AFOS Blog Rewind: Bob's Burgers, "Best Burger"

The cast and crew of Bob's Burgers celebrated the show's 100th episode with a cake that was cut by the perfect person to be seen handling such a ceremony: samurai movie fan Louise Belcher, a.k.a. Kristen Schaal. (Photo source: The Hollywood Reporter)

The complete fifth season of Bob's Burgers--a show that wrapped up its sixth season on Fox earlier this week with the airing of its 100th episode, a story that entertainingly revisits what has to be the core of Bob's Burgers, Bob's love for his family, in spite of how they frequently get in the way of his attempts at notoriety as a chef--finally became streamable on Netflix on April 1. From December 5, 2014, here's a repost of my discussion of one of my favorite fifth-season Bob's Burgers episodes, "Best Burger," an episode that centers on both the aforementioned core of Bob's Burgers and the making of one of Bob's titular burgers. Speaking of the art of making burgers, at about the same time as Netflix's addition of the fifth season, Universe Publishing finally released The Bob's Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers, a cookbook by Cole Bowden, a chef and Bob's Burgers fan I mentioned in my "Best Burger" discussion. The new book is co-written by Bob's Burgers creator Loren Bouchard and is a compilation of recipes Bowden posted on his blog The Bob's Burger Experiment.

Of all the fictional restaurants I wish would exist, I would probably most want to sample a burger made by the titular restaurant on Bob's Burgers--nominated this week, by the way, for two Annie Animation Awards, including Best Series--because of the creativity Bob brings to the Burgers of the Day that he lists on his restaurant chalkboard. I'd be most interested in the Roquefort Files Burger--awesome pun--or the Bruschetta-bout It Burger, a rare burger that actually wasn't on Bob's chalkboard.

I'm not the only one who wishes Bob's Burgers were a real restaurant: several viewers have become inspired by the show and have posted their attempts to make the show's gourmet burgers, with the most notable example being Cole Bowden of The Bob's Burger Experiment. In "Best Burger," Bob introduces the Bet It All on Black Garlic Burger while competing in a local food festival's burger-tasting contest--by the way, Bowden posted that he's now working on the recipe for that one--and even though I'm not exactly a fan of garlic (and no, I'm not a vampire), I'm dying to try the black garlic burger, based on how much enjoyment the animators clearly had in animating and at one point, slo-moing the scenes where Bob and Linda prepare the meal on-stage.

This Bob's Burgers episode is a good example of how we long for not just the Belchers' restaurant to be real--we also want the food community within the show's unnamed East Coast seaside town to exist as well. In the funniest sequence during "Best Burger," Gene--whose ADHD can be detrimental to others like his dad, especially when he has to win a burger contest he drunkenly signed up for--attempts to make up for all his preceding screw-ups in "Best Burger" by delivering to Bob the missing bulb of black garlic he needs for his contest entry, and he's forced to ignore one food festival temptation after another in order to make it to Bob on time. An agonized Gene must race past free cupcake-flavored ice cream served on a waffle, as well as 10-for-$1 pizza tacos, "robot cake" and the ultimate culinary temptation, a hot fudge car wash, which sounds like an Urban Dictionary sex act. Fuck Brigadoon. Any food community that's got a hot fudge car wash is a more enticing spot than Brigadoon.

Written by Mike Benner, "Best Burger" is a solid Bob/Gene story and acts as sort of a companion piece to both "Beefsquatch," in which Bob seethed over an ape-masked Gene taking attention away from his cooking segments on TV, and "O.T. the Outside Toilet," which entertainingly intertwined sweetness with absurdity when Bob related to Gene the difficulty of looking after either a kid or a pet ("When you were a baby and I was watching you, you ate a fern, and you could have died, but you didn't"). Gene's most endearing quality is his attachment to his Casio keyboard and its wacky sound FX, something series creator Loren Bouchard lifted from his own childhood. That's probably about it in terms of endearing qualities for Gene. He's often the show's most obnoxious character--his shoutiness and attention-seeking childishness both sort of make me understand why some Bob's Burgers haters can't get past his (or Louise's) shoutiness to fully embrace the show--but "Best Burger" gives the character a chance to redeem himself via the aforementioned race against both time and hot fudge car washes.

However, this Gene episode is stolen by Kumail Nanjiani as affable Pakistani celebrity chef Skip Marooch and Thomas Lennon at his Ryan Seacrest-iest as smooth-talking local TV personality Chuck Charles, who emcees the contest and is still bitter over losing his morning talk show due to the Belchers' on-air antics in "Beefsquatch." He keeps blaming Bob for getting him fired and forgets that Linda's boob flash on live TV (in order to stop Bob and Gene from fighting) was what actually got him fired. I suspect Chuck doesn't blame Linda because he got to see her tits.

Chuck's appeared twice before on Bob's Burgers, but in the scenes where Chuck doesn't even bother to hide his disdain for Bob and barely listens to anything he says, Lennon--even more so than in his other guest shots as Chuck--really nails the smugness of these local news personalities who think they're hot shit in their mid-sized TV markets and who care more about how they look on camera than about doing any actual research or being a competent journalist. We've most recently seen that type of not-very-bright local news personality in the viral clip of an awkward Denver morning show interview with Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader (who, interestingly, reprises his role as Wonder Wharf worker--and now pedicab driver--Mickey in "Best Burger"). While promoting the release of their Sundance hit The Skeleton Twins from a press junket room in another city, the two SNL alums collapsed into laughter because their interviewer referred to what he mistakenly thought was a nude scene Wiig did in The Skeleton Twins, which led to the interviewer admitting that he never saw the film. Way to do your research, Denver.

Bound-to-be-viral local TV fails that bring to mind Wiig and Hader's incompetent interviewer are a form of shtick Bob's Burgers does well, in addition to the usual puns and accidental double entendres. "Best Burger" is full of moments about how sexual a lot of descriptions of either the act of eating food or the act of cooking often sound. One of my favorite of these double entendres is Chuck ending the contest with "Time's up! Hands off your meat, chefs." But what I like most about "Best Burger" is the little win Bob gets despite losing the contest. Think of it as the antithesis of "Family Fracas," which many Bob's Burgers fans hated because of how badly Bob got screwed over by his enemies in that episode. An even more affecting moment than Bob trying to tell Gene that "I love you and I love who you are" (which, of course, gets interrupted by Gene's ADHD) is Skip standing in line with a bunch of other curious foodies outside Bob's Burgers and wanting to try out Bob's black garlic burger, even though his Pomegranate and Green Chili Chutney Burger defeated Bob's burger in the contest.

It's affecting because Bob doesn't get to win so often on the show, not even during a competition that's totally in his wheelhouse, like the burger contest, and the sight of this competitor--who's also a chef he respects--suddenly wanting to sample one of his creations is somehow a greater victory than any trophy he could receive, whether it's the contest's burger-shaped trophy or outside the universe of the show, the two Annie Awards that Bob's Burgers is now up for. Sometimes, a trophy is just a trophy.

Other memorable quotes:
* Skip, referring to his grandmother: "She always told me, 'Put spice on everything!' She also said, 'I hate Mondays.' But she never got credit for that."
Chuck: "[Laughs with Skip.] I would love to meet her."
Skip: "Aw... too late."
Chuck: "Ooh."

* Bob: "It's made with black garlic. Uh, it's a fermented garlic. It comes from Korea."
Chuck: "Don't blame Korea for your stupid burger, Bob. Not fair to them or burgers."
Bob: "Uh, I'm not blaming them--"
Chuck: "The Stupid Black Garlic Burger! Put it up on screen."

* "A no is just a yes upside down."

* "Never trust a boy with a skateboard. They're too fast."

* "This has exquisite mouth feel." The animation for the burger judge's tongue as he wraps that tongue around the words "mouth feel" is hilariously creepy. Mike Benner tweeted that the creepy judge was voiced by Andy Daly. The star of the very funny Comedy Central show Review with Forrest MacNeil also voiced the Belcher kid-hating specialty food store owner, whose bulb of black garlic gets stolen by Louise to replace the one Gene accidentally smushed. (By the way, if you haven't watched the first season of Review yet, stream it immediately. Review is as addictive as the coke Daly's title character gets himself hooked on in the first episode.)

* Bob: "You want to try my burger?"
Skip: "Yeah, I smelt it, and now I want you to dealt it, into my mouth."

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "Tina and the Real Ghost"

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.

The funniest line in "Tina and the Real Ghost," this year's Bob's Burgers Halloween episode, takes place when Louise unveils her Halloween costume, which simply consists of her regular clothes combined with a toothpick, a pair of leather driving gloves and a certain white satin scorpion jacket. She says, "I'm Ryan Gosling from the major motion picture trailer Drive."

The moment is also emblematic of the beautiful efficiency of the writing on Bob's Burgers. On Family Guy, this would have been an excuse for the show to do another cutaway gag and pointlessly probe into why the girl said "major motion picture trailer." Bob's Burgers doesn't feel the need to do that. It rarely opts for cutaway gags (there have been flashbacks though, to either Bob as a kid or Tina as a baby, and we get occasional glimpses into Tina's elaborate fantasies about male classmates, either human or zombie). Louise's line is already funny enough as it is that it doesn't need to be embellished with a cutaway gag. We're left to imagine Linda and Bob trying their damnedest to prevent their most mischievous and conniving kid from watching the ultraviolent Drive in its entirety, and letting us picture that in our heads is funnier than actually depicting it. That's smart writing.

The same could be said about the rest of the episode, which was written by Steven Davis and Kelvin Yu and centers on Tina's crush on what she's led to believe is a ghost in a shoebox named Jeff ("I'm pretty sure that's his handwriting. It's girlie, but it's just because he's sensitive," says Tina about a message on a girls' room mirror that she thinks was written by her spectral boyfriend). Once again, Bob's Burgers does terrific and funny work exploring the imaginative and romantic sides of Tina, who's somehow a more fully realized character than most girl characters on live-action sitcoms who are about the same age as her. As Katie Schenkel once said over at The Mary Sue, "the show took what could have been a cheap running gag of 'let's laugh at the weird girl' and turned her into the best character on the whole damn show."

It helps that the show doesn't punish Tina for being her libidinous, erotic fanfic-writing self like the Griffins cruelly do with Meg for being awkward and unpopular on Family Guy; Bob's Burgers always takes Bob's or Louise's position that "Sure, Tina's weird, but let's not be a dick to her about it." In the case of Louise in "Tina and the Real Ghost," she quickly realizes the cruelty of her Ouija board prank of tricking Tina into thinking Jeff is real and attempts to undo it. Louise's remorse exemplifies another thing I appreciate about Bob's Burgers: the support the Belchers have for each other, without having to get goopy and '80s sitcom huggy about it, expressive and affectionate Linda aside (if Louise wound up on Full House or Family Ties and she had to experience one of those shows' hugging scenes, she'd punch Bob Saget in the face or light Michael Gross' beard on fire). On Bob's Burgers, there's no time to be goopy and huggy. They've got burgers and side orders of puns that need to be cranked out.

Stray observations:
* There wasn't even enough time for the opening titles. "Tina and the Real Ghost" is the fourth consecutive Bob's Burgers episode to go without opening titles. The absence of the titles is making me wonder if the Bob's Burgers writing staff is running out of puns for the names on the exterminator vans and the failed businesses next door to Bob's. I remember watching an interview where the late Stephen J. Cannell talked about how the Rockford Files writing staff used to have problems coming up with new humorous messages for the answering machine gag at the start of Rockford's opening titles.

* Those alien noises that come out of special guest star Jenny Slate--whether they're Tammy's horror movie screams during this Bob's Burgers Halloween episode or whatever this is during Kroll Show--never lose their funniness.

* Gene's costume as half-Turner, half-Hooch makes me realize there aren't enough Tom Hanks project-inspired costumes out there on Halloween or at cons. Bosom Buddies, The 'Burbs, A League of Their Own and Apollo 13 are long overdue for the cosplay treatment (but definitely not Cloud Atlas; keep that yellowface/brownface/redface/blackface shit away from Halloween next year or any other year, white people, or prepare to get stabbed).

* It's funny that this episode where Louise cosplays Drive premiered immediately after BBC Three aired a rescored version of Drive, which was music-supervised by Zane Lowe. The Radio 1 DJ recruited artists like The 1975, Baauer of "Harlem Shake" infamy and L.A. R&B singer Banks to record new original tracks for the movie, and the results were lukewarmly received (Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is one of the few who likes the rescore). I really like "Get Away" by Chvrches, which was chosen to replace Kavinsky's 2010 song "Nightcall" in Drive's opening titles, but thematically and tonally, it doesn't really fit with the establishing of Ryan Gosling's nighttime activities as a getaway driver during the opening titles, despite the song being called "Get Away" (the romantically minded "Get Away" would have been better suited for any of the later scenes where Gosling bonds with Carey Mulligan). The Drive rescore is an interesting experiment for about a track or two, but it's otherwise unnecessary because the music that was used in the final cut is so irreplaceable. Okay, maybe I'd rescore that hammer-to-the-hand moment at the strip club with Black Sheep's "U Mean I'm Not" because that tune is life.

* Once again, co-composer and series creator Loren Bouchard and the duo known as the Elegant Too excel in the music department. The episode's silly song about Jeff is like a cross between the ballads of Serge Gainsbourg and Nelson Riddle's "Lolita Ya Ya" from the Stanley Kubrick version of Lolita.

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl"

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.

When the standout Bob's Burgers episode "Topsy" first aired in 2013, I wrote, "I don't care for show tunes, but I always enjoy John Dylan Keith and Loren Bouchard's original music on Bob's Burgers, and the brilliance of 'Electric Love' is that it doesn't sound like a polished show tune and sounds totally like something an aspiring 11-year-old musician would cobble together." I still feel that way about "Electric Love." Despite featuring the well-trained pipes of Kevin Kline and Megan Mullally (who both had pasts in musical theater), the most memorable musical number from "Topsy" convincingly sounds clunky--instrumentally speaking--and is such a nice contrast to so many live-action sitcoms where kid or teen characters who compose songs or start rock bands always sound like professional studio musicians.

For instance, during Happy Days, I could never buy that Richie, Ralph, Potsie and that black guy who briefly drummed with them before he died of spontaneous combustion (okay, that death didn't happen, but I like to make up horrible off-screen fates for unpopular Happy Days characters who vanished without explanation) all had the chops to perform competent--but still kind of shitty-sounding--covers of '50s rock hits at Arnold's. If David Chase, who once wrote a Wonder Years script that got rejected for being too edgy and later made the semi-autobiographical '60s garage band flick Not Fade Away, had been put in charge of Happy Days instead of Garry Marshall, who never let things like realism, period accuracy or authenticity in accents get in his way (why does a Milwaukee auto mechanic have a Brooklyn accent despite spending his whole life in the Midwest?), Richie's band would have sounded more like an unpolished garage band than a bunch of slick L.A. studio musicians.

In Bob's Burgers' fifth-season premiere, "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl," Bouchard, Keith and episode writer Nora Smith have somehow made the music sound worse than "Electric Love," and that's not a criticism. That's a compliment. The more off-key the singers are and the more sloppily written and expositiony the lyrics are, the funnier Bob's Burgers' musical numbers are. From the moment I first heard that "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl" was going to be about 11-year-old Gene--whose enthusiasm exceeds his talent--composing and directing a school musical based on the 1988 blockbuster Die Hard, I knew this episode was going to be special because terrible musicals based on movies that don't exactly lend themselves well to the stage musical treatment never fail to amuse me. "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl" doesn't disappoint, with cheap stage FX work that's reminiscent of the sweded movie FX from Be Kind Rewind (my favorite stage FX bit: Gene's simulation of Hans Gruber's death) and lyrics like "Oh, the life of the wife of a cop/Makes my head spin around like a top" or this gem:

In addition to Gene's Die Hard show tunes, the season premiere also treats us to snippets of songs from a musical version of another 1988 20th Century Fox smash hit, Working Girl, a rival project that beats out Gene's passion project for the school's fall musical spot. Working Girl: The Musical stars both Gene's annoying ex-girlfriend Courtney (David Wain) as Tess McGill and Tina as the Sigourney Weaver character (she auditioned to be in Working Girl just so that she can get quality time ogling the butt of Jimmy Jr., Courtney's co-star). The musical version of "the sassy sister film to Die Hard" was composed by Courtney's smug musician dad Doug (John Michael Higgins), whose songwriting skills aren't exactly the greatest either:

Despite the school's rejection of Gene's Die Hard musical idea, Louise, ever the money-hungry con artist, persuades Gene to put on his musical anyway--in the boiler room right below the stage, on the same night as Courtney and Doug's musical, as a form of guerilla protest. Gene and Louise's counterprogramming scheme forces Bob and Linda, who's more of a musical theater fan than her husband, to choose between watching Tina's musical or Gene and Louise's underground musical. Bob opts to see Tina perform because the original Working Girl inspired him to follow his dreams, while Linda picks Die Hard, and in the episode's best running gag, Bob doesn't even bother to hide his lack of enthusiasm for Gene's musical. I love how that lack of enthusiasm continues even when the two rival camps rejoice after agreeing to put aside their differences and merge their musicals together:

If this were an average '80s live-action sitcom, Bob would tell Gene he supports him no matter what he does. But Bob's Burgers isn't an average sitcom, and Bob's unwillingness to lie about his doubts over Gene's attempts at extracurricular activities--whether it's baseball or an unlikely musical adaptation of an action classic--is a thing of sad-bodied comedic beauty, man.

While "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl" isn't quite on the level of "Mother Daughter Laser Razor," which Nora Smith also wrote, or the Molyneux sisters' "Boyz 4 Now"--I wish the premiere's Rashomon-ish first act had a better comedic payoff--the episode is still an entertaining way to kick off the fifth season of a show that was made the butt of a couple of lame jokes ("We gotta carry him 'cause he can't fly on his own") in the abysmal Family Guy/Simpsons crossover (the Bob's Burgers porn parody was better than those jokes, for Christ's sake). What the writers of that crossover don't realize is that for three straight seasons, Bob's Burgers has quietly surged past Family Guy and The Simpsons to become the crown jewel of Fox's animation lineup, devoting as much care and inventiveness to revitalizing the animated network sitcom genre as Bob does to the creation of his burgers, and the solid laughs of "Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl" are an early indication that Bob's Burgers won't exactly be relinquishing that spot as the crown jewel any time soon.

Memorable quotes:

"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: Bob's Burgers, "The Kids Run Away"

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.

Bob's Burgers' latest episode, "The Kids Run Away," takes an old story that's been done before in similarly small-scale family sitcoms like The Cosby Show and Leave It to Beaver--a kid becomes afraid of dentists--and manages to outdo all those previous dentist's office episodes, thanks to Bob's Burgers' winning blend of warmth and Adult Swim-style weirdness. Instead of the comedic one-two punch of Peter, the Huxtables' silent kid neighbor, and special guest star Danny Kaye in an accent that's as zany as Bill Cosby's "obeekaybee" dental patient shtick, "The Kids Run Away" soars due to inventive writing by Rich Rinaldi (who transmogrifies an entertaining dentophobia story into an even more entertaining story about the craziness of fanny pack-wearing Aunt Gayle), as well as a return visit from Megan Mullally as Gayle, a nicely subdued additional guest shot by the usually not-so-subdued Ken Jeong as Dr. Yap and an incomprehensible homemade board game that somehow makes Cones of Dunshire look like Candy Land.

"We've been playing this game for six hours, and no one has even made it past the Cliffs of Huxtable!," groans Louise during Gayle Force Winds, Gayle's homemade board game, while hiding out in her aunt's apartment to avoid being taken by Bob to another appointment to Dr. Yap's office. The Huxtable reference is, besides Louise's fear of the dentist, a sign that "The Kids Run Away" is an homage to The Cosby Show, particularly its characters' love of dressing up or playing pretend (whether those characters were the Huxtables or friends of the family like the Danny Kaye dentist character). It's the one major trait that the Belchers and their friends inherited from The Cosby Show.

The comedic centerpiece of "The Kids Run Away," in which the Belchers, Gayle, Teddy and Dr. Yap role-play as characters in an imaginary spy thriller in order to help Louise overcome her dentophobia, takes a page from one of The Cosby Show's funniest episodes, "Theo's Holiday." If you haven't watched "Theo's Holiday" in ages (it's currently available on Hulu in the form of a badly truncated syndicated edit, but none of the episode's best gags were sliced out), it had Cliff, Clair and their daughters pretending to be apartment landlords, bankers, businesswomen and modeling agency employees, as part of Cliff's elaborate lesson to teach aspiring male model Theo about how money works in the real world.

But in "The Kids Run Away," the game of make-believe to ease Louise's fear and get her toothache treated isn't Bob's idea. Instead, it's Gayle's idea, and I like how the climax of "The Kids Run Away" gives the crazy cat lady, whose attempts at art, poetry and board game creation tend to puzzle and confuse her sister Linda's husband and kids, a chance to shine and prove how great an aunt she can be. The combination of invisible-gun-toting absurdity and low-key sweetness elevates "The Kids Run Away" from obeekaybee to excebeellentbee.

Stray observations/other memorable quotes:
* The animation for Gayle's self-absorbed cats is brilliant, as is the little background touch of Gayle's computer looking like she first bought it back when CompuServe was still a thing.

* Tina, trying again to flirt with an uninterested Dr. Yap: "You know, we don't always have to make this about business. I'm more than just a mouthful of perfect teeth."

* "I was only seven when I packed this go bag. I guess I was just a kid back then."

* "Wagstaff was my platoon in 'Nam. Oh, man, they said there'd be people like you when I came back. Serving my country, protecting your ass."

* "Louise, what a surprise! I'm so glad it's you and not a murderer."

* "Hello?" "Gayle, it's Linda." "Hey, Lin, it's me, Gayle!"

* "Oh, good thinking, Lin. You're the smart one, I'm the hot one." "No."

* "Happy Things We Should Send Into Space: A jar of mayo, magazine clippings of Scott Baio..."

* "Hmm. Hey, Aunt Gayle, I wish there was a board game that we could play that stimulates the imagination but that was too good for the major board game companies to even touch." "*GASP* I made a board game that stimulates the imagination but that was too good for the major board game companies to even touch!"

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "Slumber Party"

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.

I've said (exactly a year ago yesterday, in fact) that the kid characters are usually the best part of Bob's Burgers because they talk and act less like typically precocious sitcom kids and more like real kids, even though they're voiced by adults. But "Slumber Party" is a rare occasion where I actually find the subplot without the kids to be the more interesting half of the episode, although there are lots of funny lines (see the memorable quotes) during the titular kids' slumber party, which Linda throws at the Belchers' home to introduce a reluctant Louise to her idea of childhood fun (and which Louise proceeds to sabotage like a boss, hence the Scarface-inspired cover art for the "Slumber Party" table read script).

In the B-story, which is intertwined quite well with the A-story, Linda, who's captivated by the ongoing drama between the raccoons that root around the trash outside the apartment, ropes Bob and Teddy into helping her trap a raccoon she calls "El Diablo" so that Diablo will stop hassling the raccoon she's become fondest of, "Little King Trashmouth." Sure, the B-story sounds very weird and filler-rific, but it's worth it for Teddy's presence, H. Jon Benjamin's dry delivery of Bob's reactions to Linda and Teddy's ideas ("Ugh, guys, I don't wanna make a burger for a raccoon") and the great sight gag of Bob walking around with braided hair. His braids are the result of a styling experiment by a slumber party attendee Louise can't stand to be in the same room with because of her unhealthy obsession with braiding everything at school, including the bristles on the janitor's mops.

Maybe my preference for the B-story is because it's a relief from the shoutiness of Louise, Gene and the slumber party girls, a common complaint about the Bob's Burgers characters from viewers who find it difficult to warm up to the show. It's also a gripe that has lately been starting to make some sense to me. Because if the slightly more reserved characters like Bob, Tina and Teddy weren't around to offset the shoutiness of Louise, Gene and Linda, Bob's Burgers would be a meal I'd send back.

Stray observations/memorable quotes:
* Tina chooses a rain poncho for the slumber party fashion show. She looks like a third member of The Doppelgangaz.

* Louise, who can't go anywhere without her pink bunny-ear hat, has never been seen on the show without her head covered. My favorite freeze-frame gag in "Slumber Party" is the compilation of baby pics of Tina, Gene and Louise on one of the apartment walls, and of course, baby Louise is wearing an earless precursor to her bunny-ear hat.

* Tina, telling Gene how many slumber parties she's been to: "One and a half. I fell asleep at a regular birthday party. I'm counting that."

* Gene, excited about Linda's tie-dyeing portion of the slumber party: "Gimme a shirt! I'm gonna make the psychedelic crop top of my dreams!"

* "How about me, Mom? What's my angle?" "Well, Tina, you're the older sister. You're over all this stuff. You wanna go to the mall with your friends and beep each other on your beepers."

* "Gene, is this your first time as a human shield?" "Yeah." "It's my third time. You're doing great." "Thank you."

* "I'm not gonna tell anybody. I'm no narc. Make fun of you for wetting the bed? What is this, the '90s?"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (05/01/2013): Apollo Gauntlet, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, American Dad and 5 Second Day

"Doo-hude... Tina... I can totally hear my heart beating. It's like a Pharrell beat with guest verses being dropped by T.I."

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

In "Rodent," the latest Apollo Gauntlet installment, Prince Belenus and Dr. Benign (both voiced by series creator Myles Langlois) blame an evil robot's abduction of the Princess (Hollie Dzama) on Apollo (also Langlois) and his pummeling of her royal guards, who would have protected her from the robot had Apollo not knocked them all out. Apollo replies that leaving the guards alone wouldn't have mattered anyway because "that robot would have come in here like Terminator in the police station."

That's not the only Terminator reference in "Rodent." Unless Langlois created a blooper without realizing it, the barefoot Benign is seen at the start of the episode running through a corridor making the kind of footstep noises that would emanate from someone wearing hard-soled shoes, not someone who's barefoot--an exact re-creation of the off-putting footstep sound FX the Terminator 2 foley artists created for a barefoot Sarah Connor after she broke out of her cell. I don't know if Langlois intended it to be a reference to one of the silliest foley artist bloopers ever seen in an expensive and beloved summer blockbuster, but I'd like to think he did.

Earlier in Apollo Gauntlet's second season on the Rug Burn Channel, I said, "I might go from mildly liking this weird cartoon to straight-up admiring it if its new season never bothers to leave that throne room." Since then, the characters have stepped outside the throne room, but we've reached the season's seventh episode by now, and the show is still confined to the Dundrum castle (Apollo, Benign and Belenus will have to eventually leave the castle to rescue the Princess). The fact that the show has remained this long in one single setting proves how low its budget is, but budget limitations don't matter much when Apollo's dialogue, the awkward pauses and the intentionally wretched rotoscoping are so frequently funny.

Stray observations:
* "'Apollo Gauntlet'? Uh, yeah, sure, let's call him that," says a continually puzzled Benign to the Princess. In "The Interrogation of Dr. Benign by the Hero Apollo Gauntlet," Benign addressed Apollo as Paul. Apollo's full actual name is Paul Cassidy, according to YouTube's series synopsis.

* Where did Paul and Benign teleport from? I'm putting my money on an insane asylum where Paul was an inmate--which explains the conversations with his right gauntlet and all the slightly creepy hallucinations he's been experiencing--and Benign was either a scientist who was fiddling around with some sort of teleportation gizmo that happened to be lying around a lab in the mental facility or a therapist who was accidentally zapped along with Paul into the distant planet by the device while in the middle of a therapy session with him. (There's also the possibility that these adventures on this other planet are one whole illusion in Paul's mind.) The show also has yet to explain where Paul's magic gauntlets come from.

* "Oh no, Billy, Witchiepoo captured Pufnstuf!" H.R. Pufnstuf was way before my time, so I never watched it, but my comedy nerd-dom has exposed me to lots of jokes or sketches about the cheesiness of Pufnstuf that were written by comedians who grew up watching it. Weed references during late '60s/early '70s Krofft shows were really subtle back then. I bet H.R.'s next-door neighbor was named Phil E. Blunt.

***

On The Cleveland Show, Cleveland and his drinking buddies find a living out of being seat fillers at strangers' funerals. Donna objects to Cleveland's new side job because of how creepy it is for him to pretend to have known these strangers who died, so Cleveland wises up and quits. But his temporary stint as a funeral seat filler in "Grave Danger" has resulted in some gorgeous-looking vistas of Cleveland and his friends chillaxing at the cemetary, and the craft and care that's been put into the shots of the cemetary remind me that while this recently cancelled cartoon may not be the funniest on Fox's "Animation Domination" lineup, it can really look like a million bucks from time to time. I'm not so fond of the use of Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" during the funeral montage though. Like all those covers of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," the depressed white person's "Macarena," that shit was charming the first 998 times I heard it on series TV.

Meanwhile, Rallo spends a weekend at his biological dad Robert's apartment in East Stoolbend, and he encounters a pack of street kids who are tougher than even Rallo himself. He's so intimidated by them that he agrees to "jack show-and-tell" at his kindergarten class for them, especially after they blackmail him with photos of him appearing to bully a fat kid at the basketball court (of course, Rallo was actually telling the kid to fall on his ass so that he'd appear to be tougher in front of the street kids). Rallo's story is nothing special, aside from a funny running joke involving eBay (see below). But the denouement--in which Rallo scolds the other kindergarteners for their cruel and classist words towards the East Stoolbend kids who tried to steal their show-and-tell items, and then after the East Stoolbenders leave the classroom, he calls the police on their asses--is a terrific subversion of the badly aging "More You Know" endings that were a fixture of so many of the black sitcoms that influenced The Cleveland Show.

Stray observations:
* There's a good score music gag when Rallo cowers from hearing helicopter blades whirring, gunshots, a violin playing slashing chords, wolf howls, spooky moans and the cackling of a witch. To keep from getting scared, he switches on the TV and hears an anchorman (Kevin Michael Richardson) report that "according to police, the crazy wolf-ghost-witch violinist is believed to be armed and flying a helicopter, hunting for little boys who look like you."

* "Thanks again, Padre, for forgiving me for pushing the fat kid and for keeping your hands to yourself."

* "That's a nice suit, Rallo." "Thanks. I got it on eBay. Peter Dinklage wore it to the Golden Globes."

* Donna to Cleveland: "Is that a new suit?" "Mm-hmm. Got it on eBay. Tilda Swinton wore it to the Golden Globes."

* T-Pain voices one of the kindergarteners on the show? That's bananas. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised because of this cartoon's history of strange and random casting choices--like enlisting David Lynch to voice a bartender.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (04/10/2013): Archer, Scooby-Doo!, Out There, Apollo Gauntlet and Do's & Don'ts

Some people just want to watch the gazebo burn. (Photo source: Archer Wiki)

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

Jon Hamm's last animation guest shot had him voicing a talking toilet on Bob's Burgers, and in Archer's two-part "Sea Tunt" season finale, Hamm voices a character who's almost as bizarre as that toilet: Captain Murphy, one of many batshit crazy characters who populated Sealab 2021, Archer executive producers Adam Reed and Matt Thompson's Adult Swim show from the '00s. Here, Captain Murphy (the namesake of electronica/hip-hop producer Flying Lotus' masked alter ego as a rapper) is reimagined as an eco-terrorist who's plotting to attack Miami, New York City and the nation's capital with missiles tipped with nerve gas.

But the Mad Men star doesn't really get to do much in "Sea Tunt: Part I." The episode is more of a showcase for guest stars Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal, who get to interact with their Bob's Burgers co-star H. Jon Benjamin, and the entire regular cast (except for Lucky Yates as Krieger, who stays behind at ISIS Headquarters), and any episode that traps the entire cast in enclosed farcical situations that escalate into gory (or in other episodes, nudity-filled) chaos is always entertaining.

Instead of voicing their Bob's Burgers characters like John Roberts got to do in "Fugue and Riffs," Mirman voices Cecil Tunt, Cheryl/Carol's oceanographer/philanthropist brother, while Schaal plays Tiffy, Cecil's easily perturbed helicopter pilot and girlfriend. Malory turns to Cecil for one of his deep-sea vehicles, which will allow her and the agents to recover a hydrogen bomb inside a B-52 bomber that went down in the Bermuda Triangle in order to get a reward from the U.S. government. Of course, nothing goes as planned: the bomb turns out to be a hoax concocted by Cecil to get ISIS to stop Murphy, the lead scientist at Cecil's undersea research lab, from going through with his plan. The hoax is also a scheme for Cecil to obtain on record as many stories about his sister's insane behavior as he can from her co-workers so that he can get conservatorship over her to steal her inheritance and use it to fund his numerous philanthropies.

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

"Sea Tunt: Part II" is bound to be a more impressive and chaotic half than "Part I," but this episode isn't too shabby, thanks to killer jokes about score music and Cheryl/Carol's sanity. When everyone reacts in shock to Cecil's bit of info about Murphy's nerve gas supply, lifelong pyromaniac Cheryl/Carol is the only one who's thrilled about the madness that's about to ensue. Her giddiness matches our own.

Stray observations:
* Malory: "We are going to beat the Russians!" Archer: "Give it up, folks! Mike Eruzione!" I knew watching that DVD rental of Miracle would pay off someday.

* Archer, after being introduced to Cecil: "Yeah, Rien Poortvliet just called. He wants you to pose for him. [Awkward silence.] Oh, c'mon, beloved illustrator of Gnomes? Jesus, read a coffee table book!"

* Pam references an '80s Stephen J. Cannell show that, for a change, is neither The A-Team nor The Greatest American Hero: "I assume you've got an epi-pen on this big Riptide-lookin' bastard?" I wouldn't be surprised if Archer or one of the other ISIS employees was a Renegade viewer back in the '90s.

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

* Homer Simpson's eating noises used to make me instantly chuckle, but now I think Pam's eating noises while wolfing down vegan crab legs, courtesy of Amber Nash stuffing her face with cheese puffs, are funnier. Or maybe it's because they're paired up with the sight of Pam's face swelling up from soy allergies.

* Cheryl/Carol keeps hearing suspenseful score cues: "Just ignore it. It's non-diegetic." And later on: "Goddammit, shut up, John Williams!"

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (03/13/2013): Bravest Warriors, Archer, Out There, Bob's Burgers and 5 Second Day

Here we see Archer at his latest assignment, which is to sabotage the making of yet another "Harlem Shake" video.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.


In "Catbug," Bravest Warriors concludes its first season with a nifty--as well as somewhat frustrating--cliffhanger involving the heroes' missing parents, who have been trapped for two years in another dimension, the See-Through Zone. The Warriors' animal sidekick Catbug (Sam Lavagnino), who's been jumping back and forth between dimensions, frequently brings the teens presents from their parents.

This time, Wallow receives peanut butter squares and the pocket-sized ponies that he used to raise as pets and are known as Pony Lords (a nod to the Bronies, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's male fans). As for Chris, he's given his baby pictures, Will Rogers commemorative stamps, a sinus irrigator and a note from his parents that they're still alive, while Danny is given an expired lottery ticket and a knife. His folks must adore him. My favorite gag in "Catbug" also involves Danny, and it's the sight of him cradling a chainsaw while asleep, so that he's ready to attack any interdimensional or extraterrestrial threat that shows up at the Warriors' Invisible Hideout.

Meanwhile, Beth, who's never received any sign from her parents that they're alive, is saddened to find she's wound up empty-handed once again. But as the brain of her cherished and super-intelligent pet horse (who's been in a catatonic state since she was six years old, due to the awe--and I assume mental stress--he experienced from discovering the meaning of the universe) points out in the finale's bizarre concluding voiceover, Beth isn't aware that she's received a gift greater than any of her friends' presents. It lies behind the locked door to the See-Through Zone that materialized in front of the Warriors after microbes that were embedded in their parents' gifts fused together--and here comes the mildly frustrating part--we have to wait until next season for the Warriors to unlock the door with a mysterious key that a note from the See-Through Zone refers to only as "Ralph Waldo Pickle Chips."

The "Paralyzed Horse's Log" is a doozy of a voiceover, and the horse's mind is voiced by '80s Transformers announcer Victor Caroli. He's a little older-sounding, but he's still the same ominous voice that let viewers know that the beef between the Autobots and Decepticons will be briefly squashed for more toy ads, during a show that was one big 22-minute toy ad. In addition to revealing that Bravest Warriors officially takes place in the 31st century, the horse's mind describes Beth's gift as "an octave of death" and "a tentacle of time." Beth's item might not even be a gift. Perhaps it brings about the end of the universe.

(Photo source: Bravest Warriors Wiki)

What about the Emotion Lord's cryptic hint to the Warriors that "It's always been Wankershim"? How does that--as well as all those visions of the future Chris briefly glimpsed--tie into this tentacle of time? And why am I glad this show is airing on Cartoon Hangover and not on a kids' cable channel where execs who are perplexed by the show's material decide to bounce it around the schedule so that viewers won't be able to find it and that gives the suits an excuse to cancel it?

***

I was dreading how Archer's "Coyote Lovely" episode would turn out when I first learned that it involved Archer ferrying a pack of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. "Oh great," I thought, "Archer turns into a white savior movie this week. I fucking hate those movies." Luckily, "Coyote Lovely" prevents itself from earnestly fawning over Archer like so many of those annoying movies do with their white heroes by letting Archer be Archer and having him totally Jack Burton his way through this cause he's taken up because of his hard-on for Mercedes Moreno (Carla Jimenez, who plays Rosa, Virginia's boss at the cleaning service, on Raising Hope), the lovely titular people-smuggler.

In other words, Archer's a buffoon--a la the memorably bumbling trucker protagonist from Big Trouble in Little China, perhaps the most enjoyable upending of white savior movies Hollywood never realized it made--for most of the episode, especially after he gets shot in the back by a pair of incompetent and gay border patrol agents (one of whom is voiced by Justified's Nick Searcy). Archer's life has to be saved by both a drunken veterinarian (Sons of Anarchy's Dayton Callie, another FX star guesting in this episode) and Mercedes, who, as the episode's twist ending revealed, arranged to be captured by Archer (who was assigned to apprehend her mother, the woman in charge of the coyote system) so that her feminine wiles could lure him into helping her get the Mexicans across the border.

Mercedes realizes that Archer is far from the ideal savior she expected. She becomes frustrated--like Lana, Cyril and Ray so often do in the field--with both Archer's boorishness ("You think I am some kind of whore?!" "No, but... Chuy, back me up here. Was there not, like, a cock-hungry vibe?") and the fact that working with this man-child from ISIS turns into babysitting (which Lana realizes her job at ISIS has basically turned into at one point during "Coyote Lovely"), but ultimately, Mercedes is won over by him.

Jimenez, Searcy and Callie are better guest voice actors than the slightly wooden Anthony Bourdain in "Live and Let Dine" last week, and their performances are highlights during "Coyote Lovely," in addition to the usual hilarious dialogue. The story of how Archer creator Adam Reed got Searcy and Callie involved in "Coyote Lovely," as told by co-executive producer Matt Thompson, is amusing as well, even though this story of recruitment doesn't feature a hot Latina flaunting her cleavage.