Bob’s Burgers Recap: Gene Jacket
Mia Morrison Bob’s Burgers
Adventures in Chinchilla-Sitting Season 5 Episode 15 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****Bob’s Burgers
Adventures in Chinchilla-Sitting Season 5 Episode 15 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****The Story
A special thing is happening for Bob and Linda: date night. It only happens thrice, sometimes twice, a year, so it’s a big deal. It has to be perfect, but don’t worry — Bob has planned everything out ahead of time. It’s also a special night for Louise: She’s bringing Princess Littlepiddles, the fourth-grade pet chinchilla, home for the weekend. Bob decides to take Linda to a place called Stoolz for bar trivia; Linda is not thrilled. Louise brings home PL, and a boy named Wayne (Andy Richter) is not thrilled. So much so that he barges into the Belcher residence and inadvertently lets the Princess free. Because PL is prone to seizures and allergic to everything, it’s a race to find him before he — yes, it’s a boy chinchilla — meets his fluffy maker.
The Highlight ReelDate night is a surprise, orchestrated by Bob!
[+100 to Bob, hopefully it’s great!]
Date night means the Belchers have to call on Tina to hold things down on the home front. The rules for Tina, Babysitter Extraordinaire, are simple: No leaving the house, no breaking things, and everybody in bed by the time date night is over.
Tina: No problem, we can go to bed in our sleep.
[+1 point to Tina for really selling her and her siblings’ skill sets.]
Linda blindfolds herself on the way to Stoolz because she wants it to be a surprise. The best part about this is that it’s not supposed to be a surprise. But then it ends up being a surprise, because why the hell would you take your wife to Stoolz for date night? Yikes — 100 points revoked.
Bob: We had a funny team name. We were Albert Beerstein.
Linda: That’s funny?
Bob: Yes, it’s funny! It works on many levels, Lin!
Linda: It’s fun, it’s fun, it’s like homework, but fun homework.
[+1 to Bob for Albert Beerstein, which, yes, does work on many levels; +1 to Linda for being a trouper.]
Louise goes to school with an incredible child named Wayne, who basically looks like Peter Griffin as a kid. He is nothing like Peter, because he has anxiety through the roof, especially with regard to his class’s chinchilla, which he has nicknamed Atlas. He calls Louise to check on Atlas, but then decides to show up to her house to really see how the class pet is:
Wayne: Out of cage! Out of cage!
Louise: Okay, you’re acting nuts, Wayne.
Wayne: Oh, you mean nuts for responsibility?
Louise: Like, nuts, crazy, bad-rotten nuts.
Wayne: Responsible, handsome, has nuts, maybe.
Louise: No way, just nuts.
Wayne: No, handsome nuts!
Louise: No, like cashews!
[+1 to Wayne for trying to give crazy some sex appeal; +1 to Louise for bringing him back down to earth; -1 to her, though, for slightly dissing cashews.]
After barging in, Wayne points out that it was not his job to close the front door. After all, he was just the barger, and this makes total sense and we’re not mad at you in the least, buddy. But the fact is the front door was left open, and Princess Littlepiddles, who was OUT OF CAGE, left the house and embarked on a wild adventure all over the wharf. First, Jonas, a certain biker you might remember, takes it so it can join the worst e-biker gang in the world. The kids begin their search:
[+1 to Wayne for not letting pleasantries get in the way of rescuing a chinchilla.]
This chinchilla has ended up at a high-school party, thanks to Jonas. There’s only one person who could possibly know which party:
Tammy: Ugh, what do you maxi-sads want?
[+1 to Tammy for the uncomfortably sanitary burn.]
With trivia becoming impossible and the date looking like it’s going to implode, Linda decides to spice things up by using one of the host’s answer sheets. Bob and Linda are in last place with zero points, losing to a team literally named the DILFs (self-explanatory). The host has a lot of fun pointing this out. Meanwhile, Tammy is trying to wrap her head around what chinchillas are:
Wayne: It’s not a cat, it’s a chinchilla.
Tammy: Anything that’s not a dog is a cat to me.
[+1 to Tammy for being so relatable — but also -1 because she’s probably lying and she probably watches old Steve Irwin clips all the time.]
Tammy triangulates the party via social media, and while the gang tries to figure out a way to sneak in, Wayne and Louise take this moment to bond about the chinchilla’s shitty amazing name:
Wayne: Princess Littlepiddles? It just isn’t right?
Louise: I know, fourth-graders shouldn’t be in charge of names.
Wayne: Or sex determination! He has testicles, for God’s sake!
Louise: I know! I told them, ‘Guys, those are testicles.’ No one believed me. Everyone thought they were butt boobs!
[+1 to Wayne for being so responsibly nuts about nuts; +1 to Louise for, I guess, just relaying this story.]
They sneak in the bathroom, thanks to Gene. But then Gene is using the bathroom so Tammy just can’t.
[+1 to the muscles in her face.]
This party served a double purpose: While the young ones looked for PL, Tina and Tammy experienced high-school-boy butts in person, and they had near-fatal reactions to the exposure:
[+10 to both of them for living their lives.]
Tammy did a fear fart because the anxiety was too much — it had to leave her body somehow. Back at the bar, the tipsy Date Knights of the Round Table were turning into the Reggie Miller of trivia — except they decided to trash talk by imitating computer sounds:
[+5 to both of them — also, 100 points reawarded: This is looking like fun.]
Teddy drives past the Belcher kids twice and doesn’t notice them either time, because first the kids hide, but then, on the second pass, he’s eating pad Thai in his car. Tina’s idea is for them to stand still on the sidewalk, but Tammy thinks Tina is a sorceress who just draped them in one big invisibility snuggie:
Tammy: Oh my God, it worked; Tina’s a wizard. Do something else, make a jean jacket appear on me.
Gene: Gene jacket!
[+1oo to Gene, incredible; +1 to Teddy for not spilling his noodles; +1 to Tammy, she was on shrooms for this episode, I think; +1 to Tina, good idea, wizard.]
PL made his way to a roller rink because Jonas gave the chinchilla to a girl he has a crush on. There are a lot of twists and turns involving a sketchy security guard and marijuana, but eventually, the chinchilla rears its cute head on the rink floor. Louise dives to save PL, just as he’s having a paralyzing seizure and just before he’s crushed by a whip of skaters. Wayne dives to save both Louise and PL. It is a glorious collision that basically looks like this:
[+10 to Wayne for enduring the clothesline from hell; +1,000 to Louise for saving PL.]
If you thought that was Louise’s best moment from the episode, she had one more gem. By the end of the episode, Bob and Linda have been kicked out of Stoolz because they’re exposed as cheaters, and the kids make it back home in time to be in bed by the time their parents come home. Tina basically blows their cover, but Wayne really does, because he runs out of the Belcher residence crying, sans Atlas. A heavily maturing Louise asks Bob to drive them to Wayne’s to reunite him with his obsession, but not before a quick dad dig:
Louise: Plus my dad is simple and doesn’t know his own strength.
Wayne: Oh, I can see that. I mean, your dad looks like he’d sit on anything.
Louise: Oh, he has.
[+10 to Bob for being a great date and dad; +100 to Louise for the jab, as well as for doing the right thing.]
The MVP
Louise. Not only did she save a chinchilla’s life, but she also saved Wayne’s sanity. At least temporarily. Was it just me, or was there a slight tinge of romantic tension between those two? Probably just me. But if Wayne and Louise dated, the whole chinchilla-jealousy dispute would be over in a second. Not important. Anyway, what is important is that this show continues to do a great job with letting Louise grow and still maintain her cheekiness.
Bob’s Bonus Sliders
- Date Knights of the Round Table. What a name, but probably not better than Albert Beerstein.
- Gene named the chinchilla Javier for a split second.
- Hopefully everybody who touched this chinchilla this episode pet him with the grain, not against the grain.
- Chinchilla-Con!
- More Wayne, ASAP.
