‘Bob’s Burgers” “The Hauntening” Will Warm Your Heart and Chill Your Spine

No other TV show in history can even touch Bob’s Burgers when it comes to holiday episodes. This isn’t even up for debate! Just in terms of commitment alone, Bob’s Burgers knocks out a new Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas episode every single season. Most shows commit to one and run with it, like The Simpsons and Halloween or Friends and Thanksgiving. Not Bob’s Burgers! They go for the holiday hat trick every single year and I applaud their dedication. Since we’re in the throes of Halloween (I don’t care what the Hallmark Channel thinks—Christmas doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving!), I feel inclined to dub the Bob’s Burgers episode “The Hauntening” as the greatest holiday episode in the show’s run. It’s a kooky, spooky, borderline f’ed up delight and it is exactly what Halloween is all about.

For those that have not made BB’s Halloween canon an essential part of their spooky celebrations, I’ll run down the plot of the Season 6 Halloween episode. Bob and Linda are determined to give their youngest child, the constantly scheming Louise, her very first scare. That’s it, that’s the show. But in true Bob’s Burgers fashion, the mayhem creeps to frightening heights. This is an animated holiday sitcom episode about a quirky, blue collar family that includes an image that feels way more at home in a Saw movie.

Bob’s Burgers is not afraid to get freaky, as evidenced by other Halloween episodes involving crossing guard witches and teen ghosts. There’s even a Christmas episode that involves a bizarre and deadly gingerbread house contest! But “The Hauntening,” in trying to spook Louise good, also spooks the audience something fierce. Granted, “The Hauntening” is no “Stevil” when it comes to being totally f’ed up. But how many family sitcom episodes can you think of that flirt with haunted houses, ritual sacrifice, and cloaked cultists?

“The Hauntening” did not come to play, it came to flay… our expectations of what’s permissible for parents to do to their previously unspookable kids. Even the predictably lame, totally run-of-the-mill spooks that Bob and Linda cook up before the real scares start aren’t exactly tame. Am I a weenie for thinking that Linda’s angel hair pasta intestines with blood-marinara is kinda unnerving? Probably! But y’know, pasta-guts are a more original gag than grape “eyeballs” (which Bob forgot to pick up at the store).

Truly, the spooky house trope is one that we see over and over again in sitcoms—not that I’m complaining! I’m eternally grateful that I can visit the Conner and Taylor households via VOD and streaming as I’m cooped up in my apartment for the millionth month. But “The Hauntening” has two things going for it that “The Haunting of Taylor House” doesn’t: the haunted house in Bob’s Burgers is actually scary (which I say with all due respect to decapitated Al Borland), and all the spooks and scares aren’t done as part of comeuppance on a snotty Ryder Strong, but instead they’re done… out of love!

“The Hauntening” delivers the scares, but it also delivers the feels (and also the laughs, particularly Gene who is as on fire as the lawn in this episode). It does what Bob’s Burgers does best: it makes you feel genuinely good, and it doesn’t make you feel lame for feeling good. And it does all that while branding your brain with the image of a baby doll with sticks for eyes.

That’s why of all the holiday stunts Bob’s Burgers ever pulled, “The Hauntening” is up there at the top. Well… at least until the time comes to watch “Turkey in a Can,” “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” “Thanks-Hoarding,” “The Bleakening,” “Nice-Capades,” “Christmas in the Car”…

Stream Bob's Burgers "The Hauntening" on Hulu