august_films
If you don't find this show to be funny, you have a very uneducated, immature, dark-hearted humor. This is the kind of show that's not funny because every character is just plain stupid (Family Guy, Simpsons, Archer). It's funny because of the explanations, actions, and teachings of each and every character. Bob is hilarious due to his seemingly dry but extremely hilarious and sarcastic humor. Linda can be a bit of an airhead, but it's not to the point of being annoying and unwatchable in any sense. She's a great mix of sweet and salty. Each character portrays a different aspect of humor, especially the kids. Tina is more timid and time oriented, Louise is very grown up in a child's body, and Gene is the one utterly stupid character, but he's also just a sweet and inexperienced kid that has tunnel vision when it comes to his interests. The only character that could be off-putting to viewers is the "arch enemy" Jimmy Pesto, who annoys me to my very core, but that's the point of his character so I get it. I can easily highly, highly, highly recommend this show to any person of any age group (though best suited for adults) and not feel like I steered them wrong. I've watched this show from the pilot and I haven't regretted one minute of it. It is breathtakingly heart-warming and hilarious at the same time. The themes of the episodes are very underlying but also very prominent in the sense of subliminal messaging. This show has been my laughter for the past 6 years, so you won't regret making it yours.
RueKurei
There are so many of these made-for-adults animated family TV shows that I've watched over the years, The Simpsons, F is for Family, Oblongs,American Dad, Family Guy,Boondocks,Proud family, King of the Hill etc that I usually get bored of them if they don't grab me within the first season. I don't really look for laugh out humour in them, because that's hardly ever the case, and hardly ever the point with them. But I do look for poignancy and entertainment.This show though, something just felt off about it. I heard it mentioned on a podcast and I started watching it. After watching a couple seasons I googled around and apparently it's one of the 'it shows' or something, or I think it is, it certainly does have the symptoms of one; a)People dogpiling it, saying it's crap and humourless and giving 1 star reviews b) People complaining about the bad reviews, saying those people 'don't get it', or some other crap like that, and giving 10 star reviews c) People proceeding to crap on other shows and saying how 'clever' or 'smart' this one is, which is usually a good indication of a hipster show and that it is not actually 'smart' or 'clever' and is one to keep away from.The thing is, I liked Bob's Burgers, and found it funny at points, but the more it kept going on, the more I figured what was off about it. The characters.The characters in this series feel so written. And what I mean by that is, that they feel like ingredients plugged into something to create a formula, rather than something natural. I wouldn't mind so much, but I feel constantly aware of that fact, it actually makes me appreciate how well done the Simpsons were. The big problem with The Simpsons was that it was stuck in a loop. Characters barely changed, because if they did, the formula would change, and you can't have the formula change because you've made a machine that needs to run for a set amount of time or as long as possible and people like this formula and never want it to change because it's what works, and Bob's Burgers is pretty much like that now. It's claiming to be a show about a down on his luck burger place owner that's struggling to make ends meet, but quite a bit of situations should just bankrupt him outright. But the loop resets every episode, and every character goes back to their places to repeat the formula.The situations the family finds themselves in are mildly entertaining, nothing really extravagant, but sometimes imaginative. The writing can be funny at times, the characters feel too written and really just feel like something a writer would write,not a problem with that, just that it feels too obvious. The characters outside the family are somewhat interesting, though again, nothing too out of the ordinary or would blow me away.I guess I'm too old for this or have watched too many of these shows now, as I see nothing here worthy of merit. It is entertaining enough to earn a 7, but it never rises above any of the better animated TV shows,nor does anything original or feel that special within them, so it's just worth a 6. I guess if you can find something to relate to in here, or like cringy or awkward humour(some people have said dry humour, this is American dry humour rather than English dry humour though, if that makes sense) if you're a fan of Home Movies you'll find something here, but I liked Home Movies and this didn't do it for me, not fully anyway. I feel it was just missing that poignancy and heart that so many of the others shows have. The attempts at poignancy and heart here just feels so rote. But like I said, maybe I'm too old and watched too many of these type of shows for Bob's Burgers to make any meaningful impact on me.
