Mother Daughter Laser Razor

"Mother Daughter Laser Razor" is the tenth episode of the third season of the animated comedy series Bob's Burgers and the overall 32nd episode, and is written by Nora Smith and directed by Jennifer Coyle. It aired on Fox in the United States on January 6, 2013.

Plot

When a Family Game Night at the Belcher's home ends up with a shouting match between Linda and Louise, the former goes to a "mommy blog" to gather some ideas as to how to get closer to her youngest child, since she realizes that Louise favors Bob over her. When a series of attempts to get closer to the child fails, Linda tricks Louise into attending a Mother-Daughter seminar.

Meanwhile, Tina overhears a couple of schoolmates gossip over another girl's leg hair. This makes her conscious of her own, and wants to get rid of it. When Linda fails to shave Tina's legs because of her frustrations with Louise, Tina asks Bob to shave her legs instead. Bob brings her to a waxing salon but Tina's fear over the pain forces him to have his legs waxed as well.

In the Mother-Daughter seminar, Louise and Logan from "Ear-sy Rider" manage to anger the seminar leader Dakota and he locks them in a room where the movie "Freaky Friday" is played on loop. Louise thinks of a way to get out of the room and traps Dakota and the mothers in the seminar as well. She and the other children go to the nearby laser tag arena. Linda and the rest kick their way out of the room and get into a fight with the children in the arena, where Louise reveals that she does not really hate her mother. Blaming her for ruining his seminar, Dakota "shoots" Louise and Linda "avenges" her daughter, showing her fun side.

After getting her legs waxed, Tina realizes that she has succumbed to peer pressure and that she has "killed" her tiny leg hairs. Gene gets jealous and demands that his legs get waxed too. However, his and Bob's end up getting itchy because of the procedure.

Reception

Rowan Kaiser from The A.V. Club gave the episode an A, saying "In order to work as well as it does, Bob’s Burgers has to have five things in place: it needs an episodic storyline that gets the two Belchers into a situation where this is plausible. It needs to have a strong enough character base for Linda that Louise can imitate her well, and also that Linda would get so caught up that she couldn’t help but play along. The “songs” themselves need to be funny. The animation needs to be good enough to convey the mockery. Finally, the voice actors need to be excellent. Bob’s Burgers had all those things tonight. It’s not the first time that it’s happened. And it looks like Bob’s Burgers is getting to the point where it can pull this off on a regular basis."^[1]

Ross Bonaime of Paste gave the episode an 8.9 out of 10, saying "Mother Daughter Laser Razor" is just phenomenal in how it blends its two main stories, having both parents reinforce how they care for their kids, while not making it too overwhelming. Bob’s Burgers is setting the bar for itself for 2013 pretty high, but the show has proven that just when you think it can’t get better, it most certainly will."^[2] The episode received a 3.1 rating and was watched by a total of 6.40 people. This made it the third most watched show on Animation Domination that night, beating American Dad!, but losing to Family Guy and The Simpsons with 8.97 million.^[3]

References