You may have heard of ice dancing but this week Bob’s Burgers was all about roller dancing. “Roller? I Hardly Know Her” focused on the tale of Gene’s struggle to maintain his newfound friendship while Bob, Linda and Teddy found themselves across the street from a mysterious woman.
Photo Source: FOX – Bob’s Burgers
Alex Papasian makes his second appearance in this episode with his first being “Cheer Up Sleepy Gene”. Fans watched as Gene and Alex continued to enjoy/ explore their friendship that we last saw in the previous season. The Belcher siblings are not the most popular in their school but they are not without their group of friends/ associates. All is going well, with a brief intro to the game Robot Wizard, until Courtney Wheeler rolls onto the scene. Doug (Courtney’s father) and Courtney begin to yell passionately at Gene to lift her off the ground and feeling pressured he complies. After a minor lift, the two inform Gene that they are in need of a roller dancer because Courtney’s regular partner cant make it to a competition to be held that weekend.
Photo Source: FOX – Bob’s Burgers
Gene declines the offer as he is not interested and would rather spend the time with his friend. Surprisingly Alex proves willing, although not able, to be Courtney’s new partner leaving Gene feeling abandoned (which shows in his musical number of “Alone” by Heart). Gene tries to maintain his bond with Alex but he is more occupied with Courtney and her competition. The constant friction eventually leads up to the two having an argument with one thinking the other as selfish.
Photo Source: FOX – Bob’s Burgers
Just as it seems like the story had no way of moving forward, Doug shows up with a less than kind proposition. Doug is clearly more into this contest then his daughter as he finds Alex to be a weak link which could cost Courtney the win creating the motivation for his visit to Gene. Alex is allergic to sesame, knowing this, Doug convinces Gene to give some to Alex in order to take his place in the contest and regain their friendship. Believing there is no other way to win back his friend he agrees to the scheme.
In the end, Gene could not bring himself to hurt his friend and collaborates with Courtney to find a solution where everyone one wins. They didn’t win the contest but later all three play Robot Wizard together symbolizing their now standing friendships with one and other.
On the other side of the spectrum, Bob, Linda and Teddy have been dealing with the mysterious woman this whole time. Her actions were odd and raised some alarms as she would sit in her car for hours on end and run away screaming when trying to approach the restaurant. With all the odd happenings, all three had been formulating reason as to why the woman was acting the way she was and generally going over board (as they usually do). Finally Bob, deciding to be the voice of reason, approaches the woman to ask why she was behaving in such a way. She reveals that she suffers from agoraphobia and had been trying to work up the courage to enter the restaurant but has yet to succeed. Wanting to help the woman, all three try their best to make her feel comfortable and while she still has some fear to work through it was the first step she needed.
Genes story is a classic of conflicting interest, jealousy and the fear of losing friendship. Alex only wanted to become Courtney’s partner because she was a girl who wanted to interact with him which is kind of silly. While this reasoning isn’t the best, I felt all sides made good points and bad ones as well so there wasn’t really anyone to blame. This change would have only been in place for a week so I saw no immediate need for alarm or panic. I also wanted to bring up how much I don’t care for Doug, he stole Genes jingle in a previous episode and now wanted to intentionally poison a child (Alex wouldn’t have died but just gotten really sick which is still not ok) so this guy needs to work through some things. The music number is what truly won me over as the songs in this show usually do with how catchy they are. I would say this is a good episode that gives the potential for some exciting future content and will hopefully bring Alex and Courtney back.
Thank you for reading and I hope your ready to show your family and friends you care this season. Leave a like and a comment of your thoughts on the episode.
