13x21 Mother Author Laser Pointer

[8.0/10] I kind of loved this episode, and I suspect I'm one of the few. I’ll readily admit that Linda is downright deranged here. The episode tries to temper the insanity of her actions by having her just tell the tow truck to come back later rather than explicitly waving it off. But there’s no doubt that she’s making poor author Bea Cromwell extraordinarily uncomfortable in that forward, over-the-top way that Linda indulges in sometimes.

But it doesn't really bother me for two reasons. The first is that this is a T.V. show, and a light comedy at that. There’s certain things I can accept within the realm of the heightened reality of fiction that would seem abhorrent to me in real life. This is one of them. Linda’s behavior would be offensive in the real world, but in the context of a T.V. show, we know that she’s harmless, just enthusiastic, and so it’s easy for me to take her behavior as we find it.

The second, and more to the point, is that we understand why she’s acting this way. Her babies are talking about going off to college, and that’s scary for someone like Linda who loves her kids and her family this much. She’s going overboard with this author of some of her kids' most beloved children’s books because she can’t go overboard with the kiddos and stop them from growing up. This is an unfortunate outlet for those feelings, and while things get a little wild, I stay sympathetic to Linda because she’s trying desperately to hold onto something beautiful that inevitably slips through your fingers. Poor Bea just happens to be a projection of that, and I kind of love it as a way to dramatize those feelings.

There’s also some great comedy along the way. While there’s some setup/punchline jokes involved to be sure, I also just like the comedy of the dynamic at play, with Linda being overly friendly like she is sometimes, Bea trying to be polite but distant, and Bob recognizing this trainwreck before it’s even out of the station. The back-and-forth involved from everyone, alongside Linda’s hilariously mundane suggestions for new “Newt and Snail” books brings the cackles.

Not for nothing, the episode really sells you on the touching qualities of those Newt and Snail books! Using a different art style, mimicking the writing style of the children’s stories they’re paying homage to here, and adding a touch of melancholy to them all make it easy to buy why Linda latches onto them as a symbol of the more beautiful parts of her children’s childhoods.

And I like that for all of Linda’s out-of-control efforts to convince Bea Cromwell to write another Newt and Snail book, in her efforts to hang onto that piece of the past, instead she helps Linda by letting her look to the future. There’s something lovely about the idea that Ms. Cromwell originally wrote those books for her kids when they were little, but part of why she’s not interested anymore is that her kids are grown and off in college. The same perspective that made Linda want to treasure that childhood period telling her that things will be okay when those same kids grow up and move out of the house has a wonderful kind of poetry to it.

Hell, I love how it actually mirrors the end of the Snail and Newt series, with the two bog-dwelling friends having to accept that things change and they won’t continue being inseparable given the transformation Newt is going through. It’s a nice way to seed the idea that Bea Cromwell recognized the sadness but also the beauty of that change from the beginning, and maybe it represents her own acceptance of her kids growing up, in the way Linda needs to hear.

Oh yeah, and then we have a cat rescue story, which I love but for entirely different reasons. I don’t know. I’m a sucker. The cat is really cute. Mr. Frond’s devotion to caring for his kitty despite the Principal’s ban on pets at school is pathetically wholesome in the way Mr. Frond is. The gag about the cat, “Dr. Bojangles”, having an honorary degree slayed me. And Gene getting the win with his laser pointer idea is a nice part too. I also got a big laugh out of the “college is cool” assembly rap. It’s a slight b-plot focused on cuteness and comic relief, but it completely worked on me.

So overall, this one goes a little outsized relative to the normal, slightly more grounded Bob’s Burgers episode. But its message about embracing change, and its illustrating that through Linda’s substituting a children’s book author for her mixed feelings about her own kids growing up, is moving and dare I say brilliant. This one might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but as an avowed Linda fan, and someone who appreciates when this show touches on something real, it’s definitely mine.