The best Bob’s Burgers episodes plays similar to its contemporary shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad, but with more of a focus on family and less on pop culture mic drops. H. Jon Benjamin (Archer) voices Bob Belcher, a father of three who owns Bob’s Burgers, a small restaurant in New Jersey, and works there alongside his wife, Linda. Meanwhile, his kids (Tina, Louise, and Gene) go about their lives, often getting involved in different wild schemes that lead each episode’s plot.

When it comes to what makes Bob’s Burgers so great, it is the focus on their love and caring for each other as a family, and their desire to help out the community around them. However, the series also has a high joke count, where most gags hit, and a voice cast that perfectly fits their characters to such a degree that the animated series quickly matched the success of its fellow Fox shows and even garnered its own movie adaptation.

10 "Boyz 4 Now"

Season 3, Episode 21

One thing that defines Louise is that she doesn’t understand her older sister’s infatuation with boys and seems mostly confused by this entire dynamic of a young woman’s life. However, she finally starts to understand things a little better in the season 3 episode “Boyz 4 Now” when she develops an infatuation with the all-boy band of the same name (a reference to the real-life former boy band Boyz II Men.

When she attends a concert and the band sings a love song, Louise horrifyingly realizes she is developing a crush and quickly begins to understand her big sister a little better. When the sisters sneak onto the tour bus, they find the band’s youngest member sitting on a booster seat. The episode remains immortalized by one of Tina’s best-delivered lines: “I put my bra on one boob at a time, just like everyone else.”

9 “The Gene And Courtney Show”

Season 6, Episode 7

This Bob’s Burgers episode is a Valentine’s Day offering from the animated series and, as the title indicates, it focuses on Gene and his friend from school Courtney. The two team up to deliver the school’s morning announcements and compete with a teacher to create the best news for each morning. This even allows Gene and Courtney to sing the morning announcements in a funny moment.

This all leads to a hilarious moment when Gene realizes he has romantic feelings toward Courtney, but the two of them don’t understand how to deal with this. Gene finally takes a moment during the morning announcements to sing a song about unrequited love over the intercom to the entire school, where he its that heartbreak only makes a person stronger. These are the moments that make Bob Burgers such a beloved show.

8 "The Hauntening"

Season 6, Episode 3

“The Hauntening” is one of the horror-centric Bob’s Burgers episodes, and it has one of the best endings of any episode of the popular animated series. Linda and Bob decide to take the kids to a haunted house to scare Louise since she said nothing can scare her. They then try everything they can to scare the child, but nothing seems to work, no matter how gross or disturbing the pranks are.

However, when the parents failed, Louise’s siblings succeeded. They came up with a perfect plan to hire Teddy, his mom, Mort, and Teddy’s mom’s boyfriend to hide in their basement, moan, cut the power, and set up the horrific moments. It all ends with the kids on the roof with Louise, as they create a ring of fire while dressed in hoods and capes, which finally sends Louise over the edge. It was a hilarious prank episode that hit on every level.

7 "The Oeder Games"

Season 5, Episode 21

The season 5 Bob’s Burgers episode is a great homage to survival game movies like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. This sees Mr. Fischoeder’s tenants take part in a water balloon battle with the main goal of getting their rent lowered if they win. However, the games end up getting really dark, really fast, and things dramatically grow out of control as the games wear on.

This was the lower class battling in a child’s game to hope to improve their quality of life against a greedy landlord.

While this came out long before Squid Game, it is also easy to see a similarity there as this was the lower class battling in a child’s game to hope to improve their quality of life against a greedy landlord. The fact that Mr. Fischoeder forces his tenants to compete in games to earn the rights to lower rents speaks volumes about the message the episode is trying to deliver, and that makes this one of the best Bob’s Burgers episodes for the social issues it tackles, albeit in an absurd manner.

6 "Vampire Disco Death Dance"

Season 11, Episode 2

This Bob’s Burger episode has a very long title that is actually a homage to one of the greatest horror cult classics ever made. Of course, the title is a nod to Rocky Horror Picture Show, and much like that movie, this is a cult presentation that sees people come to watch it in group settings. However, when Bob Belcher offers to take Tina to see it, she doesn’t show much interest, so she brings her friends to keep her occupied.

If this makes little sense, that is the point, as it is completely absurd, off the wall, and exactly like something that Tina would come up with...

While they are at the theater to see Vampire Disco Death Dance, the kids pay almost no attention to what is going on and set out to do something completely off the wall. They ignore the movie and instead build a mini restaurant for raccoons. If this makes little sense, that is the point, as it is completely absurd, off the wall, and exactly like something that Tina would come up with to do when she didn’t want to do anything else.

5 "Eat, Spray, Linda"

Season 5, Episode 18

As the title suggests, “Eat, Spray, Linda” is a Linda-centric episode and gives her a lot to do away from her family. Based on the movie/book Eat, Pray, Love, Linda sets off to take a journey on her birthday, even though her family planned for her to have a spa day. However, things get wild when she goes to the grocery store that morning to get some milk and ends up in an adventure she never expected.

She locks her keys and phone in her car, splits her pants, and has to find a way home with the groceries. This leads to several more mishaps, and nothing seems to be going right for Linda, all while her kids and Bob are concerned about what happened to her. What really makes this episode rank so high for fans of the show is that Linda never lets all the bad luck get her down, and she remains positive to the end.

4 “The Bleakening”

Season 8, Episode 6

“The Bleakening” is a Bob’s Burger episode that takes place during Christmas but feels more like a Halloween episode. The entire plotline sees someone stealing Linda Belcher’s Christmas ornaments. This sets her off to find out who did it, and she begins to interrogate her party guests to find out if they did it. Meanwhile, the kids have decided that a monster called The Bleakening did it, thanks to Teddy telling them it was an anti-Santa Claus.

As with the best Bob’s Burgers episodes, this shows Linda’s never-ending optimism, even as she relentlessly tries to find the person responsible for stealing her ornaments. It also shows how different Linda and Lousie are as they are each looking for the ornament thief, but with very different attitudes as they seek out the evildoer.

3 “Glued, Where’s My Bob”

Season 6, Episode 19

In the sixth season, the episode “Glued, Where’s My Bob?” has a celebrity chef (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) tell Bob Belcher that a local food magazine wants to interview him. However, while this could really help his business grow and be a great opportunity, it is the worst time possible because his kids have started a prank war, and Bob ends up as one of the targets of his mischievous children.

When Bob ends up superglued to the toilet in the bathroom, the entire town shows up to try to help get Bob off the toilet so he can get the interview done. The entire addition of the song, “Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom" helps elevate this episode even higher, and it features some of the best gags of the series while keeping the heart of the show intact, as the community shows up to help one of their own.

2 "Broadcast Wagstaff School News"

Season 3, Episode 12

This Bob’s Burger episode is a mystery, and the case involves the “mad pooper.” Someone is leaving their poop all over the school, and this includes many student’s musical instruments and other items. Since Tina wants to be a news journalist, she sets off to solve the case, and they look for some tapes to record their investigation. Of course, they choose the tapes of Gene’s birth to tape over.

Tina gets most of the attention in this episode as she seeks out the criminal mastermind and proves that she is the woman for the job. However, there is also a b-story that sees Gene starting to grow a little mustache over his lip that makes him look a lot like his dad, making Bob wish that he was a kid again. This is the episode that started the running gag of Gene’s “Little Bob.”

1 "Work Hard Or Die Trying, Girl"

Season 5, Episode 1

The best Bob’s Burger episode ever made is also one of the best spoofs of Die Hard as well. Gene loves Die Hard so much that he decides he wants to write a musical based on the movie for the students at Wagstaff to perform. He then competes with his ex-girlfriend Courtney, who wants to make a musical based on Working Girl – and she has a musician father to help her, giving her the advantage.

The entire episode sees the back-and-forth competition between the two kids to see who can get their musical finished and in production. It all ends with Louise making a plan for Gene’s musical to take place in the boiler room at the same time as Courtney’s, and he is a great success. The two musicals are both hilarious and when they are forced to combine them into one musical, it ends up as an even bigger moment, one of the best in Bob’s Burgers history.