Why Bob’s Burgers is the Ideal 2010s Show for ’90s Kids
The two Belcher children who never could have remembered the ’90s based on the moving Bob’s Burgers timeline do not let that inconvenient reality get in their way.
In the first episode to premiere in 2014, almost three years to the day of the show’s launch, Louise promises a classmate she will not spill an embarrassing secret. Based on the nature of the classmate’s problem, it is not her style to “narc” about it.
“What, is this the ’90s?” she asks rhetorically.
With that, the Gen Zer Louise volleys her version of a playful dig at the expense of ’90s kids. She builds the dis on a bold assumption. As a perpetual nine-year-old on a show that debuted January 9, 2011, she is the only core character unequivocally born in the 21st century.
By the events of 2014’s “Slumber Party,” both of Louise’s siblings would likewise have been born in 2001 or after. Yet a year later (at least in our universe), when Bob references a “beautiful place that exists that I’ll never get to be a part of,” his other kids chime in with their idea of such a paradise.
For son Gene, it’s “New York in the ’90s!”
Gene is 11, and therefore would have been born in 1999 or early 2000 when his family’s saga hit the small screen. Now he has joined his younger sister in reaching the point where he cannot even recall the aughts. Older sister Tina is approaching that threshold herself while the series rounds out its first decade of existence.
But why burst a bubble like this? If anyone wants to have a harmless laugh at the ’90s, let alone speak fondly of the time, more is merrier.
Regardless of how long it stays fresh in this young decade, Bob’s Burgers is the definitive animated Fox sitcom of the 2010s, just as The Simpsons bears that distinction for the ’90s. It emerged and burgeoned when all ’90s kids were finishing their upbringings or undergraduate studies and, if nothing else, doing their darnedest to launch their adulthood.
The show tends to stay entrenched in its own time and universe, which one ought to expect. But besides attaching itself to a key phase in millennials’ post-millennium lives, it sprinkles out subtle and fleeting callbacks to our generation’s age of innocence. (All TV-related statistics, dates, and biographical information are via the Internet Movie Database.)
Dipping in after dark
Cartoon Network gave millennials first dibs on its offerings by launching in the fall of 1992. By the time it approached legal drinking age, it was the first channel to nationally syndicate Bob’s Burgers, placing it on the Adult Swim block.
Since its 2001 inception, Adult Swim has been Cartoon Network’s answer to Nick at Nite, relaying acquired programming more mature audiences will appreciate. Many ’90s kids can recall the latter block signaling their school-night bedtime when “regular” Nickelodeon gave way to their parents’ dull old favorite shows at 8 p.m.
Since 2013, the shoe has grown exponentially snug on the other foot. Now we have taken our turn in the post-dinner version of an otherwise children’s TV space, and the Burger of the Day is prominent on the menu.
Moreover, after initially rerunning Bob’s Burgers in the owl hours, Adult Swim has more recently offered a double play at 8 p.m. Eastern. Then it shifted the show to 9 p.m., where it sits as of this week. (But, hey, that was Nick and Nite’s start time in the Nickel-O-Zone era.)
Anyone with basic cable can easily find it then and there if and when they need a break from the deluge of web-only options. The streaming devices can retire for the evening, leaving only late-20th-century technology in charge.
Life from a booth
Anyone who has followed Saturday Night Live within the last quarter-century can appreciate the revolving door of its alumni guest starring opposite the Belcher quintet. That includes any millennials who wanted, and were able and permitted, to stay up on weekends late in the last millennium.
Few ’90s kids may have been old enough to watch, let alone remember, one-year wonder Sarah Silverman in the variety show’s 1993-94 season. But those who are recognize that point as her launching pad.
With 32 episodes from 2007 to 2010, Silverman’s self-titled Comedy Central series took the crown for her most small-screen IMDB credits. Bob’s Burgers has since seized it with 43 and counting, most notably as Ollie Pesto, opposite older sister Laura Silverman as twin brother Andy Pesto.
Entering this season, Tim Meadows is second to Silverman among ex-SNLers on this leaderboard with 17 credits as the deadpanning mailman Mike. Only six other shows have employed him for more episodes in this century, and other than the still-running No Activity and The Goldbergs, Bob’s Burgers could easily surpass them all.
Everywhere he has appeared over the past 20 years, Meadows has inevitably evoked ’90s SNL. Through a mass personnel overhaul at the midway point and other major cast changes, he was the only player to stick through all of the decade’s calendar years.
One staple from the latter half of Meadows’ Studio 8H tenure, Molly Shannon, is Shannon at her best in the Bob’s Burgers booth. Not unlike SNL’s Mary Catherine Gallagher, the animated Millie is either genuinely or willfully oblivious to others not sharing her sugar-rushed enthusiasm.
Millie’s energy is such that it is easy to forget she has only appeared four times. Nearly three years have elapsed since she last showed up, but the writers could creatively incorporate her again at any time.
Speaking of writers, former SNL sketch scribe Bob Odenkirk, who was there before and alongside Meadows, is one of 97 one-offs on the all-time Bob’s Burgers roster. So is Chris Parnell, whose first two seasons on NBC’s time-honored sketch show overlapped with Meadows’ last.
Hey, Bob-arena
Louise and Gene are not alone among Wagstaff Middle Schoolers with a curious interest in a time they barely missed. Supporting character Tammy Larsen includes “Macarena” on her elaborate bat mitzvah itinerary.
Even some local elders admit they have some catching up to do. In Season 7’s “Eggs for Days,” landlord Calvin Fischoeder tells the Belchers, “I lost the year 1996 to schnapps. I still don’t know what the ‘Macarena’ is.”
“But don’t tell me,” he adds, “I’ll figure it out.”
Mr. Fischoeder, whose dearth of touch with the everyday contemporary world resembles that of The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns, is making it harder for himself than it needs to be. The show’s repeat references reflect the inimitable dance tune’s role in ’90s nostalgia’s grip.
“Macarena” has garnered more than a dozen accolades since 2000, including positions on ’90s-related top-XX lists by Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed, ThoughtCo, Insider, and Stacker.
Hey Belchers!
As The Simpsons and many of its apers have established, kid characters acting beyond their age is a fixture in animation. As those who grew up on Nicktoons would know, that trope is not confined to “mature” cartoons.
Traces of Hey Arnold! (which premiered in Mr. Fischoeder’s lost year) and Doug (debuted 1991) come through in the various adventures the Belchers and their peers share.
Some are comparatively realistic, especially within the walls of their school. Like in Doug’s Bluffington, Wagstaff’s principal is mentioned but never seen. The faculty members who do handle disciplinary matters are often villainized in a student’s wild imagination.
Others storylines see the kids stepping into situations unsupervised or confronting or collaborating with adults outside of their everyday acquaintances.
Gene is his definitive self when he befriends and jealously guards a talking toilet, a characteristically inane answer to Arnold risking legal trouble to set Lockjaw the turtle free. Ditto when he leads a quest to find the cryptic two-butted goat whereas Arnold and Gerald pursued Big Caesar.
One could argue that the tween-centered storylines of Bob’s Burgers regress in overall maturity compared to those of some ’90s Nicktoons. If nothing else, there tends to be less balance between sentimentality and silliness. Even Tina is a less effective straight foil than Doug or Arnold ever were.
But who’s complaining? And if anyone is, why? The content is still, on the whole, mature by other definitions. The vocabulary in the dialogue reminds everyone that this is primetime material. Yet it is still your ’90s kid’s kind of show.
Keeping in character
In a way, scripted programs bringing on guest stars as themselves is the cousin of breaking the fourth wall. Even repeatedly referencing contemporary public figures can fade the fantasy (though not necessarily).
Nothing is wrong with either, and those habits have often served The Simpsons and many other adult cartoons well.
With that said, sometimes we want a change of pace, and Bob’s Burgers delivers that where other past and present Animation Domination stalwarts have not. References to real-life present-day people are few and fleeting, and there is no commentary on current events. (Believe it or not, this coming Sunday’s epidemic episode was in the works before this past March’s universal upheaval.)
It will regularly incorporate people and popular trends from the past, like Thomas Edison and, naturally, “Macarena.” And it did technically tab ’70s singing sensation Carly Simon as herself.
But those appearances and allusions occur sparingly, just as they did on most of the Nicktoons ’90s kids grew up on. Simon’s appearance as a lookalike denying her resemblance is the Bob’s Burgers equivalent of the late Monkees frontman Davy Jones’ spot on Hey Arnold! Both examples are the given show’s only case of anyone appearing as themselves.
Unlike its peers and more like the childhood staples for its young-adult demographic, Bob’s Burgers tends to stick with fictitious entertainers, athletes, politicians, socialites, media outlets and personalities, products, and establishments.
In so doing, it stays along its ceiling for escapism, which was all but effortless for kids in the ’90s.