Monday, January 10, 2011

Bob's Burgers had me at "itchy crotch"

Last night saw the series premiere of yet another animated comedy on FOX. When I first heard of this series nearly a year ago my first thought was "Oh, great. Another animated comedy. What mundane "Family Guy" character are they spinning off now?" But as I learned more about "Bob's Burgers" I warmed to the concept.

Think of it as a workplace comedy centered around a family. Right there the show's creators managed to meld two of the most tried and true sitcom concepts together into one genre which I don't recall having been done before. Right there they had an original concept.

From the first scene I was laughing. The series is one of the most politically incorrect shows in recent memory but it crosses the line without being deranged like "Family Guy" does. With a daughter which a sibling identified as "the worst kind of autistic" to jokes about the restaurant's burgers containing more than the allowable 4% ratio of human flesh and that was what the first episode centered around the pilot episode could easily be described as raucous -- right down to the opening joke about the autistic daughter openly stating that she had an itchy crotch.

Couple that with well thought out sight gags including a bus load of tourists hell-bent on obtaining one of these supposedly human flesh burgers at any cost and a customer who bought "The Molester" -- a burger that comes with candy -- who truly did fit the image of a child molester and "Bob's Burgers" was a twenty minute string of laughs which were well written and far from cheap and expected.

"Bob's Burgers" has a great start and fits well following "The Simpsons" which itself seems to have stepped up its game after twenty or so seasons. If the writers can keep the momentum up and FOX doesn't fuck the show up by shuffling its time period, this is yet another animated winner well worth watching at 7:30 PM on Sunday on FOX.

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