis attacked Whitney for what she did to his wife, and Thompson betrayed Masters and stuck it to the Council. Wow. That was a lot going on and every decision made by most of Agent Carter’s principle characters led to some life-altering moments.

I haven’t caught the second half of this week’s double-header yet, so I’m writing this blind to anything that happened in “A Little Song and Dance,” but I will take a moment and say that I hate that ABC has decided to air Agent Carter in two-hour blocks in order to make up for the network’s decision to delay the Season 2 premiere. I get why you wouldn’t want the two Marvel shows (Agent Carter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) on at the same time, but there could’ve been a better way to handle this situation. Even though Agent Carter has suffered through three weeks of doubleheaders, the episodes the network have stuck together for these two-hours have worked because they have a through line (like last week’s return and escape of Dottie Underwood), so I expect “The Edge of Mystery” and “A Little Song and Dance” to follow suit.

Getting back to “The Edge of Mystery,” I liked how the show used flashbacks for Mrs. Jarvis. The show didn’t dwell too long in the past, and this moment reminded me of the flashbacks we saw with Peggy and Whitney; those were some of the best moments this season.

The outcast super friends reunited, sort of, and while I didn’t care for the first episode they were together, “The Edge of Mystery” toned down the camp. I liked the hint of comedy.

Yeah, I’d have to say that while Jarvis continued to shine, it was the shocking—and yet understandable—turns Wilkes and Thompson made this week that caught my eye. Agent Carter’s ratings have been down this season and that’s too bad. If the show offered more antagonists like Whitney and continued to build layers for supporting characters like Wilkes, Thompson, Sousa, and Jarvis, the show could have legs. Agent Carter could still get renewed, and unlike last season, I wouldn’t be upset if it did.

“The Edge of Mystery” was a stellar episode. It’s too bad I don’t have a week to think about and discuss the episode before watching what happens next. I guess I’ll get to watching “A Little Song and Dance.” Seriously, ABC, the doubleheader thing is a bad call.

Bob’s Burgers Review: “Sexy Dance Healing”

Kyle’s Thoughts

“Sexy Dance Healing” was a star-studded joy. Kevin Kline reprised his role of Mr. Fischoeder (pronounced fish odor), Rob Huebel portrayed a doctor, Steve Buscemi made an appearance as a lawyer, and Jon Glaser returned as Jairo, the Capoeiera guru. Okay, this week’s episode may not be steeped in strong familial ties like “Hauntening” or “Hawk & Chick,” but as far as Bob driven episodes are concerned, “Sexy Dance Healing” is about as good as it gets.

Bob stresses over everything but nothing as much as his catchy, punny burgers of the day. I have a soft spot for these puns—I’ve even made a few of the burgers—so it was nice to see the burger of the day take center stage for the first time in the show’s run. Bob found himself in a bad slump, coming up with names like “The say cheese burger,” and “Head, shoulders, knees, and tomatoes burger.” These weren’t Bob’s best names. While out on a walk to find his burger name muse, Bob slipped on the body oil Jairo dumped on the sidewalk. The rest of the episode showed Bob turn into a real Brazil nut. He committed to Jairo’s “sexy, dance healing” instead of suing him for damages.

Bob’s Burgers balanced this episode between the Belcher kids running their own fake law firm and gags about how much Bob changed. The one thing I wonder is why everything Capoeiera-related had to do with the buttocks. The last time Jairo was on the show, Bob missed one of his 4:30 appointments and soiled himself. When Bob first visits Jairo, Jairo asks him to describe the color and personality of his bowel movements. I have to admit that I shared this with my wife, who works as a nurse. Who knows, this could be another way to find out what’s wrong with someone? No one wants a clingy bowel movement. But I don’t know how a buttocks can look like it’s stressed over a test it has tomorrow.

There were plenty of butt jokes during “Sexy Dance Healing,” but they undercut Bob’s journey to self-discovery. He may stress about his burgers of the day, but the stress grants him the drive to be the best burger chef he can be. And the wait for “Runny out of thyme burger” was well worth it. This week’s episode may not be the strongest episode this season, but this season of Bob’s Burgers has been a particularly good one like last year’s.

Thanks for reading.