I could always count on Bob Belcher.

My younger son and I have been making our way through the entire run of Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers” on Hulu for about a year or so. It’s our reliable go-to, a feel-good nightcap. So when we sat down a few days ago to watch the Season 9 premiere, “Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now,” I wasn’t really looking for an escape from coronavirus anxiety. But I wasn’t not looking for an escape, either. That’s what TV’s for now, right?

In the episode’s B-plot, the hamburger slinger Bob is entrusted with caring for an adorable baby rat that his friend Teddy has been keeping in a cardboard box. This presents some complications, given that Bob prepares food for a living, especially when he learns that he has to give the ratling an intimate therapeutic massage. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll just wash my hands really, really well, like how surgeons do.”

I’ll just wash my hands. Really, really well. Like how surgeons do. Ha ha, where have I heard that lately, I wondered, as I stared glumly at the soap-ravaged mitts in my lap.

But never mind! This was still just a fun, silly, distracting comedy, with no relationship to our current anxious reality. Set in a beachside town whose tourism business would no doubt be drying up right now. And at the sort of small, family-owned restaurant that would probably be shuttering right now if it weren’t drawn by animators …