Bob’s Burgers (FOX – Sunday, 8:30 p.m.)

BOB’S BURGERS is a new animated series about a man, his family and a burger joint.

A second-generation restaurateur, BOB (H. Jon Benjamin) is a dreamer with big ideas about burgers. Despite his greasy counters, his lousy location next to a crematorium and the occasionally spotty service, Bob is convinced his burgers speak for themselves.

Bob’s wife, LINDA (John Roberts), supports Bob’s dream through thick and thin, but has some dreams of her own. Their oldest daughter, TINA (Dan Mintz), is a 13-year-old hopeless romantic with minimal social skills. Middle child GENE (Eugene Mirman) is a self-described musician, class clown and all-around entertainer. Their youngest, LOUISE (Kristen Schaal), is the most enthusiastic about her dad’s business, but her imagination and scheming make her somewhat of a liability in the kitchen.

The restaurant is situated in an eastern seaboard town, complete with an oceanside amusement pier called Wonder Wharf. Next door to BOB’S BURGERS is the It’s Your Funeral Home and Crematorium – owned and operated by Mort the Mortician, one of Bob’s most faithful regulars. And across the street is Jimmy Pesto’s, Bob’s main competition and one of the many thorns in Bob’s side. – FOX

3 out of 10

We had very mixed emotions going into the series premiere of Bob’s Burgers.  On the one hand, we’re always excited about a new animated series on FOX (yes, it’s the one thing we like about FOX at this time) and this one genuinely looked VERY funny based on the sneak-preview we saw on the It’s A Trap! Blu-Ray but on the other hand, it’s been a poorly kept secret that FOX has been trying to replace American Dad since about the second season and Bob’s Burgers would be in all likelihood, the heir-apparent.  We really are not sure why FOX treats American Dad like the proverbial red-headed step-child, either, but they always have. The audiences numbers haven’t been as big as Family Guy, however, they have been good enough and consistent over the last six seasons to keep FOX from just arbitrarily dumping it like the do with so many other of their shows.

That being said, it’s with a heavy heart and overwhelming joy at the same time that we declare this:

BOB’S BURGERS SUCKS.

There… we said it… and we want our readers to realize this before they start investing a whole bunch of time into this dopey show expecting the show to become enjoyable.  It’s not going to happen.   The jokes are lame and incredibly dated and it’s really just a whole bunch of recycled crap from other prime-time cartoons with a smattering of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim comedy thrown in for good measure.  The truth is that if they couldn’t pull off more than three good jokes in the premiere, it’s never going to happen.

Another thing about this is that there’s really nobody likable or relatable on this show except for maybe Bob himself.  His wife, Linda, reminds of Pickles Oblong from the short-lived WB series, The Oblongs, without being funny or endearing. All three of the kids are just a bunch of gross weirdos and the writers just keep jumping back to these gross/weird kids in an attempt to exploit their grossness/weirdness into a joke.  It’s not working at all as it’s all very predictable and you just wind up a little more grossed-out.  To give you an idea about how predictable and unoriginal this show is, they actually did a “Whatever-you-do-don’t-touch-that-red-button” joke.  Pure, puke-in-your-mouth, suckitude©.

Believe us when we say that we really wanted to like Bob’s Burgers, despite what the ramifications of a high-quality animated show on FOX means to the fate of American Dad.  We really tried. We’re firm believers in letting the best show win at the end of the day and its self-defeating to root for a show to suck, even if it means losing another beloved show.

We even brought Mrs. ‘Tastic in to watch this who normally stares through the television like she’s trying to see the hidden image of the sailboat like in one of those ‘Magic Eye’ pictures whenever one of our shows is on.  She confirmed our worst fears when she said at the end, “Was that supposed to be funny?”  Then we contemplated turning on MTV’s Teen Mom to make us feel better about our lives after having to sit through Bob’s Burgers.

So, in the end, the downside is that Bob’s Burgers is really not very good at all but the upside is that it looks like American Dad may have dodged the FOX bullet for yet another season and for that… we rejoice.

And before anyone starts talking about how Bob’s had the highest rated season premiere of any new show this season, keep in mind that the show was heavily promoted by FOX and oh, yeah… it had the benefit of having an NFL wild-card game as a lead in. We would not expect similar numbers next week because we simply find it impossible for anyone who watched that mess to think it was good enough to tune in to a second time.