[7.6/10] This was a lot of fun. There’s the usual “kids have an A-story/parents have a B-story” setup here, but for once there was a nice thematic and motivation-based connection between the two, which bumps this one up a notch.
The A-story sees Tina and the rest of the Wagstaff cohort starting a business as part of a school program. Their effort to sell “woodchucks” (i.e. little blocks of wood with googly eyes pasted on) goes predictably awry, with a bunch of fairly standard but amusing enough worker vs. management gags. But things really pick up when Tina goes from employee to management, and slowly but surely becomes a “business monster” in the process.
Everything moves pretty damn fast, but it’s still neat to see Tina spin out of control, until an all-too-pliable Teddy’s offer to invest becomes her moral breaking point. The realization that she doesn't want to take advantage of people or offer inferior products is a solid one, founded on her dad’s example, and her solution of selling just the googly eyes is a clever one. It’s a measured victory, like all Bob’s Burgers victories, but a good one.
And I like how it connects to the B-story. Bob and Linda fighting against the continually more outlandish schemes of a serial dine-and-dasher are fine enough if not extraordinarily amusing. But the fact that he comes back to be a legit customer because the food is so good is a nice grace note to Bob’s deliberately corny speech about never compromising on quality in the beginning of the episode. Tina’s declaration that she’d rather be a bad good businessman like her dad than a good bad businessman like she was is a sweet one.
Overall, some standard-if-amusing stuff, bolstered by a neat and worthy connection between the two stories in the episode.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-10-31T00:31:09Z
[7.6/10] This was a lot of fun. There’s the usual “kids have an A-story/parents have a B-story” setup here, but for once there was a nice thematic and motivation-based connection between the two, which bumps this one up a notch.
The A-story sees Tina and the rest of the Wagstaff cohort starting a business as part of a school program. Their effort to sell “woodchucks” (i.e. little blocks of wood with googly eyes pasted on) goes predictably awry, with a bunch of fairly standard but amusing enough worker vs. management gags. But things really pick up when Tina goes from employee to management, and slowly but surely becomes a “business monster” in the process.
Everything moves pretty damn fast, but it’s still neat to see Tina spin out of control, until an all-too-pliable Teddy’s offer to invest becomes her moral breaking point. The realization that she doesn't want to take advantage of people or offer inferior products is a solid one, founded on her dad’s example, and her solution of selling just the googly eyes is a clever one. It’s a measured victory, like all Bob’s Burgers victories, but a good one.
And I like how it connects to the B-story. Bob and Linda fighting against the continually more outlandish schemes of a serial dine-and-dasher are fine enough if not extraordinarily amusing. But the fact that he comes back to be a legit customer because the food is so good is a nice grace note to Bob’s deliberately corny speech about never compromising on quality in the beginning of the episode. Tina’s declaration that she’d rather be a bad good businessman like her dad than a good bad businessman like she was is a sweet one.
Overall, some standard-if-amusing stuff, bolstered by a neat and worthy connection between the two stories in the episode.