Art Crawl

"Art Crawl" is the eighth episode of the first season of the animated television series Bob's Burgers. The episode originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 20, 2011.

The episode was written by Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux, and was directed by Kyounghee Lim. According to the Nielsen ratings, it was viewed by 4.43 million viewers during its original airing. The episode featured guest performances by Andy Kindler, Jerry Minor, Megan Mullally, Larry Murphy, Sam Seder, Laura Silverman and Sarah Silverman.

Plot[]

It is the annual art crawl in town and Bob and the kids are walking around, amazed at how badly done some of the artwork is. They are also killing time so Linda’s sister, Gayle, can display her paintings in the restaurant. Gayle is quite strange, as she is known to have shaved her cat, eaten a tube of lipstick, and worn a dress covered in live shrimp to church. She is also described as “fragile”, getting scared over the slightest things. However, Linda wants to encourage her sister’s “artistic nature”, so Bob agreed to the display.

Along the way the Belchers come across the local art supply store, Reflections, where someone has paid $250 for a painting much to Louise’s amazement. Her reaction upsets the store owner, Edith, who dispatches her henpecked husband Harold to deal with the situation. Eventually the Belchers leave, but not before Louise tells Harold he “smells like ointment and pee.”

Returning to the restaurant, Bob is horrified to discover that all of Gayle’s paintings are of various animal anuses. He tells Linda he does not want Bob’s Burgers to be known as the “anus restaurant”, and is convinced that the paintings will drive customers away. Not only is Bob proven right, his two most frequent customers, Mort and Teddy, find the pictures uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, Louise gets inspired by the painting that was sold and decides to use Tina and Gene’s artistic talents (or lack thereof) to make some money. Twenty-seven minutes later, Gene completes his laborious painting of a robot ninja fighting a tape recorder vampire at Stonehenge with his 28-year-old albino friend, Ken. Tina paints a nude portrait of her dentist, Dr. Yap. Louise is not pleased, and decides to go in a different direction and cut off one of her siblings’ ears. Before she can, however, Bob stops the sale and decides to hang Gene and Tina’s paintings in the restaurant in place of Gayle’s. Despite his reservations, as he thinks Gene’s painting is too weird and is greatly disturbed by Tina’s, Bob decides that Linda would love to see them and hangs them anyway.

Predictably, once Linda and Gayle return, Linda is happy to see what the kids contributed. Gayle, on the other hand, is disappointed that Bob took down her paintings. Before Bob can explain himself, Edith and Harold barge into Bob’s Burgers on a tip that there were offensive paintings along the art crawl route. Edith, to everyone’s surprise, is also chairperson of the art crawl and says that she agreed with Bob’s decision to remove the paintings due to their not meeting with the art crawl standards.

Surprisingly Bob, who to this point was not receptive to giving the anus paintings a display site, has a change of heart as he does not appreciate being told by outsiders what he can and cannot do at his business. Therefore, he declares the paintings are going back up and chases away Edith with several of them.

Over the next few days, Bob commissions Gayle to paint more and more anuses and cheerfully hangs them on the walls much to Linda’s disgust, as she reminds Bob that he said he did not want to be the “anus restaurant” and that he is only doing this to get back at Edith. Bob counters by reminding her that she said they needed to support Gayle, and raises the stakes even higher by declaring the paintings to be a permanent fixture of the restaurant.

Meanwhile, Louise's art sale is failing, so she replaces Tina and Gene with Andy and Ollie Pesto, whom she can easily manipulate, and a young boy named Devin McJimsey who she simply calls red. She becomes a de facto slave driver, making huge money off of her new charges while forcing them to work long hours and berating them.

The next morning, Bob opens the restaurant to discover the anuses have been painted over with pink underpants. Immediately assuming Edith had something to do with it, Bob storms down to Reflections and demands an apology, which Edith refuses to give him. In response, Bob defaces every painting in the store with black dots that he says represent anuses.

Shortly after he returns to Bob’s Burgers and triumphantly tells Linda what he did, the police show up with Edith and Harold to press charges against Bob for vandalizing their store. Bob then points out the paintings, which Edith once again denies defacing despite approving of the underpants. Bob then decides to press his own charges for vandalism.

Finally, Linda cracks under the pressure and admits that she was the one who painted the underpants. She had been driven crazy by the sight and was seeing them in her dreams, and decided to paint over the anuses rather than be honest with Gayle.

Just before Bob is placed under arrest, Louise steps in to save the day by paying the damages for her father. When he repeatedly asks her where she got all that money, Louise responds by repeating “it’s art crawl”.

Gayle then returns with retouched versions of her paintings, where all the animals have been given pants and extremely large breasts. After everybody stands in shock briefly, Linda again lies to Gayle and tells her she likes them.

The episode closes with Andy and Ollie still working, having been abandoned by Louise for sometime.

Reception[]

In its original American broadcasting, "Art Crawl" was viewed by an estimated 4.43 million viewers and received a 2.2 rating, a 6 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, an increase from last episode.^[1]

Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club gave the episode an A, saying "It's a great feeling to be there when a show filled with potential suddenly fulfills it. First off, because you can get the feeling that you're special for being one of the few million who was actually there, live, when Bob's Burgers went from good to great. Second of all, because you can't stop laughing at how ridiculously good “Art Crawl” is. Bob's Burgers has been developing several different threads, and they all work really well here: the ineffectual liberal antagonists, Bob's stubbornness when things don't work the way he thinks they should, Gene and Tina's absurd asides, Louise's megalomania, and Linda's intense willingness to make sure everything goes smoothly."^[2]

References[]

External links[]

• "Art Crawl" at IMDb