After just over ten years on screens, Bob’s Burgers worked hard to get to where it has. Released in 2011, the show’s premise didn’t appear all too unusual at first glance, set up to follow the Belcher family as they tried to maintain some kind of normality in running their downstairs burger restaurant. There are no big secrets underlying throughout the show, no big drama, and almost no more minor drama either, as the family rarely find themselves unsupported either by each other or by a generous dose of self-confidence as they push through wacky scenarios. But for some reason, there is something addictive about Bob’s Burgers.
Is it the familiar cast of voices? Or the delightfully unfamiliar ones? The effects making us feel like the show is not just the product of one person but the love-child of many. Whatever it is, at the end of a decade when we thought maybe we were sick, tired, and finished with the family sitcom, Bob’s Burgers wandered in to change our minds with a host of puns, hilarious voice acting, and a love-you-to-death brand of humour accessible for adults and children alike. Having finally had its trailer released earlier this year, The Bob’s Burgers Movie will be released without further setbacks in May. Let's look at why we love the series so much in the first place and why we need the movie now more than ever.
How Bob’s Burgers Gained its Success
At the beginning of the last decade, we saw a shift in our cartoons. Cartoon Network had almost completely let go of a host of popular long-running shows such as The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and the original Ben 10, and on other networks, staple shows such as Futurama and King of the Hill were also on their way out. What remained of kids shows for the target market above the age of 11 was mainly occupied by shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and maybe South Park at a stretch. And while these definitely hit the spot for many, they certainly left room for new material. Slowly, Cartoon Network began to expand its repertoire again with The Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Adventure Time, making up for the oddball shows that didn’t make it into 2011, almost opening a new genre of series altogether wherein colorfully animated biomorphic shapes and well-spoken garden animals became canvases for coming-of-age comedy, addressing a plethora of relatable issues, both funny and serious.
With adult-rated anime gaining traction in the background, animated media, in general, was becoming increasingly popular for an audience beyond school ages. As Family Guy and South Park used serious issues to make a joke, succeeding in a way that was often too rude to be watched as a family, these new series were building a new perspective on animated drama by making a joke to talk about serious issues, doing so with a fresh, painless 21st-century attitude where The Simpsons, for instance, struggled. Bob’s Burgers bridged the gap between the popular new cartoons and the older generation of family-dynamic animated shows like no other. It became the perfect show to reflect the audience of the 2010s.
The Bob's Burgers team has also been ahead of its time in striving toward a more diverse team, as they outlined their mission to have more women and people of colour on their staff. In an interview at Comic-Con 2020, the series creator Loren Bouchard said that just under 50% of Bob's writers were women, setting a new standard for the animation industry, which the team described as having been "a bit on the white male side until very recently." These values might also have added to the show's success, as modern audiences have become increasingly critical of studios for their handling of race and gender equality issues.
Why Now Is the Perfect Time for a Movie
Bob’s Burgers made it onto screens with Fox in January 2011 and followed a family in their day-to-day life keeping a burger restaurant alive. Although, in a chat with New York Magazine during season 4, the production team addresses (and denies) assertions of the show's similarity to Family Guy and the Simpsons, as the show now enters its 11th season, it is quite clear to see where these allegations fall short. Unlike the semi-invincible protagonists of The Simpsons, or the psychopathic definitely-invincible characters frequenting Family Guy (or pretty much all of Seth MacFarlane’s creations, for that matter), the family we follow in Bob’s Burgers is fairly average, somewhat aware of their own mortality, finding the facility for empathy blocking their path to success in a variety of situations.
What made the show stand out was its uniquely homely, comforting atmosphere. The comedic violence between parents and children we often saw in the Simpson and Griffin families was replaced with an almost comedic level of forgiveness. The show’s parents are acting like, well, parents, for once. Bob and Linda’s children, Louise, Tina, and Gene, are not the most successful at anything they do, nor the most focussed, smartest, or ethically directed children they could be. However, they are still loved, even when their averageness and awkwardness cause problems. Instead of the familiar tropes stemming from being too shy, too smart, too attractive, or even causing too much trouble, Bob’s Burgers lets us relax and imagine a world where not everything revolves around being the best or the worst at anything.
So, with the quirky humour typical of the new decade of 21st-century cartoons, mixed with its subversively soft take on the family dynamic, Bob’s Burgers set itself up for success and earned it with a killer sense of dead-pan, pun-slapped humour and a team of unforgettable voice actors such as Dan Mintz, H. Jon Benjamin, Eugene Mirman, John Roberts, and Kristen Schaal. The show has now surpassed a decade on screens, and it's time to see it in its unique, funny, lovable way on the big screen, whether it follows true to what we're used to seeing in the series or goes with something unexpected, such as a feature-length musical number.
As we move out of a hellish era of Zoom meetings and social isolation, it is not uncommon to hear the question, "What did you get up to in quarantine?" And while for some, it might serve as some comfort to watch a story about exceptional talent against the odds, imagining ourselves in those shoes, for others, a film about characters who love and value each other for just being could come at no better a time.