♪ I think I found my happy place ♪
To get a spot in the community garden, Bob does the unthinkable: he makes Louise's arch-nemesis Logan Bush an employee at the restaurant. When Louise eventually gets to her breaking point, Bob is left struggling to choose between his own desires and his relationship with his daughter.Late Afternoon in the Garden of Tropes:
- Affectionate Nickname: Bob tries to give Louise one. It doesn't quite land, not helped by one of Bob's suggestions (angel dust) being the name of a drug.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Bob tells Louise not to cut up his babies (the crops). Louise's response finally nails into Bob's head that he's been a bit selfish.Louise: (genuinely offended) These are your babies?
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Discussed; Bob lampshades that Louise shows inklings of looking up to him, but they're so well-hidden he's never 100% sure until she outright tells him.
- Bear Hug: Louise gives a surprisingly genuine one to Bob when she thinks he finally got rid of Logan. When he reveals he not only didn't fire Logan but made him Employee of the Month, she hugs him again—except this time it's in anger, and she squeezes him so hard it starts to hurt him.Bob: Oh, my kidneys. You're so small, but you're so strong.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Gene thinks there's this between Louise and Logan.Gene: I bet when you reconnect in your thirties, you guys will get married.
- Bittersweet Ending: Bob loses his plot in the garden, and his attempt at salvaging the crops goes awry when they fall off the windowsill. However, he and Louise make up after an episode at odds, Louise rejoins the restaurant after previously quitting, and the father/daughter duo bond over trying to plant the crops at home.
- Brutal Honesty: Bob points out that Louise is the last person he'd give an award for being a good employee, even behind Gene.
- Call-Back: Louise utilizes the crawl space to fire spitballs at Logan.
- Companion Cube: Bob talks to his plants. However, because it's in a public garden, people do take notice and are weirded out.
- Condescending Compassion: Linda takes offense to the upper middle-class Cynthia calling the Belchers "simple folk" who are "doing the best they can".
- Continuity Nod: Bob and Cynthia each reference the events of "Ear-sy Rider", such as mentioning the One-Eyed Snakes, Louise threatening to cut off Logan's ears, Bob and Cynthia's first meeting in the restaurant, and Sidecar's birth.
- Counter Point Duet: The song "Happy Crappy Place" has Bob singing about how much he loves working in the garden, while Louise and Linda sing about how much they hate having Logan and his mom Cynthia hanging around the restaurant.
- Crazy-Prepared: Bob knew that having Louise fire Logan would cost him his garden plot, so he took his crops and transported them home so he could continue to grow them.
- Daddy's Girl: Louise considers the restaurant her and Bob's special place, which is why she's so upset that Bob is letting the Bush family ruin it. The final scene of the episode also shows that for all her talk about not liking vegetables, she's having a genuinely fun time bonding with her father while planting the crops at home.
- Defensive "What?": Gene says this each time Louise gets mad at him for getting along so well with Logan.
- Don't Explain the Joke: At the beginning of the episode, Gene is pouring a jug of ketchup into a bottle, calling it "Niagara Ketchup." Tina is confused about it, but upon getting it asks if it's Niagara Falls but with ketchup.
- Door Slam of Rage: Louise slams the restaurant door after quitting, and is disappointed that the glass didn't break.
- Employee of the Month: Bob hires Louise's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Logan to work at the restaurant for a school assignment so Logan's mom Cynthia will give Bob a plot in the community garden. Logan doesn't do anything except make a mess and pick on Louise, but when Louise fights back it upsets Cynthia and Bob is forced to give Logan an Employee of the Month award to keep Cynthia happy and avoid losing his garden. Even though she knows the award is meaningless, the gesture still upsets Louise so much that she quits.
- Foreshadowing: Linda suggests to Bob that he could hang a planter from the window after his application gets rejected at the start of the episode, hinting as to how he preserves his plants after getting kicked out at the end.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: If one looks carefully at the blackboard, someone (likely Logan) edited the episode's second Burger of the Day, the "Garden of Eden Burger", to instead read the "Garden of E-dumb Burger". The blackboard also states that the burger comes with apple, which was rewritten (also likely by Logan) to instead read "crapple".
- Gasshole: Logan likes to torment Louise by wafting his burps and farts in her face.
- Hidden Depths: Bob is revealed to love gardening.
- Hypocritical Humor: Linda tells Louise that sometimes you have to be around someone you just cannot stand, but immediately after she says that Cynthia comes through the door, and Linda is not happy about it. Louise immediately takes notice of it.
- I Have This Friend: Tina asks Logan about high school boys using the shower after sports, and adds that she's "asking for a friend."
- Jerkass Realization: After trying to stop Louise from sabotaging his garden plot, Bob refers to the plants as "my babies". He realizes saying that in front of his actual daughter was a dick move, and that he's overall been really selfish about the whole garden thing.
- Jerkass to One: While he's not overly nice to the other Belchers, Logan only directly antagonizes Louise.
- Kids Hate Vegetables: Louise points out that she adheres to the trope when Bob tries to get her excited about the community garden.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While Louise acting out is understandable since Logan is bullying her, Linda acting out against Cynthia is much less so and is what causes Cynthia to try to revoke Bob's garden membership, which in turn leads to the third act of the episode when Bob hastily makes a deal to appease Cynthia.
- Orphaned Set Up: While talking to his plants, Bob starts to tell them a joke about a kid who finds a welding mask in the sandbox when he realizes the other people in the garden are staring at him.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: It's a Shout-Out to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
- Status Quo Is God: It doesn't take a genius to know that even after quitting, Louise will rejoin the restaurant at the end of the episode.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Discussed; nothing of the sort happens, but Linda claims that she'll understand if Bob has to sleep with Cynthia to get into the community garden.
