In the undying search for the next great American TV family, we've been left with a few dozen iterations of the same scale model, with one standard deviation. They are all beautiful, tepidly funny, just ethnic enough, temporarily ill or split apart but never permanently so, struggling but not really, fighting but not seriously, always bracing for a happy ending. The Dunphys, the Millers, whatever the family from Parenthood is called—they are warm, big, sometimes memorable, bands of fraternity.

But they're not representative. Their soul is dinner-party deep. They are all the same.

Oblong, U-nosed, imperfect, happy, the Belchers are not the same as the other families. They refuse to be.

They're not even the same as one another. And yet their very difference is not why they fight with each other or others or spent artificial time apart, like on those other shows. That their differences are widely ignored, both among the characters and by the creators, is very clearly part of why they love each other so much.

That's how they became the next great American TV family. Yep, the Belchers on Bob's Burgers. Eight-fingered, flawed, and funnier than any other family of five on TV. Remind you of anything?

Louise is a firecracker, who always makes it out alive by shaming the hierarchy on her way out. Tina, androgynous and hyper-sexual, is the soul of the show, and—unlike in every other show—her androgyny and hyper-sexuality have nothing to do with her being the soul of the show. Gene, the family's only boy, is simultaneously the least and most self-aware character on the show. (He knows he's fat, for example, and he has owned it, but he thinks he got that way from a single ice cream sandwich.)

They're shockingly optimistic about their situation. They're really accepting people. They're present in their kids' lives. It's really sweet." —H. Jon Benjamin (Bob)

And it all works. It all works because at no point do Louise and Tina and Gene's parents, Bob and Linda, ever consider changing them. Why would they? They are so profoundly themselves. And they let them be this way because, deep down, they are artists.

"Without being grandiose, I dare to say sometimes that the show itself is about creativity," show creator Loren Bouchard says. "That's one of the themes that's informed the show since the beginning."

That's how he wound up with Bob. Bouchard had previously worked on Dr. Katz and Home Movies, shows about people who try to be creative under dangerous circumstances—as a therapist, or as an eight-year-old. Bob's no different. He is the most wildly ambitious burger shop owner there is.

"I wanted to tell the story of an artist, an unfulfilled creative guy who had to run this burger shop to care for this family," Bouchard says. "And I say that he's unfulfilled, but in a lot of ways he isn't anymore. In a lot of ways, because of what he's built, he is fulfilled."

He gets in hours-long rivalries on train trips, he subs in for a home ec teacher, he gets his legs waxed with Tina because why? Because of adventure. He thinks the kids need adventure.

"Bob's a creative artist stuck in a business, and since it's a family business, the kids are going to be around. It's workplace comedy-slash-family comedy."

Just look at the punny specials board at the burger shop that fans pay so much attention to, and which one thinks must be filled out by Louise. It is always stuff like this, or raunchier, like the Child Molester burger. (That one comes with candy.)

But the special could be written by any one of them. Bob and Linda, instead of taking out their boxed-in creative dreams (Linda sings, poorly but incessantly) on their kids, just let it consume the whole family.

H. Jon Benjamin, who plays Bob (and also Archer of Archer, for those with cable), says this is the engine of the show.

"They're shockingly optimistic about their situation. They're really accepting people. In a lot of these shows—and, I guess, this is representative, in life—it's a lot of parents saying, 'Well, we're really busy. I don't have time to worry about my kids as much.' It's not like that in this show. They're present in their kids' lives. It's really sweet."

It is not enough for a joke to play on the stereotype of a character, like in other shows. (Age will not be kind to Big Bang Theory.) It is not enough for a character to be a nerd, and for someone to call that character a nerd and then wait for the laugh sign to light up, then for the nerd to rebut with something equally broad and marginalizing but worse. There is effort on this show that isn't anywhere else on television.

"The ascendence of Tina as a sort of icon is proof," Benjamin says. "It's not because she's funny. She is, but that's not it. She's honest and vulnerable and she's allowed to be who she wants to be, and she's funny within that."

Benjamin brings up the hypothetical future episode in which Gene finds out that he's gay, which would be a universe-leveling bombshell on any other TV show, but on Bob's Burgers? So what. Of course Gene is gay, or isn't, or could be, or might not be. Does it matter?

"That's what's interesting about their family: They're letting their kids develop in their own way," Benjamin says. "It's more common in a lot of families in the world, but maybe not yet on TV. Bob's not one to micromanage his kids."

Not bumbling or crotchety or too enthusiastic or too, well, anything, Bob Belcher might be the least cartoonish TV dad we have. In spite of being a cartoon.

"Gene, Tina, all of them—they'd tax up a parents' patience. But Bob is less tinged with annoyance," Benjamin says. "I think he enjoys being a dad."

"I know why there are these characters on TV who don't seem to like each other. People want these quick, setup-punchline jokes. They drive these scenes along very easily. But the disapproving dad stuff—it becomes a trap. It's a really understandable pitfall," Bouchard adds.

But the family dynamics on Bob's Burgers?

"It's a little more earned. A little more fair."

That's a good way to put it, for Bob's Burgers and for the successful 21st-century family. If you still have it even a little bit together, give yourselves some credit in this weird economy and weirder cultural moment: Your family is a little bit more earned, and a little more fair.

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