6x11-12 - House of 1,000 Bounces & Stand By Gene

We’ve got two, count ‘em, two lovely episodes this week! Please welcome “House of 1,000 Bounces” and “Stand By Gene”, give them a hand, folks.



These episodes are quintessential kid Belcher scheme episodes and this one zings but maybe there’s something I’m missing. It’s good, has the heart and funny but kinda feels a bit flat, like it had a good concept but got cut short then had a new third act tacked on. Either that or my ‘good Bob’s Burgers episode’ barometer is miscalibrated, could be either but nobody ever argues against me so I probably won’t ever know. The B story was fun too, following a mystery pigeon which gets stuck in the restaurant and for some reason Bob is afraid of pigeons due to The Birds. Anyway, he makes a recovery and all is fine... but is it a good episode? Oh yes, it’s plenty good, better than even and building on the relationships we know to make good stories but why don’t I feel like it’s at the top of its game? It contains so much; great guest cast (if you ignore the presence and noises of Ollie and Andy), a Louise-based plot, Regular Sized Rudy even but maybe there’s a sense of malaise in me which makes me feel less than peppy about it. Still, we did get a bonus of seeing Bob in a bath with a pigeon which does help a lot in resettling me into the general weirdness of Bob’s Burgers I enjoy, we might be spared another midseason of slumps if they're doing this well.

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Of the two episodes, this one is by far the strongest and as usual, it’s usually the ones where we get to see the more distant parts away from the wharf which seem to hold the most potential for fun stories. This one involves the Wagstaff kids going off to find themselves a two-butted goat after Gene heard about it under the pier and like the title implies, it’s a kids out explorin’ story. B story meanwhile is a competition between Bob and Linda for best hookshots with napkin darts with soiled napkins and is very fun, even sweet right at the end. Most of what drives this like the other episode is what we know about the characters and that knowledge helping propel the episode as it’s then just about them doing things towards a motive, in this case finding said goat. Character moments galore with everyone playing their general roles and it all being a nice, enjoyable story and never to doubt the existence of a goat with two tails, even gets to rekindle Bob’s Burgers’ passing acquaintance with animal anuses (“Art Crawl” remains the single worst episode, nobody should watch it).