Bob's Burgers - The Cartoon For Everyone

I remember first seeing the promo for Bob's Burgers and thinking "Wow, this show looks awful, i give it one season" and here we are several years later and the show has just started it's sixth season. Bob's Burgers follows the Belcher family, a working class family who own a small burger restaurant who struggle to get by. Back when The Simpsons and Family Guy had a crossover they made a joke about how Bob's Burgers is riding their success, which is ironic because Bob's Burgers is funnier than The Simpsons is now or Family Guy ever has been (And I used to love Family Guy). I think what makes it so much better than those two shows is one: it's optimism. The Belcher family is constantly struggling and the creator of the show Loren Bouchard has said the show is based around small victories, the Belchers are never going to win the lottery or become celebrities, but they'll have enough to pay rent at the last minute or having a good day at school or even just nothing going wrong is still a victory to them. The second thing that makes it successful, is that it's inoffensive, and i don't mean the sense that the show never takes risks and plays it safe, I mean it never takes any shots at races, cultures, religions, politicians. All of the jokes and suffering are contained within the show, but even then it's nothing too brutal. Out of everyone in the Belcher family the most normal one is Bob who constantly has to put up with the wackiness of his family when he himself just wants a simple life, but we see that he still loves his family, even if he has to put up with their shenanigans.

The show also splits the focus between the adults Bob & Linda and the kids Tina, Gene & Louise, often focusing on problems that different ages face, the kids have school problems, Tina has boy problems, the adults have to deal with debt, rival companies, etc. Because of this the show can have such a wide audience from kids to adults because there's nothing offensive and has situations that everyone can relate to in someway. It's honestly the perfectly written show for everyone to get some enjoyment out of, the only problem I can imagine people having is the animation, which i'm not gonna lie, the characters are very weirdly designed and the flatness of them bothers me a lot, but i can look past that for the genius writing.

Then there are the characters themselves, Louise who despite being only nine is practically a sociopath for how much joy she gets in other people's misery and is actually the smartest of the Belcher kids even though she's also the youngest, also being played by Kristen Schaal, the voice of Mabel Pines makes some of her dialogue even funnier pretending it's Mabel saying it. Now that I think about it Mabel and Louise have a lot in common, they are both goddesses of destruction after all. Tina is a character that has recieved a lot of praise by critics and feminists for being open about her sexuality but never demonised or portrayed as a slut. She's not sexually active, but she's a teenager who has an interest in exploring her sexuality, to basically put it, it's the most normal representation of a teenage girl's sexuality in a TV Show. But that's an assumption i'm making based on other people's praise of her, i being a dude have no idea how a 14 year old girl should be portrayed when it comes to sex (There has got to be a better way to word that sentence). Actually I think i prefer the stories with the kids, they each have wildly different personalities and each one is hilarious, Louise is aggressive, Tina is obvlious and Gene is passionate yet dumb. With Bob and Linda, Bob is mostly the straight man who plays off other people's silliness (Not always, but most of the time) and honestly I think Linda is more annoying than she is funny.

So really, this is a cartoon that I can recommend to everyone. While it's not my favourite cartoon, a lot of people still feel weird about watching shows meant for kids like Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, but at the same time there are other adults who are uncomfortable watching shows like Rick & Morty which is most definitely not meant for kids. Bob's Burgers can be watched and enjoyed by everyone I feel, and i highly recommend it.

-Danny