Lawrence Person's Futuramen

So, I finished watching Bob’s Burgers, and thought I would delay writing about it until today because I’m incredibly lazy I wanted to ruminate on it for a while. The short description is: It’s not great. Not awful, but not great.

A few random thoughts:

• Right now it seems more than a little generic (family with three kids: lord knows we’ve never seen that on a Fox animated Sunday show).
• The setup (small business owner vs. the bureaucracy) has the potential to be good, but most of the restaurant gags already seem stale.
• I like two of the three kids, but the quiet girl and the father don’t do much for me.
• The mother, with her generic New York Jewish Mother accent, does less than nothing for me. If you talk like that, you damn well better look like Fran Drescher if you want people west of the Hudson to endure your voice.
• The edgy stuff (the suggestions of cannibalism, the funny daughter putting up a notice for a hamburger special called The Child Molester (“it comes with candy on the side”)) didn’t bother me (after all, I watch South Park), but the “can’t remember my wedding anniversary/old boyfriend” business was so old it might have been written by Henny Youngman. (No, scratch that; if Henny Youngman had written it, it would have been funnier.)
• Every now and then there was a funny bit, but there weren’t enough of them.
• I don’t want to write it off entirely, because the first episodes of animated shows frequently suck (have you watched “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” recently?); it might very well get better.
• I was able to watch all of it, unlike Sit Down, Shut Up (I’m amazed that lasted all of four episodes).
• It’s still better than The Cleveland Show, which I couldn’t last beyond the first commercial break of the premiere, and even that took willpower. Every time since I’ve happened to catch part of it, something would make me turn it off before two minutes had passed. It seems that every time Seth McFarlane creates a new show, his old shows become half as funny. Which is why I gave up on Family Guy shortly after the O.J. Simpson episode.

I’ll probably watch the next episode of Bob’s Burgers, but if it doesn’t improve I expect it to fall off my list well before Fox axes it 6-8 weeks from now…