San Diego Comic-Con may not be happening in person this year, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get to enjoy some fun panel conversations with the creative minds behind some of our favorite entertainment thanks to Comic-Con@Home.
This afternoon featured a panel for FOX’s Bob’s Burgers (distributed by the Disney-owned 20th Television), which opened with clips from previous episodes and brought together series creator Loren Bouchard along with writer Nora Smith, producer Janelle Momary, and voice cast members Kristen Schaal (Louise Belcher), Larry Murphy (Teddy), Dan Mintz (Tina Belcher), H. Jon Benjamin (Bob Belcher), John Roberts (Linda Belcher), and Eugene Mirman (Gene Belcher) to discuss the popular animated sitcom. In the below bullet-point list, I’ve collected some of the more interesting tidbits to come out of this conversation.
Watch Bob's Burgers | Comic-Con@Home 2020:
- The team is in production on future episodes of Bob’s Burgers during the lockdown. Everyone is working from home.
- Kristen Schaal misses going to places and seeing other people and getting compliments, but she likes spending more time with her family and son– even though he doesn’t give her a lot of compliments.
- Jon Benjamin says he is the inverse of Kristen Schaal. He doesn’t need compliments and he doesn’t like being at home with his family.
- Dan Mintz doesn’t like recording from his closet surrounded by jackets.
- Larry Murphy misses human interaction, but he’s taken the time to clean out his office.
- John Roberts misses Jon Benjamin’s insults, but he likes having his dog on his lap while recording from home.
- Eugene Mirman misses the improvisation that occurs when the cast is recording all together.
- Production from home was ready to resume three days after the lockdown began. The IT department was very helpful. The team’s biggest challenge is missing the collaborative nature of being in an office environment.
- Nora Smith says she has always been ready to quarantine, because she doesn’t enjoy going out. She jokes that writers don’t work that hard– maybe five hours a week.
- Upcoming episodes in the fall include the season premiere “Dream a Little Bob of Bob” (which takes place mostly inside Bob’s dreams) and the second episode “Worms of Enrearment” (which concerns a pinworm epidemic– there’s a lot of handwashing). Nora Smith describes this as “an escape to a more fun pandemic.
- There will also be a Halloween episode in which we finally get to go inside the hotel at the end of the street when the kids try to deliver a burger there on Halloween night.
- The 200th episode will be entitled “Bob Belcher and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Kids.” It’s a Rashomon-type story conveying three levels of guilt that pertain to a disastrous event, and it’s also a musical episode. “Two Terminals of Endearment” will take place at an airport and there will also be a Christmas episode.
- A good deal of time was spent talking about representation in animation. Loren Bouchard says these conversations are good and help people get better at being in the world. He says Bob’s Burgers tries to do good and he doesn’t want the show to be junk food and make the world worse. Kristen Schaal challenged him to hire more women, so there are lots of guest actresses coming up in season 9. Just under 50% of the show’s writers are now women.
- As for men playing women on the show, Bouchard says gender is fluid and a construct, but Schaal suggests they cast more women in men’s roles to balance it out and Smith says they should write more funny lines for the female characters.
- Regarding Bob’s Burgers: The Movie, they’ve made it but there are no movie theaters to play it in. They joke they are going to invest in a drive-in theater where fans can come watch the movie.
- Another upcoming episode is entitled “Copa-Bob-Bana,” in which the Fischoeder brothers open a nightclub and Bob falls in love with the kitchen. They showed a clip from this episode.
- They say the art keeps getting better with every season and the movie will be next-level in terms of the visuals. “It’s really pretty.”
- A whole bunch of fans entered the chat all at once and got to ask questions one at a time. Answers included:
- Ginger will likely remain an off-screen character.
- Asked what each actor has in common with their characters, Eugene Mirman shares a love of food and optimism with Gene Belcher. Dan Mintz shares being socially awkward with Tina. John Roberts channels his mother for Linda. Jon Benjamin shares his difficulty with Jon Roberts with Bob’s difficulty with Linda. Kristen shares her distaste for pooping in public with Louise. And Larry Murphy shares “so many things” with Teddy.
- Schaal thinks it would be fun if Louise had a secret pet.
- Favorite episodes include “Poops!… I Didn't Do It Again” (Schaal), “Just the Trip” (Mirman), “Legends of the Mall” (Roberts), and “Topsy” (Mintz). Loren Bouchard can’t pick and Nora Smith says “Bob Actually.”
- They jokingly decide the final episode of the series should conclude with the Belchers getting eaten by their cannibal family counterparts from the show’s pilot.
- Mr. Fischoeder’s eye was accidentally poked out by his brother Felix, as revealed in a previous episode.
- The cast talked and joked about how their acting has evolved over the course of the series.
- Everyone says they miss Comic-Con and they’re looking forward to going back after the pandemic is over.
Bob’s Burgers returns Sunday, September 27 on FOX.