By far my favorite throw-away gag from this episode is Bob hoping to learn about Bee Keeping and walking up to random crates and asking "Are you a Bee Hive?"
[7.3/10] Solid Bob’s Burgers Halloween outing. I liked them mixing up the setting and giving us a historical orchard as the backdrop for the spooky fun. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the show was doing a light takeoff on Midsommar with this one, which is fun. The gag work here, involving a pagan couple who runs the orchard and is way too into it, is a lot of fun. The kids' jokes and one-liners, along with Bob’s naive hopes to get to do some cool beekeeping stuff are all good for a yuk or two.
But the story felt like it needed another beat. Louise disdaining the sheep-like call of popularity that other students enjoy, while secretly being a little jealous of it, isn’t a bad throughline for the episode. The baton of “Hero of the Harvest” being passed to whichever kid has the latest gimmick that gets them attention succeeds as a way to dramatize the fickle trendiness of who's captured the class’s imagination at the moment. Louise looking down on it, only to revel in it when she’s picked as the winner, has some charm. But it’s never really resolved beyond a fear that being popular means she’ll be sacrificed in pagan ritual, which obviously doesn’t happen. There’s no real resolution to the broader arc the show seemed to be crafting for Louise.
The B-story was aces though. The kids trying to do an offbeat group costume tuned to 1996’s Twister is so on-brand for the Belchers. I love Linda getting way too into it and designing over-elaborate costumes that Tina and Gene can barely walk in. The idea of reuniting the Belcher kids in time to make the costume parade contest adds a little bit of stakes and tension, and Teddy’s anxiety over not getting his daily burger and sating himself on buns is delightful.
Overall, the pieces of this one are solid, and it’s still a fun episode, even if they don’t amount to as much of a fully-formed whole as they might.
Shout by Jim222001VIP 6BlockedParent2022-10-31T22:15:04Z
The earlier seasons had far superior Halloween episodes. I actually laughed out loud with those. Now the show is a nice harmless relaxing show to watch. Where you just can’t expect to laugh.