Bob’s Burgers Season 16 Episode 3 Review: The Twinnening

Bob’s Burgers Season 16 Episode 3, “The Twinnening,” is the 13th Halloween special for the series and places poor Teddy in the spotlight.

He gets hired to set up an occult antique shop next door called “Freaky Antiquies” (the store even appears in the intro). But before Teddy enters the store, Louise, Gene, and Tina give him a walkie-talkie so that they can “help” him in case things go south.

The owner, Gabriel, leaves Teddy alone in the store and warns him not to let his identical twin brother, Gideon, in because he may try to steal a creepy antique mask from him.

It is a promising introduction to this spooky Halloween outing.

That same night, Bob and Linda head out to try and get tickets for a Halloween-themed “Cake” spinoff called “Cake Me to Hell.” This storyline is an incredibly funny callback to Bob’s Burgers Season 2 Episode 8, “Bad Tina,” where Bob becomes obsessed with a patty-cake performance. 

This B-plot feels a touch out of place in a Halloween special. Thankfully, the episode doesn’t spend enough time on it for it to be too noticeable or overpowering.

Plus, it has its own gold mine moments to make up for a disjointed group of plotlines.

Season 16 has gotten off to a strong start, successfully encapsulating the series’ heart and comedy.

And the Halloween episodes are some of the series’ most iconic installments. So, it is thrilling to see “The Twinnening” do a good job at living up to its predecessors.  

The new characters introduced on this episode, Gabriel and Gideon (voiced by Jamie Demetriou), embody the mysterious supernatural villain archetypes while later subverting to typical Bob’s Burgers fashion.

They’re more like eccentric goth salesmen than they are evil, but Teddy has no way of knowing that, and it’s played to excellent comedic effect.

Teddy is the perfect choice to center this episode around, too.

He’s grounded enough to contrast against the twins but also gullible enough to believe every scary thing he’s told. The “supernatural” edge of the twins clashes against Teddy’s genuine fear that there is something sinister afoot.

The kids standing by over the walkie-talkie serve to feed into Teddy’s fears while also filling the silence between interactions. In typical Louise fashion, she researches the mask and tells Teddy that she thinks it’s for ritual sacrifices.

At the same time, we learn something far more important to the series as a whole, and that is the lore of Cake. 

Bob and Linda fail to get tickets to the show, but they do find a performer who’s considering walking away from Cake entirely. In a beautifully stupid explanation, he laments that the show lost ties to its roots as political commentary, and it leaves the audience with so many questions about that they almost certainly didn’t have before.

Fortunately, at the last second, Bob and Linda convince the performer not to quit, and as a reward for his help, Bob receives a high-five. The outcome may seem like a letdown, given that this side plot didn’t add much to the main story, but at least Bob comes away happy.

Back at the store, Teddy discovers the truth about the twins is a lot more mundane than he thought.

They used to own a shop together, but they ended up walking away over a disagreement. Gabriel ran off with the mask because they couldn’t decide who it should go to.

Teddy is safe from sacrifice, which might not be much of a twist to the audience, but it sure is to him. As a Halloween episode, “The Twinnening” succeeds in its desired tone, even if the B-plot feels a bit inconsequential.

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Bob’s Burgers airs Sundays at 9:30/8:30c on Fox.

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