Bob's Burgers (Season 7) 720p - (2017 Lang: English)

I've been stereotyped. Not well-done! An okay Show!

Everything else in the Bob's Burgers series aside, the way Tina Belcher is portrayed is an insult to my intelligence. Though twice her age, I'm basically her real-life counterpart — autistic (Aspie), a voice of reason, interested in many guys (and their backsides, BTW) at once, have a passion for books, music, and horses, generally sweet (but can be sassy!), honest and direct, "socially awkward" at times, and often feel the need to scratch in, well, less-desirable areas. I also have dark hair and wear glasses, if that helps. However, Tina is the embodiment of harmful stereotypes about female adolescence — that her hormones are so out of control that her voice drops — and autistic women, fearless women, and female intelligence — that we're more manly, hence Dan Mintz as her voice actor. All the Internet fame because an adult male is speaking for her. Unless necessary for her gender identity (I'll explain later), I feel that Tina doesn't need a man to voice her. Otherwise it's proof we still live in a male-dominated society and haven't come as far as we say we have.

(Spoiler and option #1) Dan Mintz made a huge faux pas when he said in an interview that Tina is better if voiced by a man (or something like that) due to her interests and straightforwardness. It's as if she has the same hormonal and thought patterns of a guy; ergo, she's better off voiced by one. Oops! Sounds like a validation of male dominance with the delusion that straightforwardness, especially concerning one's sexuality, is a male trait. Not falling for that one!:))) My first option would be for the network to give Tina a feminine voice, because it's about time a confident, independent female character isn't an outlet for stereotypes.

(Spoiler and option #2) Tina was originally Daniel, a possible caricature of Mr Mintz himself. In "God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins," Tina mentions her "assigned gender," referring to Daniel. In "Letters Written by Linda" in the Bob's Burgers comic, Linda imagines an alternate universe where Tina is, you guessed it, Daniel again. That said, my second option would be for Tina to come out as transgender or gender non-conforming, taking out any guesswork as to why her voice is the way it is.

(Option #3) Tina comes out as transgender and gets voiced by a real-life trans woman. I see this option as more realistic, since she could also play the other trans women in the series, currently played by cis men and have stereotypical roles to boot.

(Option #4) If either of the above options fail, and the network decide to keep Tina cisgender and polyamorous, I can play her (seriously). Why not have a real-life counterpart play her? I don't care how far-fetched it sounds, it's still possible!)))

There are so many of these made-for-adults animated family TV shows that I've watched over the years, The Simpsons, F is for Family, Oblongs,American Dad, Family Guy,Boondocks,Proud family, King of the Hill etc that I usually get bored of them if they don't grab me within the first season. I don't really look for laugh out humour in them, because that's hardly ever the case, and hardly ever the point with them. But I do look for poignancy and entertainment.

This show though, something just felt off about it. I heard it mentioned on a podcast and I started watching it. After watching a couple seasons I googled around and apparently it's one of the 'it shows' or something, or I think it is, it certainly does have the symptoms of one; a)People dogpiling it, saying it's crap and humourless and giving 1 star reviews b) People complaining about the bad reviews, saying those people 'don't get it', or some other crap like that, and giving 10 star reviews c) People proceeding to crap on other shows and saying how 'clever' or 'smart' this one is, which is usually a good indication of a hipster show and that it is not actually 'smart' or 'clever' and is one to keep away from.

The thing is, I liked Bob's Burgers, and found it funny at points, but the more it kept going on, the more I figured what was off about it. The characters.

The characters in this series feel so written. And what I mean by that is, that they feel like ingredients plugged into something to create a formula, rather than something natural. I wouldn't mind so much, but I feel constantly aware of that fact, it actually makes me appreciate how well done the Simpsons were. The big problem with The Simpsons was that it was stuck in a loop. Characters barely changed, because if they did, the formula would change, and you can't have the formula change because you've made a machine that needs to run for a set amount of time or as long as possible and people like this formula and never want it to change because it's what works, and Bob's Burgers is pretty much like that now. It's claiming to be a show about a down on his luck burger place owner that's struggling to make ends meet, but quite a bit of situations should just bankrupt him outright. But the loop resets every episode, and every character goes back to their places to repeat the formula.

The situations the family finds themselves in are mildly entertaining, nothing really extravagant, but sometimes imaginative. The writing can be funny at times, the characters feel too written and really just feel like something a writer would write,not a problem with that, just that it feels too obvious. The characters outside the family are somewhat interesting, though again, nothing too out of the ordinary or would blow me away.

I guess I'm too old for this or have watched too many of these shows now, as I see nothing here worthy of merit. It is entertaining enough to earn a 7, but it never rises above any of the better animated TV shows,nor does anything original or feel that special within them, so it's just worth a 6. I guess if you can find something to relate to in here, or like cringy or awkward humour(some people have said dry humour, this is American dry humour rather than English dry humour though, if that makes sense) if you're a fan of Home Movies you'll find something here, but I liked Home Movies and this didn't do it for me, not fully anyway. I feel it was just missing that poignancy and heart that so many of the others shows have. The attempts at poignancy and heart here just feels so rote. But like I said, maybe I'm too old and watched too many of these type of shows for Bob's Burgers to make any meaningful impact on me.