Fridge / Bob's Burgers

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• The Belchers have excellent family harmony despite their diverse and clashing personalities. There are many other reasons as well for their wonderful dynamic, but it's interesting to note that there is at least one trait common to every member of the family: creativity. Linda and Gene are both musically inclined and actually quite good. Linda is very good at ad-libbing lyrics to songs along with melodies at a moment's notice, while Gene has genuine musical talent (seriously, a 6th-grader not only writing but composing "Electric Love" probably qualifies as a genius). Tina is of course a devoted writer, probably stemming from her elaborate fantasy life, and Louise is a master planner who is willing to think outside the box for solutions to problems (even if outside the box means "verging on psychotic"). Finally, Bob is extremely creative in his cooking. The show's producers have said that the Burger of the Day is not merely Bob playing with puns, but that it shows how much thought and work he puts into his creations. He sits down daily and dreams up a logical, interesting variation on the same basic concept, and never lets himself get lazy.
• In the pilot, Bob shoots down Linda's reason for remembering their anniversary—9/3, 9 is divisible by 3—by claiming a lot of numbers are divisible by 3. Linda in turn brushes off this defense, which gains a lot more merit when it's later revealed that Linda's birthday (another date Bob has trouble remembering) also follows the "divisible by 3" rule (specifically, it's on 6/3). This explains both Linda's usage of the rule (it applies to several important dates) and her annoyance at Bob brushing it off (because he's probably used this excuse before).
• In Season 1's "Burger Wars," Mr. Fischoeder runs a raccoon sanctuary in the building next door to Bob's Burgers. Over the course of the series Little King Trashmouth, El Diablo, Big Baby Pudding Snatcher, and a number of other raccoons living in the alley behind the Belchers' become part of the narrative—given said building is the Store Next Door, which changes every episode, it's almost certain that the sanctuary closed down, with the raccoons relocating to the Belchers' alley. Worth noting is that none of the raccoons appear before or during that episode (they're first mentioned in Season 3's "Two For Tina"), so there's no way to know if they were already there.
• In the second season episode "Moody Foodie," the food critic visits the restaurant disguised as a Hasidic Jew. Bob freaks out about his napkin as a "tell," and it's played as if it could just be a random customer, not the Moody Foodie. But there's an easier tell for the audience - he orders a cheeseburger. That's about as non-kosher as you can get.
• Tina's anger at Mr. Frond cheating on Aunt Gayle is even more justified than it first seems (and it's already pretty freaking justified)... after all, she was the one to defend him when Louise tried to break up him and Gayle. At that moment, Tina was angry at not just Frond's infidelity, but the fact she stood up for him believing he would do better. Frond betrayed not just Gayle's trust, but her trust as well.
• The episode "Spaghetti Western And Meatballs" has Mr. Frond introduce his A.B.S. method of conflict resolution, as well as a subplot that climaxes with Gene and Bob being confronted and pursued by a shirtless Choo-Choo and his father. It's something of a Stealth Pun that Choo-Choo and his dad are therefor literally using their "abs" in a conflict. Based on the events of this episode, Choo-Choo apparently always takes his shirt off when he's ready to start a fight: Maybe Mr. Frond saw him do this on the school grounds once before and the whole "A.B.S." acronym took off from there.
• Teddy's imaginary family in "Bob Fires the Kids" resembles the Pesto family—he gives himself an older son named Jeremy who "needs [Teddy] the most" (Jimmy Jr., who resents Jimmy Sr. and could use a supportive father figure), and younger twins who "have each other" (Andy & Ollie, whose emotional dependency on each other is implied to stem from Parental Neglect), not to mention Teddy himself plays the role of a divorced dad (Jimmy Sr.). Why does he base his imaginary family on the Pestos and not the Belchers (arguably the obvious choice)? Because he recognizes that the Belcher kids already have Good Parents in Bob and Linda; the Pesto kids, meanwhile, only have the abrasive and neglectful Jimmy Sr. as a parent (and Teddy's not in a position to know how their mother raises them). Teddy wishes he could be the father figure the Pestos are sorely lacking.
• Why did Bob name his son Eugene/"Gene" instead of Robert III (aside from Eugene also being the name of Gene's voice actor)? It's because of the pressure Bob got from being the Jr. of a man who has to make sure everything is done exactly the way he wants it. Between the name and how loose he is in terms of what the kids can and can't do, it's clear that he didn't want to risk Gene feeling he needed to be another "Bob"!
• Bob's life is an interesting parallel to Jimmy Jr.'s. Both share their respective father's name and had to deal with expectations from their father about doing what the father wanted them to do. They also had to grow up working in their parents' restaurant, and both Big Bob and Jimmy Sr. cracked down on their respective sons' creative aspirations, leading to immense feelings of resentment. Bob's hatred of Jimmy Pesto already has clear basis (Jimmy's a complete dick), but it's entirely possible that Bob also hates him because he recognizes what Jimmy's putting his eldest son through.
• In "Hawk & Chick", Bob and Louise meet Shinji "Koji" Kojima, who was a part of their favorite father-daughter acting duo (the titular series, Hawk and Chick). Koji explains he came to the States from Japan looking for his daughter Yuki, whom he had been estranged from for 30 years following his divorce from her mother. When Bob and Louise find Yuki to get her to reunite with her father, Yuki shoots them down. She explains that acting with her father was a strenuous time in her life, and she has no desire to reminisce about her career nor reunite with her father. This immediately sways Bob against the reunion, shocking Louise. Why? Because Bob also had similar issues with his father and is unable to be around to stand being around him for more than 15 minutes. It makes sense that he can sympathize with Yuki more than Koji, despite having a more positive relationship with his own kids^note And as it turns out, this detail wasn't lost on the creators—a deleted scene shows Bob making this exact connection between Yuki's life and his own.
  • Likewise, the fact that Louise's only real experience she has with parenting is with Bob and Linda explains why she sides with Koji. Even at their worst, Bob and Linda still try their best for their kids, and deep down Louise knows it. The fact that her relationships with her parents have been a net positive overall means that Louise genuinely can’t imagine the parent being at fault for a parent/child split because she has pretty much no real-world basis for it—in her mind, it has to be the child's fault. And when she reveals her fear of abandonment, she asks if she'll change when she grows up, showing that this extends to even herself.
• The Belcher family name seems to be no more than a silly sounding joke at the family's expense. However, Word of God states that the family is (among a larger mix of ancestry) partly French-Canadian. Break "Belcher" down into the French words Bel and Cher, and what does it mean? "Beautiful Dear". On the surface the Belchers seem silly, but at their core they're lovely people.
• Louise loves messing with Mr. Frond. In "Crawl Space", Mr. Frond says he's a vegetarian. Later, in "Food Truckin'", Bob admits that he taught the kids that it's okay to lie to vegetarians, and that the kids actively follow said lesson.
• Bob refusing to go to the wharf in "Dawn of the Peck" has another reason besides Bob wanting to have a traditional Thanksgiving—not five episodes ago, Bob nearly lost his life and his family underneath the wharf. The wharf probably brings up extremely bad memories for him, which is supported by the fact that after Season 4, it took until the movie (eight years later) for Bob to set foot in Wonder Wharf again (and he only does it out of necessity).
• In "Best Burger", the characters make no reference to the events of "Family Fracas", and Chuck Charles still has a grudge against the Belchers even though he's already gotten revenge and has a new, well-paying job as the host of the titular game show. Except... no, he probably doesn't anymore. While the Belchers may have lost their lawsuit against the show, the way the verdict was achieved probably would have caused a lot of backlash—namely, the show only got acquitted through one of the co-hosts blatantly destroying a key piece of evidence. While nobody acknowledges this in the episode itself (besides the Belchers), it's entirely possible someone noticed this and pointed it out given the trial was aired on TV. The resulting stigma would have led to the show being cancelled in an in-universe case of Overshadowed by Controversy, renewing Chuck Charles's hatred for the Belchers since they once again forced him out of a job^note While Family Fracas can be seen on Gayle's TV in "The Kids Run Away", it's archive footage from the titular episode—most likely just a rerun or a recording. It would certainly explain how Chuck Charles went from hosting two nationally-broadcast TV shows to hosting a local burger competition in a middle-of-nowhere town.
• In "Sliding Bobs", Louise is the most outwardly horrified at her Habercore counterpart from Tina's story despite the fact that her counterpart is arguably the most like her (while Tina and Gene's Habercore counterparts only retain physical similarities, Louise's counterpart shares two of Louise's key characteristics—her fixation with hats and status as a Daddy's Girl). Except that's probably exactly why she's so horrified. For the others, the horror came from how different their counterparts were, but Tina seems to be pushing the contrast to the point that they're practically caricatures. However, even if one discounts the princess phase as just another caricaturized contrast on Tina's part, Louise can identify with Charlize a lot more than she'd like to admit, and that's what's so scary—for all she knows, in another reality she could have been Charlize.
• In "The Horse Rider-er", Tina's imaginary horse Jericho is voiced by Paul Rudd. Out-of-universe it's a clear case of Celebrity Voice Actor, but there's also an in-universe explanation too. After all, Jericho is imaginary—Tina chooses what he sounds like in her head. She probably intentionally pictures him with Paul Rudd's voice.
• In "The Wolf of Wharf Street", the kids are less than excited to have Linda accompanying them. It's not just that they believe they're too old for parental supervision (although that's definitely a major factor)—"Full Bars" reveals that prior to the kids striking out on their own, Bob was the one who took them trick-or-treating. They've never had Linda take them before, and aren't keen on having that start now.
• In "The Hurt Soccer", the Blue Dragons are absolute tryhards that show no mercy against the Gold Dragons. When one considers that it's the last game of the season, and that every other team managed to score a Flawless Victory against the Gold Dragons, their attitude gains an excuse—they don't want to be the only team to not get a complete shut-out against the Gold Dragons.
• When Gene and Louise have a cook-off in "Tappy Tappy Tappy Tap Tap Tap", their parents each assume a different child will win (Bob bets on Louise; Linda bets on Gene). Not only is this a parallel to their children (Louise is a Daddy's Girl and favors Bob; Gene is a Momma's Boy and favors Linda), but Bob has a genuine reason to bet on Louise: in "Carpe Museum", Louise admitted she wanted to take over the restaurant as an adult. Bob took that admission to heart and assumed Louise would have more passion for cooking than Gene (who hadn't shown any significant interest in running the restaurant). He then took that assumption to its logical conclusion—that Louise paid attention when Bob was cooking, or at the very least cared enough to try and learn on her own. Taking into account all of this, it's little wonder he's so horrified to find her burger is nigh-inedible.
• In "Bob Belcher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Kids", there's actually pretty clear evidence showing the kids probably didn't in fact start the fire: the survival of the papier-mache mermaid. She was incredibly flammable, and if she had been the point of ignition (which all the kids believed to be the case), there would be nothing but ashes left. As it is she only ended up being damaged, which suggests the flames were doused just as they were reaching her.
• The kids are all Book Dumb to varying extents, and why each of them isn't doing so hot in school ties into several deeper aspects of their characters beyond "doesn't like school/isn't good at it".
  • Tina, as the responsible sibling, is the one kid who actually seems to try in school. Her repeated failures are the simplest—she's shown to be easily distracted and lost in thought regarding anything and everything, leading to her daydreaming when she should be working. She's clearly not an outright idiot, as several episodes show her to be quite intellectually capable, but when it comes to school her mind wanders more than it should.
  • Louise is the only sibling whose future aspirations are covered at length—she wants to inherit the restaurant from Bob and work in it through adulthood. She doesn't care about school because she doesn't think she needs to know science or literature if she'll spend her life running her father's restaurant—but because she hides this from nearly everyone (to the point that Bob himself only finds out when Louise accidentally reveals it to him), everyone just assumes she's being an anti-authority rebel. The one person who knows better is Bob himself, which is why he rarely if ever gets on her case about schoolwork.
  • While Gene's future aspirations aren't quite known, it's clearly something tied to the arts. It's also shown several times that he's quite talented in those areas; "Itty Bitty Ditty Committee" reveals he's well aware of this and is averse to practicing as a result. However, "Best Burger" also reveals that he's easily distracted and can't focus on anything. Thus, Gene's reason for doing poorly is a combination of Tina and Louise's reasons—he has trouble focusing on work, but even if he could he wouldn't want to, because he feels like school couldn't teach him anything new for his dream job.
• Bob’s annoyance with Gene pretending to be a mini version of him In “Broadcast Wagstaff News” could be yet another thing tied to his issues with Bob Belcher Sr.. Bob clearly grew up being seen as “Little Bob,” a miniature version of “Big Bob.” We also see Bob tries very hard to raise his kids the opposite way his father did. Gene acting as a little Bob put Bob in the position of his dad, which definitely made him uncomfortable given how much distance Bob has put between the two of them and might have made Bob wonder if he’s doing a good enough job of raising his Tina, Gene, and Louise to not turn out like him.
• As noted on her character page, Louise is subtly shown to be Afraid of Blood and avoids interacting with it directly. While a lot of her squeamishness can be chalked up to her only being 9 years old, we are shown several times that blood is Bob’s biggest phobia. Of the three kids, Louise has picked up Bob’s Companion Cube tendencies the most, and "Poops!... I Didn’t Do It Again" suggests that Louise learned to share Bob's distaste for public bathrooms rather than simply inheriting it. Since Louise either consciously or subconsciously copies Bob’s behaviors, it’s also possible that she’s afraid of blood because she knows how much it disturbs Bob.
• Even without the geographic clues and occasional mentions of area codes, it's not very surprising that the Belcher family is from somewhere along the coast of New Jersey—the Belcher's family Ambiguously Brown and "probably" Greek-Armenian-Italian-Jewish-German background lines up with immigrant groups that formed large communities in-and-around the New York Metropolitan area. Linda's accent, while based on the Jewish Mother trope, is also evocative of community members of the Mid-Atlantic area.
• In the "Millie-Churian Candidate", the reason Louise gets disqualified from the election is because Frond walked in on her taking a file from his office. It seems awfully convenient timing for Henry (the mastermind behind the scheme), since he had no way of planning for Frond's actions. But Louise probably would've been caught anyway—even if she hadn't been directly spotted in Frond's office, the information she used to get Millie disqualified was only located on the file she took (nobody else knew Abby's real name was Mabel, and it's not until Louise mentions it that Abby herself confirms it). Frond would likely have put two-and-two together considering he would be present as the vote counter, and even if he hadn't, Henry would have just had to casually question Louise on how she found the information. Henry's plan didn't require Frond catching Louise in the act, it just made it significantly simpler.
• In Season 13, Bob and Linda start having smartphones after having had flip phones beforehand. Why the change? After the movie, where Grover threw Bob and Linda’s cell phones into the ocean, they definitely had to get replacements, and it’s likely they wanted to take advantage of the situation to upgrade their phones.
• In "Show Mama from the Grave", Bob estimates that the last time he visited his mother's grave was 20 years ago. In "Father of the Bob," Bob and Big Bob's falling out happened 20 years before the present-day scenes. There's a good chance the last time Bob visited his mother's grave was to 'see' her after the huge fight and him leaving Big Bob's Diner for good.
• At the end of "Bob Belcher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Kids", it's revealed that Hugo likely accidentally started the fire by tossing Bob's greasy rags out of the drawer. But there's evidence the kids may not have started the fire even before then: The mermaid statue wasn't badly burned. If it was the source of the fire, it very likely would have been far more damaged.
• In "My Big Fat Greek Bob", Gene mentions he has had a cat secretly living under his bed. In "Bad Tina", he mentions he has a litter box under his bed he likes to use. He most likely got the litter box for the cat, and once the cat was gone, he repurposed it as a bedpan.
• Logan and Louise are actually quite similar. They tend to defy authority, have a somewhat strained relationship with their mother, don't give up on revenge once somebody smites them, both have a ban at Family Fun Time, and they love the bunny ears-hat. But Logan is way more evil and antagonistic. That's because Louise has her siblings who keep her in check, while Logan only has his friends, who are essentially yesmen and minions that often enable his schenanigans and bullying behavior.

Fridge Horror

• In "Art Crawl", Louise becomes a drill-sergeant-like manager to no one's surprise. As the episode goes on, she is overseeing Andy, Ollie, and another kid with red hair who is unrelated. Among all of the shouting that she hurls, Louise seems to switch gears for a minute when talking to Andy and Ollie at the table.
  Louise: (Sweet, loving voice) Andy, Ollie, come 'ere...(puts hands on both and pulls them in) Listen, I'm pushing you because you've got talent, babies. And I'm gonna take care of you, oh, you better believe it. But first you gotta make some money for Mommy. OK, babies?
  • This line isn't particularly meaningful until the viewer looks at the context involved. It's made clear in the show that Ollie and Andy are raised by their father (and not necessarily in a loving way). Their biological mother is nowhere to be seen... a fact that Louise surely knows. What Louise could possibly be trying to do with this line is intentionally invoke Ollie and Andy's emptiness for the love of a mother in their lives, and use that deep psychological emptiness to get better art out of them. And worst of all? Louise abandons them there. And at the end of the episode, after Louise has left the table for several hours, Ollie and Andy are still waiting for their "Mommy" to return. The red-haired child has left, but Andy asks Ollie, "Do you think she's coming back?" Granted, Louise does eventually return (with the express intention of collecting more paintings from them!) but it seems to be a pretty cleverly conniving tactic on her part.
    • Interesting note, adding more to the Fridge Horror, it was implied in "The Belchies" that their parents are divorced (i.e he tells them, "I thought you were at your mother's.") and its very clear that said parents' divorce has affected them greatly and they rarely get to see her, along with the fact that said divorce might have occurred while they were very young. In which case, it makes the above even more depressing.
    • It's pretty clear that the Pestos' family problems have left the two with serious abandonment issues. The two are constantly together and become terrified to the point of a full emotional breakdown at the thought of being separated.
• What is Louise going to be like as an adult? There's no indication that her Comedic Sociopathy is a passing phase, or that it's just an act covering up a harmless little girl. She's actually pretty friggin' dangerous, even at nine years old. She nearly cuts off her brother's ear, causes an angry mob to descend on her dad's shop because it amuses her, and tortures a grown man (psychologically and physically) to the breaking point for occupying her room. What's going to happen when she's physically and intellectually capable of doing more damage?
  • The fact that this has been implied to be an act may just make it worse as she has no reason to behave this way and we don't even have any real confirmation if it is an act or not.
  • It's actually becoming more and more likely as the show goes on that this is just a phase. Present-Louise is a much more thoughtful and caring person than past-Louise. Can you imagine Louise from season 1 doing things like kissing Regular-Sized Rudy, or stepping in to stop Pocket-Sized Rudy's bullies, or working hard to save a doll from being destroyed and then bringing it home? As for why it's an act, it's implied that the Belchers don't monitor her TV shows very closely, since she's apparently seen Game of Thrones.
  • While she is gaining some empathy and generosity, it’s still there. She’s just going from a loose cannon to a very powerful targeted missile, making her even more dangerous. Someone willing to hurt anyone just because is dangerous but predictable. Someone with that same capacity for destruction but people that they care about is even more dangerous, because now their brilliance and viciousness are powered by wrath. Louise is just evolving from a baby sociopath to something far more dangerous: a baby John Wick.
• The family's mental health can be scary once you think about it. Bob has a severely addictive personality to drugs and alcohol, Linda and Gayle have very alarming personality problems (callousness, egotism, Munchausen syndrome, lack of empathy, narcissism, violent tendencies), Louise's above-mentioned sociopathy, Gene's ADHD and Tina's possible autism, along with that the fact that the family's poverty means that they can never get any therapy or medication that they truly need, is a very sad and terrifying thought, as well as a common reality in the United States.
• After Bob gets gut-punched in "Christmas in the Car", he makes a comment about internal bleeding. Nothing too bad, until one remembers that Bob is heavily implied to be a hemophiliac.
• In the season 4 finale, Felix Fischoeder holds Bob and his brother Calvin at gunpoint, and ties them up under the pier with the intention of letting them drown. While Bob is reasonably afraid, Calvin, whose eye was cut out by Felix, reacts with nothing but amusement, believing Felix not to be tough enough to go through with it, even mocking him when he does return. How many times has Felix tried to kill Calvin for the latter to be so nonchalant about it?
  • Bob and Calvin's near-death situation also holds another terrifying thought. There's no doubt that the Belchers would have been hurt badly if Bob died, but think about Louise in particular. Louise is extremely close to her father, which is outlined several times in several episodes. If Bob dies, who's to say Louise wouldn't go completely off the deep end, especially if she learns who killed her father? Combine this with her aforementioned vindictive nature in later seasons, and Felix is almost lucky he pulled a Heel–Face Turn, because otherwise he'd have to deal with a massively pissed-off, conniving, vengeful little girl who'd stop at nothing to see her father's killer suffer.
• Nurse Liz from "Lice Things are Lice". We find out that a regular hospital/clinic wouldn't take her, so, knowing that and after seeing what she does over the course of the episode, one has to be wonder as to how she even got employed at Wagstaff.
  • Considering she didn't get fired for that stunt (she appears in "Ex Mach Tina"), it's entirely probable that Wagstaff has never had any other options to replace her... but this raises another horrific thought in that she somehow didn't get fired for going completely off the deep end. While she seems to have mellowed out (well, compared to how she was before), for all anyone knows she's waiting for her next chance to let her insanity shine...
• More like Fridge Tearjerker than straight-up horror, but in "The Ring (But Not Scary)", Bob is so angry over the ring that he warns his kids that they're grounded, they're disowned, they're banned from his funeral, and they can't talk to him for the rest of the night, or maybe ever again. That last one sounds like a case of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, right? Well, maybe to the audience, and probably to Gene and Tina, but not to Louise. Way back in "Hawk & Chick", Louise was revealed to be extremely insecure about not talking with Bob in the future, to the point that one could reasonably argue it's Louise's biggest fear. And now Bob's bringing it back up again. It's little wonder she doesn't try to invoke Never My Fault like she usually does—the mere mention of her biggest fear is enough to keep her in line.
  • If that's not enough, look closely as Bob makes this threat. For the bulk of the conversation he's looking at all of his kids, but as he specifically tells the kids not to talk to him he's looking right at Louise in particular.
    • Additionally, when Nat is taking the Belchers to the water park, Louise is the first to try and talk to Bob. She's probably looking for any sign that Bob didn't mean what he said before.
• Louise's room is shown to be essentially a glorified closet with no windows, so how exactly has Millie been able to replicate Louise's room in her own? Unless she managed to sneak into the Belchers' house without anyone noticing...
• Using context clues from Zeke’s life, his family situation is quite dysfunctional, but some aspects of it seem downright unsettling. Zeke’s dad seemingly has three kids by three different women (Zeke, a baby with a woman named Cheryl, and a 44-year-old son from a previous marriage). But Zeke mentions that his mom was pregnant as a teenager, and considering the age of Zeke’s oldest half-sibling, means that he was at least 50 at the time he fathered Zeke, and his mother could have been no older than 18 when they got married. Sounds like a case of grooming and possible pedophilia going on, considering that a relationship between the two likely didn’t pop up out of nowhere when she turned 18.
  • And judging by the fact that he’s having a kid by another woman, it implies that he’s still going after women way too young for him, especially since he’s in his 60s at least as of the current day.
  • This also raises some scary implications of what the situation was like for Zeke’s mom. It’s possible that the reason she married Zeke’s dad (and later divorced him) was because of either the social stigma of being a single mother at 18 or lack of access to an abortion. And considering that she divorced him while Zeke was a toddler, their marriage was probably quite rocky due to the shaky foundation it started with.
  • It's also a bit horrific that Zeke's mother left him with his father—Zeke is indicated to still live with his father while his mother is only mentioned in past tense (based off of Zeke's mentions of her, the last time he's known to have seen her was over a decade ago, during the divorce proceedings). While it seems like she had many reasons to get away from her ex-husband, the fact that she abandoned Zeke to be raised by him (or even worse, lost custody of Zeke) is pretty sad.
  • Since she was shown in an earlier ep, it's possible she's still around but has to share joint custody but prolly doesn't seem him that much and this is probably assuming what he's saying is true. Not that it detracts from the implications, tho.
• In "The Horse Rider-Er", Tina goes back to her imaginary horse Jericho, who returns to her in a big showing. But when you stop and think about it, Jericho could only appear suddenly like that only because Tina's mind made it so, and that carries some uneasy implications. Namely, the fact that this might be reflective of a full on mental break for poor Tina. It's already established she's rather mis-wired in the head and if given the opportunity, can act in a pretty worrisome manner (leaving her sister and Tammy trapped to remain the centre of attention at a party for example and outright stalking Jimmy Jr). And in this episode, she ends up being rejected by Plops, a horse, the animal she loves above any other. With reality having let her down so badly, she retreats back into her fantasy of Jericho and as a psychiatrist can tell you, that's not a good thing.
• The more you watch the show, the more you realize that the reason the Belchers are constantly on the verge of poverty is because of Bob and Linda's own bad decisions. They can never afford to pay the rent yet Bob rejects any idea that could make his restaurant successful and Linda is always giving her sister hundreds of dollars for things she clearly knows are a scam. This is made worse when you realize that their kids have suffer a "thrifty" lifestyle while their parents are wasting money and opportunities to turn things around.