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Recap / Bobs Burgers S 13 E 5 So You Stink You Can Dance

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Tina cheers Jimmy Jr. on at a semi-prestigious dancing seminar while Bob and Linda compete to see who can catch the most home run balls outside of Wonder Wharf Stadium.


Trope You Stink You Can Dance:

  • Born Unlucky: Naturally, the day Bob doesn't go to the stadium is the one day there are a ton of homers.
  • The Bus Came Back:
    • The baseball announcers from "Torpedo" make a return.
    • Flips Whitefudge makes a return as a spectator at the dance seminar, and he even somewhat befriends Tina and Zeke.
    • Zeke's cousin Leslie, last seen in "Boyz 4 Now", makes a return midway through the episode. It turns out he attended the same seminar Jimmy Jr. did, which is a major plot point in the episode.
  • Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn: Bob comes back from being out in the sun all day with his face and arms red as beets.
  • Jerkass: Spencer Blankenship clearly doesn't care for his students as much as he says he does, down to not caring about their names, point-blank calling them bad, telling them to give up on their dancing dreams, cry about their crushed dreams at home, and then drink the exact amount of water they previously lost crying. Zeke's cousin Leslie used to love dancing, but Spencer's seminar completely broke him.
  • Kafka Komedy: The entire episode drags Bob through the mud so much you'd think the universe was actively working against him.
  • One-Hour Work Week: Averted; Bob and Linda can't both go ball catching with Teddy because someone has to run the restaurant, so they alternate. Bob eventually closes the restaurant because it's a slow day (only Mort came in) and he's going borderline insane from hearing about all the home runs on the radio.
  • Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The episode title is a reference to So You Think You Can Dance.
  • Prone to Sunburn: Gene seems to be the one Belcher actually capable of getting a tan, as Bob proves just as vulnerable to sunburns as Linda has in the past.
  • Rousing Speech: Tina gives one to Jimmy Jr., telling him to ignore Spencer's critiques and just dance like he feels like and even if his improvised dance moves isn't something that backup dancers should be doing, they work a lot better if he's the main performer.
  • Sadist Teacher: Blankenship is a total prick who really doesn't seem to care about his students and his critiques of their dancing skills are borderline cruel. Zeke's cousin Leslie stopped dancing altogether after Blankenship thoroughly destroyed his self-esteem.
  • Serious Business: The dance instructor takes the art of dancing extremely seriously.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Signs of Disrepair: When Linda is running the restaurant on her own, she takes advantage of one of the many lulls in business to rearrange the wall menu so that the top 3 entries read "irregular penis face". Louise is naturally impressed when she sees it and says her respect towards Linda has gone up, and Bob naturally reverts it back to its default state by next day.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: Spencer Blankenship doesn't bother to learn any of his students' names, simply addressing everyone as "you" when talking to them one-on-one and expecting them to know at any given time which person he's talking to. Near the end of the episode, Tina points that he could have had the dancers wear name tags.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: After an entire episode of being a borderline-Cosmic Plaything, Bob finally catches a homer—and not counting a brief tug-of-war, he manages to get it on his own without anyone's charity.

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