This week on Bob’s Burgers season 9 Louise Belcher became principal for a day. The episode played off the rivalry between Louise and Phillip Frond, which is one of the more interesting relationships in Bob’s Burgers.
After selling the most chocolate bars at her school, Louise received the prize of being “principal for a day.” She had big plans, including unlocking a big cabinet of confiscated objects. But, Mr. Frond explained the role was purely ceremonial. Louise managed to sneakily seize power and actually make changes in the school, like tripling the length of recess. It was a lot of fun watching the changes she got away with making and how they actually proved to be beneficial.
Things took a turn when she found out that the school hired a new guidance counselor to replace Mr. Frond. The new guidance counselor was a man named Donnie, voiced by Joe Lo Truglio. Frond had no idea that he was being fired. Of course, at first Louise was excited.
Donnie was a great character who was completely incompetent and mostly uninterested in the job. This was not only funny, but helped motivate the kids. Even Louise quickly had to admit that he wouldn’t even attempt to actually help kids. In the third act, the kids finally opened the cabinet of confiscated items. There was a very funny sequence where they discovered the code was simply 1-1-1-1 and that the principal still had to write that down to remember it.
At this point, Louise announced that they had to choose between playing with all the cool stuff and saving Mr. Frond’s job. This felt very forced for the sake of making the arc in the episode obvious. Of course, the kids could’ve just grabbed all the cool stuff they wanted then headed off to help Frond. The plot already worked. This line of dialogue forced an extra conflict it didn’t need. This was the one annoying moment in the episode.
But, the kids’ plan to save Frond was great. Louise used her power to organize an assembly. They hit Donnie with a Q&A from the kids. The questions during this sequence were all hilarious and Donnie quickly became overwhelmed and quit.
Meanwhile, after Teddy asked Bob Belcher about how he flips burgers, he suddenly forgot and found himself unable to do it properly. The plot with the kids was complex enough that this very simple plot for Bob worked great. The ultimate resolution for the plot was a lot of fun. Overall, this was one of the better episodes of Bob’s Burgers this season.
Also check out my review of last week’s episode of Bob’s Burgers.