Review: Bob’s Burgers ‘Hawk & Chick’

 

Spoilers Below:

Yikes. Two new Bob’s Burgers last night AND a new Simpsons? I get that it’s the season finale night for all the shows, but jeez, FOX, are you trying to kill me?

No time for fancy setups, tonight. Let’s get right into the episode.

While on a father-daughter shopping trip, Bob and Louise spotted Kojima, the former star of Hawk & Chick, the duo’s favorite father-daughter samurai show. They invited him to the restaurant and found out that he was searching for his daughter, Yuki, whom he hasn’t seen for 30 years.

They conspired with Dominic, a local cinema usher, to hold a secret midnight film festival of a Hawk & Chick movie in order to reunite the samurai with his estranged daughter, and sought her out to deliver an invite.

Everything was going according to plan when the English dubbing of the film began to malfunction, and the Belcher family was forced to wing it themselves via microphone. Bob and Louise ended up having a touching moment where Louise confessed that she was worried she would grow up and grow apart from her father like Kojima and Yuki. Bob reassured her that this would never happen, and the samurai team (who heard Bob & Louise talking) forgave each other of their differences.

In Case You Missed It:

1) Next door store: The Seven Year Itch – Couple’s Dermatology

2) Bug Truck: Abraca-Dead-Bug Pest Control

3) Burger of the Day: Take a Leek Burger (comes with sautéed leeks.)

4) Louise’s age logic [to Bob]: “Well you’re 80, so he’s gotta be at least 90.”

5) “I am out of ketchup, but I am IN for the festival!”

6) Movies playing at the local theater: “My Life As A Person,” “A Dirty Place,” “A Beautiful Robot,” “The Messenger Who Got Killed,” “Song of the Fishwife, “Tuesday in Tuscany,” and “Total Urgency.”

7) Yuki worked at an accounting firm called Deduction Junction.

8) Not having a song at the end was a bummer!

Last week I praised Bob’s Burgers for their strong story, specifically citing the entertainment value of a little murder mystery. “Hawk and Chick” also had a fantastic story, but for a different reason. It was a cute and heartfelt tale, which is always nice to see once in a while.

When it comes to Bob and his kids, Tina is likely the favorite, due to the fact that she’s less of a pain than the other kids, and shares her father’s occasional awkwardness. Plus, Jon Benjamin speculated that this was the case, so who are we – as mere mortals – to say otherwise? Bob and Gene share their special father-son bond, which has been highlighted in the past, but Louise and her dad usually bond over TV & movies. Way back in season one, “Spaghetti Western and Meatballs” revealed the two’s mutual love for old cowboy flicks, and now we add samurai movies to the list as well.

Bob’s Burgers makes it a point to show the different relationships between its five main characters, and they rarely fail. In fact, two week’s ago, “Eat, Spray, Linda” showed the individual bonds between Linda and each of her kids all in one installment, and it was one of the best in the show’s history.

I would also rank this episode as a little funnier than last week’s, giving it a bit of an edge overall. For instance, any show featuring Bob talking as an inanimate object is an automatic winner, and this one started out with just that. The ongoing battle between Linda and Tina for the role as the Mayor was a nice running gag as well. And as for visual laughs, I really liked the small touch of making Tina & Gene’s hair samurai-like when they were handing out fliers. Not nearly as funny as Gene’s bald hair and mini-mustache, but close.

This last part is a bit nutty, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. I think it would have been hilarious if the second-to-last episode of this season of Bob’s Burgers was this same storyline and generally the same episode, but was immediately followed by a 22-minute finale showing just the family’s dub of the Hawk & Chick movie. I could easily watch a whole episode of that.

Regardless, this was a quality story and a humorous effort, and yet another feather in the cap of Bob’s Burgers season five.

Bring on the finale!