Overview (Spoilers Below):
Tina’s family is concerned about her recent behavior and decide to read her journals to see if they can shed some light on what’s been going on lately. While they go through her erotic friend fiction, Tina is sneaking into the school after-hours with a hammer in order to smash the fancy newsroom touch screen. Luckily, her family is able to identify her target in time and make it to the school—but it ends up being Tammy who helps her evade detection in the end.
Our Take:
Season twelve of Bob’s Burgers comes to a close with its 22nd episode, Some Like It Bot Part 2: Judge-bot Day. It’s a conclusion that is, for the most part, suitably epic, with messages on fitting in, musical numbers, and plenty of homages to Blade Runner. It doesn’t have the dramatic depth that some season enders of the past have provided, but it’s still a solid ep that closes out the run in a satisfying way.
The main plot picks up where we left off last week, except this time the other Belchers are all together in their search for Tina’s motivations. Gene and Louise and Bob and Linda are mirrors of each other in some ways, so the four of them teaming up to search for Tina’s journals was a fun combo, and I especially liked Gene’s line about how it was like Blues Clues all over again.
Cutting between Tina’s fictional parodies and the real life action taking place at the school was an engaging plot device as well, although at this point I was much more invested in the reality than in the fictional stuff.
Tina’s struggle with evading the security guard is definitely one of the highlights of the night, and his continual quest for the perfect t-shirt design with no drop shadow but maybe an outer glow was probably the time I laughed loudest during the whole ep.
I think the weakest part of the episode is around the middle when Tina’s family arrives at school and talks to her through the window for a good five minutes. It all started to feel a bit slow and dragging, and though I always appreciate a musical number, the song wasn’t my favorite and it just seemed to repeat emotions the dialogue had already conveyed adequately.
The most surprising part of the ep happens when Tammy ends up being the one who discovers what Tina is about to do, and then decides to help cover for her and ends up changing the segment after confessing that the only reason she started it in the first place was because she herself was afraid of feeling judged. That really helped push the episode back into solid B-grade territory for me.
Overall, the season finale of Bob’s Burger’s twelfth season is a fitting end. It’s fun, musical, and heartwarming—but it sure did drag in the middle and I’m not sure it necessarily covered any new ground or did anything very unexpected. I did like Tammy and Tina being able to share a small moment together though, and sometimes it’s the little things like that that can help turn an episode into a finale.