Sunday night animation wrap-up

I usually like to pick the "winner" from the Sunday night "Animation Domination" line-up on FOX. This week, there was no clear winner so I'll do something a little different and take it show by show.

The Cleveland Show: "Fist and the Furious"
Bryan Cranston has really been making the rounds lately as the guest voice on animated shows. Here he plays Dr. Fist, a general practitioner who develops a bromantic attachment for Cleveland. Dr. Fist is terribly lonely, and he claims that this is because he lost all of his friends when he dropped his iPhone into the toilet, thus wiping out his Contacts list. (N.B. not to nerd it up, but your Contacts list gets synced to iCloud so this is not actually a thing you need to worry about.)

Things go horribly wrong when Cleveland (predictably) tries to find Dr. Fist's old friends, and it turns out (predictably) that Dr. Fist is actually in hiding from the mafia. The episode hinges on a ludicrous joke about the board game "Operation," which just didn't work for me.

In the B plot, Cleveland Jr. turns out to be a frustrated molecular gastronomist, which is awesome. But then he finds himself in competition with a Mexican food truck run by Choni, and it all goes predictably from there.

Image copyright The Simpsons/20th Century FOX Television

The Simpsons: "What Animated Women Want"
How many times has Marge gotten frustrated and angry with Homer's incompetence as a husband? Too many. And yet, here is another.

This episode is mainly notable for being the lynchpin of the odd sort of synchronicity which often seems to happen on Animation Domination. The couch gag is an extended homage to Breaking Bad (thus linking it to The Cleveland Show which guest starred Bryan Cranston). And Homer decides to woo Marge by building a "snuggle dungeon" in their garage (thus linking it to American Dad where Stan and Francine decide to explore their kinky side).

Bob's Burgers, "Family Fracas"
I'm not sure why this episode of Bob's Burgers didn't work for me. On paper, it was a perfectly competent episode. But nothing about it really came to life. It never built to the sort of insane-yet-inevitable climax that Bob's Burgers kinda specializes in. And seeing the Belchers succeed at something as pedestrian as a game show seems somehow… flat.

Remember when Bob became obsessed with knocking Jimmy Pesto's high score ("BOB SUX") off the Burgerboss arcade game? Nothing in this episode even approaches the frenzied energy of that episode.

This wasn't a bad episode, far from it. It's just that Bob's Burgers has set the bar for itself so high that it's inevitable that not every episode is going to be able to live up to that.

Family Guy, "Bigfat"
Ever since Allen Gregory and Napoleon Dynamite got dropped, Family Guy has been my least favorite show on Animation Domination. Nothing about this particular episode made any sense, a fact which the characters themselves kept remarking upon. And we had the requisite anti-Semitic, misogynist, and racist jokes; check, check, check. (For once I don't think there was a rape joke this episode, but I probably just missed it.)

I was also annoyed that Family Guy dragged King of the Hill into it. Family Guy isn't fit to kiss King of the Hill's carburetor. DO NOT, Family Guy. Just DON'T.

Image copyright American Dad/20th Century FOX Television

American Dad, "The Missing Kink"
The best part about this episode was Stan's "MISSIONARY ACCOMPLISHED" banner, and since that was right at the beginning, it was kind of all downhill from there.

American Dad rarely does musical numbers, and nothing in this one can even begin to compare with Hayley's "Guns Make Holes in Your Body" or Francine's "Worst Place in the World." The "let's find Stan's kink" song is basically just a piling on of ridiculous things, with no actual pay-off.

The episode also pays very little respect to its own past. Remember when Francine took up shoplifting, and burned herself with a cigarette in the car? Remember when Stan developed a special relationship with the burn gel for his groin injury? Remember when Francine got turned on by the idea of Stan killing people? This episode apparently doesn't.

Plus, the scene where Snot tries to get out of dating Hayley by claiming that he's gay, and he and Barry make out? That was as clichéd as it was homophobic. I was embarrassed for this show.

Main image copyright Bob's Burgers/20th Century FOX Television