Here we are, at the finish line! After twenty-one episodes, we've finally reached the finale of the tenth season of Bob's Burgers. It's fitting that the theme for this episode is about connecting with people. As we've all discovered in the last few months human connection can have many different forms, from interacting on social media, or text messaging to screaming out a "hello!" from the end of someone's driveway as you wear a mask. No matter how we do it, humans like to be around other humans. That includes the Belchers and their friends.
Both the A and B plots of the season finale highlight the importance of human connection. Let's start with the A plot, where we learn that Louise has been in detention four days in a row. That's what happens when a troublemaker finds a bag of plastic roaches in the trash after being discarded by a carnival worker.
Christmas came early for Louise.Louise is fine with serving detention for her roach related pranks until Mr. Frond puts down the hammer: any more shenanigans and she'll be forced to spend her lunches and after school time with the Thinkgineers, an extracurricular group who solve fun problems with pipe cleaners and newspapers. Rudy is their leader. They're a bunch of nerds.
Louise is already spooked by the threat of the Thinkgineers when she notices she's being spied on. Kaylee, who we met earlier in the season as Tina's failed mentee in the episode "A Fish Called Tina," is skulking behind trees and in bushes watching Louise. When Louise calls her out finally Kaylee reveals that she needs Louise's troublemaker expertise to get kicked out of Wagstaff so she can be home schooled. Worried about Mr. Frond's threat, Louise only agrees when Kaylee promised that only she will get in trouble, not Louise, and that she'll do whatever Louise says. In effect she'll become Louise's proxy for causing trouble and Louise is already plotting before they even end the conversation.
Louise starts out small, painting a baby carrot white with correction fluid and telling Kaylee to substitute it for a teacher's chalk. The one flaw in Kaylee's plan to get kicked out of school for being bad is that she's horrible at being bad. She can't bring herself to switch the chalk, or knock over a glass of water while being watched by Tina and Gene pretending to be adults (Gene is 48, FYI).
Gene is wearing two of Linda's bras, one on the top, one on the bottom. Just like any proper lady.Next we have a musical montage of Louise trying to get Kaylee to do something bad, and she finally succeeds when Kaylee posts a sign on the bathroom saying "Out of Order - Poop on Floor." With Kaylee finally on the road to juvenile delinquency Louise gets an idea for an even bigger prank thanks to the Thinkgineers. At their lunch table they're working on a catapult and Louise enlists their assistance in building an even bigger catapult that will launch a bunch of her plastic roaches onto her fellow students during lunch time, causing panic, mayhem and plenty of laughs for her.
But there's a twist! It seems that the teachers have noticed that Kaylee is hanging out with Louise and acting up and Mr. Frond proposes a deal to Louise: she snitches on Kaylee to keep her in line and Mr. Frond will promise to never put Louise in the Thinkgineers. Louise takes the deal and promptly reneges on it in the next scene when she tells Tina and Gene that she'll just pretend she didn't know Kaylee was planning the lunchroom roach prank. Gene likens Louise to Matt Damon in The Departed, and as someone who's never seen that movie I agree with him 100%.
The prank is all set up but at the very last moment there's an issue: Kaylee lets slip to Louise that the real reason she wants to be home schooled is that she's afraid of people and she never wants to be around them ever again. Louise, tough on the outside but emotional mush on the inside, can't let Kaylee go through with the prank, even though it would be totally awesome. She doesn't want Kaylee to cut herself off from people because she's scared - she tells her how can she find her people if she isn't around people? There's a scuffle and the prank is revealed, but no one gets in trouble with Mr. Frond since the prank never happened and Louise exhibits character growth by helping Kaylee which makes Mr. Frond super happy and Louise super annoyed.
Kaylee does end up finding her people in the Thinkgineers and she's totally into whatever nerdy thing they end up doing.
The B plot of this episode has Bob being drafted to deliver Jimmy Pesto's post hernia surgery medication to him since Pesto doesn't seem to have any friends. Bob reluctantly agrees because the Belchers are good people but when he gets to Jimmy's apartment he sees that Jimmy's place is basically a fun land for grown ups. There's a bar and slot car racing and an inversion table - Bob is intrigued.
This is what is called "foreshadowing."When Jimmy falls asleep Bob sticks around and plays with Jimmy's stuff (when Bob says this to Linda and Teddy their minds go to obvious places). Bob forms a routine - drop by Jimmy's with a flimsy excuse, wait until he falls asleep then play with his man toys. It goes well until Bob gets stuck on the inversion table upside down and Jimmy has to call Linda to pick up her husband. But when Bob and Linda go to leave Jimmy asks them to stay - he's lonely (awww!). The three end up racing slot cars together and damn you Bob's Burgers, why do you have to be so wholesome all the time!
Odds and Ends:
Favorite quote: "How's your pain that I'm glad you're feeling?"
Favorite blink and you'll miss is moment: Zeke is being punished by being forced to join the Thinkgineers and when Kaylee sees him they exchange greetings - Zeke was her mentor after Tina in "A Fish Called Tina" so it was a nice call back, and a foreshadowing of Kaylee joining up with them later.
Favorite words of wisdom: "You pee before you prank." That is excellent advice from professional prankster Louise.
A missed opportunity: I would have loved to see more of Tina reacting to Louise basically mentoring Kaylee after Tina failed at it earlier in the season.
And that's it for this season! Thanks for reading, any comments can go below!
