"Art Crawl" is the eighth episode of the first season of the animated television series ''
Bob's Burgers
''Bob's Burgers'' is an American adult animated sitcom created by Loren Bouchard that premiered on Fox on January 9, 2011. The show centers on the Belcher family—parents Bob and Linda and their three children, Tina, Gene, and Louise—who r ...
''. The episode originally aired on the
Fox network
The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations an ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
on March 20, 2011.
The episode was written by Lizzie and Wendy Molyneux, and was directed by Kyounghee Lim. According to the
Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...
, it was viewed by 4.43 million viewers during its original airing. The episode featured guest performances by
Andy Kindler
Andy Kindler (born October 16, 1956) is an American comedian and actor from Queens, New York. He played the character "Andy", a fellow sportswriter and friend of sportswriter "Ray Barone" (Ray Romano) on the TV show ''Everybody Loves Raymond'', w ...
,
Jerry Minor
Jerome Charles Minor Jr. (born October 4, 1969) is an American actor, comedian and writer known for his comedic roles in numerous television programs such as ''Mr. Show'', ''Saturday Night Live'', ''Trigger Happy TV'', ''Delocated'', ''Brickleber ...
,
Megan Mullally
Megan Mullally (born November 12, 1958) is an American actress, comedian, and singer. She is best known for playing Karen Walker on the NBC sitcom ''Will & Grace'' (1998–2006, 2017–2020), for which she received eight Primetime Emmy Award no ...
,
Larry Murphy,
Sam Seder
Samuel Lincoln Seder (born November 28, 1966) is an American actor, political commentator, and media host. His works include the film ''Who's the Caboose?'' (1997) as well as the television shows ''Beat Cops'' (2001) and ''Pilot Season (TV seri ...
,
Laura Silverman
Laura Jane Silverman (born June 10, 1966) is an American actress and the older sister of actress and comedian Sarah Silverman. She acted in '' Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic'' and ''The Sarah Silverman Program'' portraying a fictionalized versi ...
and
Sarah Silverman
Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedian, actress, and writer.
Silverman was a writer and performer on ''Saturday Night Live'', and she starred in and produced ''The Sarah Silverman Program'', which ran from 2007 to ...
.
Plot
Bob and the kids walk through the town’s annual art crawl while Linda’s eccentric, “fragile” sister, Gayle, hangs her paintings in Bob’s Burgers. When Louise makes fun of a painting from the art supply store, Reflections, that someone bought for $200, the Belchers are shooed away by the store’s elderly owners Edith and Harold.
When the family returns to the restaurant, Bob is horrified to discover that all of Gayle’s paintings are of animal anuses. He is convinced that they will drive customers away. Later, after Bob has started taking down Gayle’s paintings to display the kids’ artwork instead, Edith and Harold arrive at the restaurant. Edith, chairperson of the art crawl, declares Gayle’s anus paintings to be too inappropriate for the art crawl and commends Bob for taking them down. Bob, not wanting to be told how to run his business, rebukes Edith and makes the paintings a permanent fixture of the restaurant.
Bob opens the restaurant the next morning to discover that someone has painted over Gayle’s anus paintings with pink underwear. Assuming that Edith is the culprit, Bob storms down to Reflections and confronts her. When Edith denies the vandalism, he defaces every painting in the store with black dots that he says are meant to be anuses.
Edith and Harold press charges against Bob for the vandalism and bring the police to the restaurant. When Bob says he wants to press charges against Edith for the underwear paintings, Linda admits that she was the one who painted the underwear. The anuses were haunting her in her dreams, and she couldn’t bring herself to be honest with Gayle about them.
Gayle arrives with new versions of her paintings, which now include pants and “huge, pendulous breasts.” The family is in shock, before Linda lies and tells her she loves them.
A subplot involves Louise trying to make money by selling bad art to tourists during the art crawl. After discovering that Gene and Tina have no artistic talent (despite Gene’s attempt to become like van Gogh by having Louise try to cut his ear off), she recruits Andy and Ollie Pesto and another child to paint instead, forcing them to work long hours while verbally abusing them and pocketing all the money. Louise later uses some of the money to pay back Edith and Harold for the damage Bob caused in Reflections. When Bob asks where she got it from, she simply replies, “It’s art crawl.”
Reception
In its original American broadcasting, "Art Crawl" was viewed by an estimated 4.43 million viewers and received a 2.2 rating, a 6 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, an increase from last episode.
Rowan Kaiser of ''
The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' gave the episode an A, saying "It's a great feeling to be there when a show filled with potential suddenly fulfills it. First off, because you can get the feeling that you're special for being one of the few million who was actually there, live, when ''Bob's Burgers'' went from good to great. Second of all, because you can't stop laughing at how ridiculously good “Art Crawl” is. ''Bob's Burgers'' has been developing several different threads, and they all work really well here: the ineffectual liberal antagonists, Bob's stubbornness when things don't work the way he thinks they should, Gene and Tina's absurd asides, Louise's megalomania, and Linda's intense willingness to make sure everything goes smoothly."
References
External links
*
{{Bob's Burgers episodes, 1
2011 American television episodes
Bob's Burgers (season 1) episodes