"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "World Wharf II: The Wharfening (or How Bob Saves/Destroys the Town, Part II)," and The Boondocks, "Freedom Ride or Die" (tie)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

So special guest star Kevin Kline's ad-libbed attempt at beatboxing while voicing Mr. Fischoeder, the eccentric owner of both the Wonder Wharf and the Belchers' apartment building, didn't quite make the final cut of "World Wharf II: The Wharfening" like I had expected. But plenty of hilarious bits of business made it into the conclusion of Bob's Burgers' two-part fourth-season finale. My favorite running joke in "World Wharf II" has characters being able to find time, even when Bob's life is in danger, to make the usual potshots at either Bob's age ("It's not your time, Dad! I want to put you in a nursing home next year!") or his hirsute, sad-looking body ("Your butt... Up here, you're okay, but down here, it gets bad.").

Throughout "World Wharf II," which marks the first time the show has ever placed Bob in such peril (the camping episode doesn't count), I was reminded of how often Diff'rent Strokes and its mid-to-late-'70s misery-porn precursor Good Times would subject their characters to cliffhanger situations that were as perilous as Bob and Mr. Fischoeder getting kidnapped and tied to the pier together by Mr. Fischoeder's greedy brother, but were much more depressing. Kidnapping was a favorite dramatic device of the Diff'rent Strokes writing staff (Arnold and Kimberly were kidnapped by a rapist who attempted to sexually assault Kimberly, and Sam was later abducted by an insane dad who wanted Sam to replace his dead son), while on a very special, chroma-key-heavy two-parter of Good Times, a deaf kid almost fell into an elevator shaft because he couldn't hear the Evanses' warnings about the shaft and was too busy trying to entertain them with an impression of the crappy chroma-key flying FX from The Bugaloos.

Bob's Burgers is so much better than those older shows and their misguided and wildly inappropriate (especially when they're accompanied by studio audience laughter) attempts to raise the stakes and be taken seriously by the press (I'd like to know what sort of drugs were involved in the decision to place Kimberly in danger of being raped as if she were Edith Bunker, during a family sitcom that's meant for little kids). If there's anything that's serious about last week's "Wharf Horse" and "World Wharf II," it's the issue of gentrification (Felix's scheme to get his brother to sell the wharf is a comedic take on a not-so-funny real-life matter), but Bob's Burgers never feels the need to preach about the evilness of gentrification or go down a completely somber path regarding the issue. It's sort of the same approach King of the Hill brought to gentrification in my favorite late-period King of the Hill episode, "Lady and Gentrification" (an episode that gets extra points for giving guest star Danny Trejo the following line to say: "They put salmon in the fish tacos, Hank! Look at it! It's salmon! They're ruining everything!").

Even when Linda panics after realizing Bob's been kidnapped or when Teddy starts weeping over Bob's disappearance, the writers keep things light, hence the characters' comments about Bob's weird body. It helps that those writers are the sister duo of Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux, my favorite writing pair on Bob's Burgers (they were behind series highlights like "Art Crawl" and last year's "Boyz 4 Now," as well as a bunch of jokes in episodes they didn't receive on-screen credit for, like Gene's line about Linda's apron in "Lindapendent Woman"). I feel like the Molyneuxs remembered what those lurid Very Special Episodes of Diff'rent Strokes were like and thought, "Those shows were awful. Let's not be like those shows during this two-parter."

The Molyneuxs' skills with funny rat-a-tat-tat dialogue make "World Wharf II" such an enjoyable mock-dramatic experience (while "Wharf Horse" is credited to Nora Smith, who wrote "Mother Daughter Laser Razor"). "World Wharf II" is also noteworthy for being the first time the Belchers say "I love you" to each other. Of course, when Bob's Burgers finally gets them to say "I love you" after Bob's rescued, the Molyneuxs and the other writers undercut the potentially sappy moment with offbeat touches like abrasive Louise's slightly standoffish version of "I love you" ("I love you all. But that's just between us.") and the Belchers saying "I love you" so repeatedly that Mr. Fischoeder groans in disgust, a noise that Kevin Kline must have also made while skimming through the script of Life as a House. They're great examples of how Bob's Burgers gets the characters to express their affection for each other without becoming too goopy. There's only one thing that's corny about Bob's Burgers, and it's all those genuinely funny puns.

Other memorable quotes:
* Tina: "I have a great new nail polish I've been dying to try. It's called Clear." Gene: "Sure, if you want to look like a prostitute."

* "Quit squirming around, Bob. Do you have worms? 'Cause I do, and you're making them crazy."

* Fanny (Jordan Peele): "Hey, what are you looking at? My boobs are up here."

* I like how John Roberts, as Linda, can be heard breaking character and chuckling when Tina's able to identify Mr. Fischoeder's butt in the picture Bob sent to Linda: "How do you know what Mr. Fischoeder's butt looks like?" "I have photographic butt memory."

* Linda attempts to decipher Bob's garbled cry for help in his text: "Could it be... 'I tried blow'? We were gonna do that together. Just once."

* "You have to pull yourself together! You have two children and a Louise to take care of!"

* Teddy suspects a waiter (Paul F. Tompkins) of kidnapping Bob and proceeds to channel Mel Gibson in Ransom: "Let me at him! Give me back my son!"

* "And now I'll never know who wins Game of Thrones/Oh, things are bad!"

* "No, no, we need your dad. You kids are a two-adult, two-bottle-of-wine-a-night job."

* Fanny: "Shut up! I can't think!" Mr. Fischoeder: "What else is new?"

* "You saved us, Linda. Thank God we live in a time where women can learn to swim."

***

An equally irreverent approach to a serious issue also distinguishes The Boondocks' latest episode, "Freedom Ride or Die," which flashes back to 1961, when a young Robert Freeman became part of the Freedom Riders movement--against his will, of course (this time, young Robert's voiced by a digitally sped-up John Witherspoon, instead of now-absent ex-showrunner Aaron McGruder, who previously voiced young Robert during a non-canonical flashback to Rosa Parks overshadowing Robert's attempt to make civil rights history in 1955 Montgomery in "The Return of the King"). While trying to hide out after getting caught starting a different kind of movement inside a whites-only bathroom in a segregated bus station ("It was a dump for freedom. A stinky load for the dignity of the black man."), Robert accidentally hops onto a Freedom Rider bus headed for Birmingham and immediately wants to get off because of all the violence down there. Rev. Sturdy Harris (special guest star Dennis Haysbert), the leader of the protesters, believes that Robert, who's uninterested in getting himself killed and finds Sturdy's non-violent form of activism to be completely insane, is born to be a Freedom Rider and continually prevents him from jumping off the bus.

No Boondocks episode involving historical figures from the civil rights movement could ever top the quality of the Rev. Al Sharpton-angering "Return of the King," especially when McGruder's no longer involved. "Freedom Ride or Die" doesn't even try to revisit the highs of "The Return of the King" or outdo them. But thanks to the solid satirical writing of Boondocks veteran Rodney Barnes, as well as the fact that it's not burdened with the fourth season's inane "Granddad in debt" arc, "Freedom Ride or Die" is easily the funniest episode of this underwhelming McGruder-less season (however, there was no need for present-day Uncle Ruckus to explain the Speed reference; that just killed all the funny out of the bomb-on-the-bus gag).

"Freedom Ride or Die" even contains the reliable laugh-getter of Robert taking out his belt (the same belt he'll later use to frequently punish Riley with), a sign that this Boondocks episode's a solid one. The sight of Robert attacking racist rioters with his belt makes me wonder why neither Wesley Snipes nor Michael Jai White have ever made a martial arts flick set during the civil rights movement. Who gives a shit what Sharpton would say? A '60s black activist martial arts flick would be brilliant.

Other memorable quotes:
* "Take that, you cracker-ass cracker! That's why I shit in your bathroom and used up all your special white people quilted toilet paper!"

* "I noticed she was reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a book I had meant to read many times."

* Young Robert to Sturdy: "You want to know how to end Jim Crow? Get out of the fuckin' South!"

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: The Boondocks, "Breaking Granddad"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

You can tell it's been a mediocre week for animated TV shows when the strongest piece of animated TV is an episode of The Boondocks' fourth and final season, the only season that was completed without Aaron McGruder's involvement. For those who forgot that The Boondocks is still on the air, McGruder exited his own creation under circumstances that still remain mysterious, even after he posted on his Facebook account in March an unusually benign message of thanks to Sony Pictures Television and Adult Swim for the show's first three seasons. A writer from The Root compared hearing the news of McGruder's departure to "buying tickets to a Public Enemy show only to find out that Chuck D is no longer with the group." Sony claims McGruder exited because he and the studio couldn't come to an agreement over the fourth season's production schedule.

Getting the full story behind the tight-lipped McGruder's departure is about as likely as Dr. Dre dropping Detox. I bet we won't know the full story, perhaps due to legal reasons, until a few years from now (which would be much longer than the amount of time it took for Dave Chappelle to address his fans after he quit Chappelle's Show because he was dissatisfied with sketches that he felt were making white people laugh for the wrong reasons, the same issue that's currently fueling the debate over whether or not Leslie Jones' controversial SNL monologue about slavery is "coonery").

For now, what McGruder's departure has left us with are episodes that mysteriously don't contain any writing credits (the "Created by Aaron McGruder" credit has also been erased from the opening titles, just like when Matt Groening took his name off a Simpsons/Critic crossover episode he despised) and have so far been mostly limp rehashes of earlier Boondocks episodes, with very little of the effective social commentary that distinguished past McGruder-scripted gems like the Peabody-winning "Return of the King." The Boondocks is the latest show that's stumbled creatively after the creator who was so essential to crafting most of the show's greatest hits went ahead and bounced (exhibit A: the departures of Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry from the original Star Trek; exhibit B: Dan Harmon's Sony-related absence during what's come to be known as the "gas leak year" of Community).

Though "Breaking Granddad" is another example of how much the gas leak year of The Boondocks pales in comparison to the seasons when McGruder was involved and was proud to leave his name on the product (the episode is another one this season that doesn't contain a writing credit), it's easily the funniest of the three fourth-season episodes that have aired so far. That's not due to the Breaking Bad gags, which mostly fall flat and are riffs on just the events in the Breaking Bad pilot episode and no other episode in Breaking Bad's history (spoofs of network or cable dramas have never been The Boondocks' strong suit; the third-season finale, which aired 120 years ago, was an underwhelming 24 spoof that showed signs that maybe it wasn't a good idea for McGruder to agree to a fourth season). What redeems "Breaking Granddad" is all the genuinely funny satirical material about hair-care products for black people, a subject that's never really been satirized on an animated show before (the plot has the Freemans inventing and selling a gel that both relaxes and lengthens hair). Even though "Breaking Granddad" is watered-down Boondocks, it's still more daring than late-period Simpsons, even when the latter experiments with CG animation for one episode (which it did this week with the okay-but-still-not-up-to-classic-Simpsons-level "Brick Like Me," a story set mostly in a Lego world fantasized by Homer).

This whole fourth-season arc, in which Robert Freeman (John Witherspoon) winds up so broke that, like pre-cancer-diagnosis Walter White, he's taken a job at a car wash owned by Uncle Ruckus (Gary Anthony Williams), is straight-up character assassination. Sure, Robert's always been a loser, but he's never been as dumb as Riley (Regina King). It's hard to buy that Robert would be so clueless that he'd lose ownership of his house and be forced to sell both himself and his grandsons into slavery. I'm getting the feeling that McGruder left because the storyline wasn't his idea and even he thinks it's inane.

Or maybe it was McGruder's idea and he felt burnt out from both the show and dealing with Sony (he's since moved on to creating a live-action Adult Swim show called Black Jesus), and leaving The Boondocks was the only thing that would make him happy. McGruder has a history of sometimes appearing to be bored with his own creation, especially back when it was a comic strip. Too many of the strip's post-9/11 weekday installments were lazily drawn rehashes of the same scenario--Huey sits and watches some idiotic soundbite on TV--and towards the end of the strip's run, McGruder stopped drawing it and left the illustrating duties to an uncredited artist.

Fortunately, "Breaking Granddad" doesn't rehash material like how the strip would recycle that same damn pose of Huey parked in front of the TV or how the season premiere (with special guest star Michael B. Jordan as a Chris Brown-esque celebrity) laughlessly recycled the much more hilarious "Tom, Sarah and Usher." This week's episode is the first (and judging from King's comments to the press about behind-the-scenes infighting over the direction of her show's writing, most likely to be the only) time I've ever felt like The Boondocks' fourth season wasn't a complete mistake.

Memorable quotes:
* "Well, you see, I'm a little short on cash. [Sound FX of the woman on the other end of the phone line hanging up.]"

* "Oh, thank you, Jesus! Always knew if I pretended to believe in you, it would pay off someday!"

* Boss Willona (special guest star Jenifer Lewis): "Don't you get it? These bitches would put napalm on their hair if it would make it straight. Put a warning label on it!"

* "The ironically named hair gel is the hottest-selling on the market, but experts claim a single jar contains enough high explosives to destroy a small plane or a Prius."

Five rap jams where the rappers drop malapropistic pop culture references that make them sound like John Witherspoon when he referred to "Public Enema" during House Party

One of my favorite lines in the original House Party was John Witherspoon's Granddad from The Boondocks-esque neighbor character complaining about the titular party blasting the music of "Public Enema." On a similar note, my favorite line in Zack and Miri Make a Porno is "Han Solo ain't never had no sex with Princess Leia in the Star War" because instead of Star Wars, Craig Robinson calls it "the Star War," as if the fictional conflict were the Civil War or the Vietnam War.

The "Public Enema" and "Star War" lines remind me of an article I read in a hip-hop magazine once. The article listed moments when rappers dropped malapropistic pop culture references or flubbed up celebrities' names. When they flub up the pop culture references like in the following five tracks, rappers suddenly sound old and out-of-it like that Witherspoon character from House Party (the Beastie Boys have been in the game for a while, but hopefully, they won't sound too out-of-it on their promising-sounding new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two).

Thanks to "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull, I'm in the mood for renting a film by "Albert Hitchcock."

1. "My Weezy" by Lil Wayne
Like Mojo Nixon during "Elvis Is Everywhere" and Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn, Wayne calls Star Trek's Vulcan hero "Dr. Spock" (a la baby care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock) instead of Mr. Spock.

2. "Oh Word?" by the Beastie Boys
"This is not a fantasy, I'm not Mr. O'Roarke." Wow, I didn't know the racially ambiguous but Latin-ish Mr. Roarke was really an Irish bloke all along.

3. "Shazam" by the Beastie Boys
Mike D misidentifies Fred Sanford's dead wife Elizabeth as "Weezy."

4. "Flip Flop Rock" by Big Boi featuring Killer Mike & Jay-Z
Big Boi refers to Penelope Cruz as "Penelope Ann Cruz," while Killer Mike admires the authority of "Commander Picard."

5. "Blindfold Me" by Kelis and her then-husband Nas
Nas probably meant "Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 Weeks," but for some reason, it came out as "Gonna surprise you like Hugh Grant in 8 1/2 Weeks." Confusing the works of softcore porn producer Zalman King with the oeuvre of Chris Columbus, the family-friendly director of Nine Months, Home Alone and I Love You, Beth Cooper, is a common mistake in hip-hop. The other day on the street, I overheard a freestyle battle where one MC insulted the other to the beat of Drake's "Over" with "Got a text from your girl saying she wanna ride my penis/Like Hayden Panettiere in Delta of Venus."