Raising burgers up right

This January has had some real rough spots so far.  I started off with a hideous illness, some kind of awful cold that put me down for a week.  It faded from there but had a long tail so after three weeks I thought the last of the persistent cough would finally end.

And then I caught another cold and am sick again. 

On the upside, being sick all the time has left me lots of time to watch animated sitcom Bob's Burgers.  I assume most people who talk about Bob's Burgers would want to talk about the silly events that occur or the ridiculous children in the Belcher family but the thing that really gets me about the show is the parenting.

I remember watching The Simpsons years ago and always being really uncomfortable with the parenting in the show.  Homer is constantly physically abusive to Bart and is generally a pretty awful person.  Marge is less brutal but still puts up with Homer choking Bart and does that parenting thing where parents desperately try to solve their children's problems by doing whatever they wished their parents had done instead of what their children need.

This is the thing that I like most about Bob's Burgers.  The parents are quirky and flawed people.  They make mistakes.  But they fundamentally believe in their children's right to self determination and do their best to support them.  They struggle to balance their own lives and dreams against the needs of their children and generally do all right at that.

The Simpsons is a classic model of abusive behaviour - Homer does horrible things, then at the end of the show suddenly gets all loving and kind and tries to make it up to everyone.  Not that every episode is like this, but enough of them follow that script that the dynamic was always very off for me.

When a show has parenting built into it I react pretty strongly to that parenting, even if the parenting is just a sideshow.  This even happened with The Walking Dead where I wanted to punch all of the parents in the face for their terrible decisions.  I get that they are living in a world of brain munching zombies and that puts a lot of strain on them, but the constant excessively controlling behaviour is just unpleasant.  Plus the parents constantly push the kids to try to make up for the parents latest screwup or meltdown and everything lurches back and forth all the time.  I hate that part of it.

I like zombies and apocalypse though so the show is generally fun but the parenting really puts me off.

Bob and Linda Belcher don't try to make their kids into their redemption.  They don't try to pin their lives and hopes on their kids following in their footsteps.  They let the kids be who they are, and hope for the best for them.  With many screwups and breakdowns along the way, sure, but their baseline relationship with their children is one I like.

So that is why you should watch Bob's Burgers.  Not just because Bob's voice is Archer and that blows my mind, but because the parenting makes me happy.