Bob’s Burgers takes puppets from bland to battle ready

In their last episode of March, Louise is making enemies on this week’s episode of Bob’s Burgers while Bob tries to lend a helping hand.

Each week, Bob’s Burgers continues to be even better than the previous week. Maybe season 9 has hit its stride. This week’s episode looks to be another promising one as Louise is the star and after “The Fresh Princ-ipal,” there is no telling what she’s going to do. With an episode entitled “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” Louise might end up in a Mabel Pines situation for all we know.

If you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Bob’s Burgers, there will be spoilers from “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” from this point on!

The episode starts with Louise playing with Kuchi Kopi until Tina interrupts her. The family is having breakfast before the kids go on a field trip to marionette theater. Once they arrive, Mr. Frond goes over their plans and Louise tries to give them the benefit of the doubt. She realizes how terrible it is when the show starts and she tries to get out of participating including wandering off. She goes into a restricted area and the owner makes her help in the tech department.

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Somehow the tech department is even more boring and Ron tells Tina and Gene that Louise has been reassigned. Louise tries to find out what’s going on with the owner, Esther but Dot doesn’t know. Back in the theater, the rest of the kids get stuck doing mad libs while Louise makes her own puppet with Dot. Louise comes back with her puppet but starts arguing with Esther and telling her how terrible her show is until Esther bans her from the theater.

Once outside, Louise starts pouting until Ron sneaks Tina and Gene outside to visit. They help sneak her in where Louise goes into the restricted room and takes the dragon puppet. She also convinces Dot to play the music she wants and challenges Esther to a puppet battle. The two are going back and forth until Esther realizes she shouldn’t have put her puppet away. The episode ends with Louise realizing that she doesn’t have to give up on anything because she’s growing up and Esther bringing her old puppet out of retirement.

At the restaurant, Bob sees someone trying to hand out flyers outside. He asks the guy to leave and he starts to until he explains that his boss will fire him. Later in the day, Bob goes out to check on him and gets roped into handing out the flyers to help him. Linda goes outside to help Bob and Bob becomes awesome at handing out flyers.

Everything is going good until Bob gets made fun of by Jimmy Pesto and he drops all of the flyers. Later, the guy and his boss come back where Bob convinces them to hand flyers out in front of Jimmy Pesto’s.

As previous episodes have done, “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” featured two plotlines. The main plotline featured Louise making an enemy of Esther and the secondary featured Bob helping out someone who is kind of ruining his business. There is a delicate balance when it comes to juggling plotlines and this week, Bob’s Burgers nailed it.

Looking at the Bob plotline first, it was hilarious. Granted, it didn’t make a lot of sense but it was nice to see Bob helping out someone in need. It was funny to see him embrace his role and Linda kind of be jealous of the fun he’s having. Having Bob wear the guy’s outfit was the icing on the cake especially when the guy’s boss wanted his hat back.

The main plotline featuring Louise and Esther was touching. It was awesome to see the two connecting over something they were both dealing with. Louise was dealing with losing her love for toys while Esther lost her love for puppets. The two were able to bond and eventually, come together. It was such a sweet ending to an episode that could have been horrifying as puppets aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Somehow, Bob’s Burgers managed to make puppets less scary. Adding Ron in as a side player was awesome, too. This episode struck a chord between being an incredible character-driven episode while still having good comedic moments. Overall, “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” was a great episode, maybe one of the best Louise ones to have aired yet in my opinion.

I give “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” a B.

What did you think of “If You Love It So Much, Why Don’t You Marionette?” Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Bob’s Burgers airs Sundays on Fox at 8:30/7:30c.