Bob’s Burgers, “The Millie-Churrian Candidate,” (5.12) - TV Review

February 15th, 2015, 9:30 PM, FOX

Tina and Louise team up (well, more like Louise wedges herself in there to make sure she gets the result she wants after Tina’s already been named head of the campaign) to help run Jimmy Pesto Jr’s school presidential campaign - mainly to keep Louise’s ever-creepy and obsessed “frenemy” Millie Frock from winning and thus ending up running the whole school. But Louise’s campaign commercials take Jimmy Junior from front runner to smear campaigning bully and all seems doomed until Louise throws her own hat into the ring – but when Millie proposes an assigned best friend system it makes her even more popular. Only a hail-mary pass from a Deep Throat-style stranger might fix the vote, but can the Belcher kids break out of Mister Frond’s office before the vote goes down – but might the ultimate victor be a sleeper whom nobody’s expecting. Meanwhile Bob experiences kitchen supply envy and grows obsessed with a $300 Fukinawa knife. Once he buys it and spends his days slicing up any vulnerable vegetable in his kitchen, Bob ends up in a debate with Teddy over the superiority of the tools of their respective trades, leading to an eventual battle between the hammer and the knife, as judged by Linda.

First things first: Millie is downright creepy. Even creepier than she was in her first appearance! That makes her an excellent foe and foil for the driven, almost manically determined and ambitious Louise. Watching them bounce off of each other is an experience that entertains but only allows your rooting value to flow in a single direction – by the end of the episode you genuinely root for Louise to be moved to a Millie-free zip code as quickly as humanly possible. The best parts of that storyline involve Jimmy Junior’s aborted train wreck of a campaign, which successfully lampoons the “hard hitting” attack ads put out by real-world politicians trying to win elections, but once it switches over to Louise’s campaign there isn’t enough time to build up her candidacy. I wish there had been a two-parter; one half of the episode focusing on Jimmy Junior’s failed campaign and the fight between Louise and Tina for control of the whole enterprise, followed by an episode about Louise and Millie’s fight to the finish for control of the school. But compact as it is the parts are just a bit less than they would have been were they spread out more evenly.

Bob’s plot is pure silliness, total and completely, from the first moment to the last, and that’s what makes it wonderful. Teddy being a Natalie Merchant fan is spot-on, his pride in what he does quite characteristic. Meanwhile, the show’s slow revelation of seeming straight man Bob’s quirks has been quite a fun journey over the past few seasons; here it’s Linda’s job to reel him in as his rivalry with Teddy goes above and beyond the call of normal rivalry. Naturally the whole storyline has a wonderfully ludicrous conclusion.

Suffering just slightly for its pacing problems, The “Millie-Churrian Candidate” is still a fun episode, though it doesn’t lie near the top of this season’s heap.

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