12x21 Some Like It Bot: Eighth Grade Runner (1)

[9.1/10] Wow, this one hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I think a lot of folks who enjoy Bob’s Burgers have been the “weird kid” at one time in their life. I know I have. So the sense of Tina coming to school, ready to show off something she thinks is cool, only to have the would-be popular girls immediately decry it, and by extension her, as weird is heartbreaking. Tina’s always so earnest and sensitive, which makes people acting in ways that hurt her more sad and unfortunate than when Louise or Gene hit bumps in the road; because they’re better able to take it in stride and even strike back.

I also love the choice to realize Tina’s emotions and sense of hopelessness via her erotic friend fiction. The simple act of mixing films like Ex Machina, Blade Runner, The Terminator, and other robotic sci-fi dystopia into a blender is a lot of fun. It adds a specificity to the aesthetic and mood of Tina’s letterboxed story. More to the point, drawing a line between people who feel real and present as human beings, but are secretly bots, maps neatly onto Tina feeling like she’s a perfectly normal and valid person, while her frenemies make her feel othered and less than.

I especially appreciate the big swing of going without dialogue for long stretches here. I know some of that is simply paying tribute to other films, but the boldness to do it, and tell the story in some ways with Tina’s actions as much as with her words, makes the dystopian tale feel even more intimate and introspective. There’s still plenty of good gags -- the riff on the Voight-Kampff test is particularly good -- but this is a surprisingly legitimate take on the robo-dystopia genre where you genuinely feel for the bots at risk, and the young woman expressing herself through their story.

I also appreciate how it aligns with Bob’s subplot in this one. The simple act of someone saying his restaurant sucks in bathroom graffiti really hurts someone like Bob, who’s always had a certain concordance with Tina. He too tries to express himself with his art, something he takes pride in and rests his success on. To have someone slate it like that, even some joker with a pen on the toilet, hits Bob where it hurts.

That’s why the “What If They’re Right” song is so piercing. There’s an abject sadness to two sensitive souls putting a piece of themselves on display for all the world to see and have the world turn around and reject it. The impostor syndrome, the sense that you’re just weird and not fit for the world, comes out in a beautiful, melancholy tune, that plays on anxieties lots of people have. This is, in some ways, the worst fear of every weird kid -- what if the normies are right about me? What is there’s something off or wrong there. Dramatizing that through a vulnerable eighth grade girl and an earnest middle-aged man shows how the fear never really goes away, and can feel heartbreaking when it catches you off guard.

The other elements of the episode are solid too. I particularly like how defensive Teddy is of Bob, and how the both of them want to go to great lengths to expose whoever wrote the graffiti. You know things are off the rails when Linda is the voice of reason, and her scenes in the restaurant are a good laugh. I’m not fully invested in Gene and Louise trying to get Tina to buck up enough to buy them boba tea, but I trust Bob’s Burgers to be going somewhere with this.

Overall, this is a very cool first half of the season finale, one that takes some big creative swings with its robo-dystopia pastiche, while touching on something achingly real with Tina and Bob’s insecurities.