Bob's Burgers: Midday Run

January 5, 2015 6:45 AM - Season 5, Episode 8

When Tina is up for a big hall monitor promotion, she is determined to do whatever it takes to nab the powerful job. So, she enlists the help of Gene and Louise. Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, Linda gets artsy and begins to decorate the walls with customer artwork...on napkins
posted by mathowie (9 comments total)

I loved this episode but it wasn't until the end of the show that was I deleting it off my TiVo and saw the title and everything clicked. It was a huge Midnight Run parody that I didn't realize at the time, and it was great. They played up Midnight Run themes throughout -- lots of "swearing" that they had to apologize for, the fingercuffs-instead-of-handcuffs, the cover-up for losing a suspect. The whole thing was brilliant.
posted by mathowie at 6:47 AM on January 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

I laughed so hard when Mr Frond was telling Tina to stop making that noise. That's the same response I get form my husband when I do my Tina impression (which is really just making that noise).
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:52 AM on January 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is a rare episode where the B-plot just didn't work for me. They could have easily done the full half-hour just on the kids' story, and I would have been happy.
posted by Etrigan at 7:54 AM on January 5, 2015

Butts on Brass. I'd know that sound anywhere.
posted by drezdn at 8:21 AM on January 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Second on the B plot. I could go to my death without more hurfdurf naked old people jokes. There's some backpedaling once Bob's back with his drawing and the kids are not put out by it but I grow weary with people reacting to older bodies. I am sure this has no relationship to my continuing decrepitude.
posted by phearlez at 10:30 AM on January 6, 2015

I could go to my death without more hurfdurf naked old people jokes.

I didn't see it that way as much as that it was Edith, who's a pretty hateful/antagonistic character but who nonetheless insisted on posing nude for Bob for the Good of Art.
posted by psoas at 11:24 AM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed Zeke's blithe comment to Tina that they were going to get married someday ("I'm gonna gitcha!") Is this the start to a Zeke-Tina-Jimmy Jr. love triangle? (Probably not.)

Poor Regular-Sized Rudy. Life is setting him up for so many regular-and-other-sized disappointments. I kind of wish we'd gotten a better resolution to his part of the story.
posted by ilana at 1:15 AM on January 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Poor Regular-Sized Rudy. Life is setting him up for so many regular-and-other-sized disappointments. I kind of wish we'd gotten a better resolution to his part of the story.

"I didn't get a permission slip for that!"
posted by nubs at 7:11 AM on January 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

More seriously, it feels like the show's writers don't yet feel confident about stepping a bit outside the norm and doing a story that doesn't revolve entirely about the core family. This could've been an awesome Midnight Run/The Fugitive/Training Day type of story with it's own unique spin, using just Tina, Regular Sized Rudy, and Zeke.

The B-plot didn't bother me all that much; I liked the arbitrariness of Linda not liking Bob's doodles for no apparent reason, and that Bob freaks out about it and the whole thing just keeps escalating - she doesn't like his doodles, so he heavily invests in creating a burger drawing that she still doesn't like, so he goes for a crash art course, the crash art course turns out to involve life drawing of a nude.
posted by nubs at 8:45 AM on January 12, 2015 [1 favorite]