"Gone Boy" came as such a pleasant surprise to me that I was obviously approaching Bob's subsequent showing, in "Bobby, It's Cold Outside" (ZAB0F01) of Season 31, with some caution. Its predecessor concluded with Bob realising, with the help of an unnamed psychiatrist, that his Bart-slaying obsessions were senseless and unhealthy, and moving on to a new ambition of opening a flower shop. An epilogue set many years in the future showed an older but wiser Bob living a secluded existence in a lighthouse, haunted by memories of his former life and aware that he had a valuable lesson to share with anyone who'd care to hear it (which the Squeaky Voiced Teen didn't). Character development that suggests a positive outcome for Bob comes only sparingly, and is absolutely not something that I take for granted. I was pretty certain that "Bobby, It's Cold Outside" was going to not only undo all of that, but not even bother to address it. I'd been there before, you know - "Day of The Jackanapes" had gotten around Bob's prior peacemaking with Bart in "Brother From Another Series" by ignoring it altogether. Was I right to be so suspicious of this one? Yes and no. Bob's interest in floristry presumably hasn't stuck as a serious ambition and, more dishearteningly, his thought processes are once again hijacked by his pathological revenge fantasies against everyone's favourite shamus in short pants (at the start of the episode, we find him making festive decorations in the shape of Bart being gored, strangled or devoured by sharks). Yet the events of "Gone Boy" are not completely forgotten, and "Bobby, It's Cold Outside" actually does serve as a weird kind of sequel to that episode.
There's a direct callback to the ending of "Gone Boy", in that Bob is already living in his lighthouse and wearing what looks to be the same sweater he had on during
the flash forward. It isn't exactly a direct continuation of the same storyline, but the reappearance of that lighthouse reinforces the idea that it holds some kind of symbolic significance for Bob - presumably, his compulsion to distance himself, both physically and emotionally, from the rest of society. With that in mind, I guess I can look on his ongoing Bart fixation as playing into that same metaphor, it being the thing that's pushed him so far down the path of desolation, stranding him in his deranged fantasy world and disbarring him from experiencing any kind of functional life's purpose or affinities. Although a twist is yielded on the latter front. Remember Teen's indication, at the end of "Gone Boy", that Bob wasn't the only societal outcast who'd sought out the seclusion of a lighthouse abode? That he still had fifteen others like himself to deliver to that day? Well, we potentially get to meet one of them here. Having exiled himself to the outermost regions of civilisation, Bob gets the unexpected opportunity to make a connection, with someone who's perhaps not exactly a kindred spirit (her darkest secret is that she puts extra butter in her muffins), but is capable of accepting and embracing him for who he is.
Of course, it still annoys me, on mere principle, that Bob is already back to wanting to disembowel Bart, but the good news is that "Bobby, It's Cold Outside" isn't another "Cape Feare" knock-off, and it finds something more for Bob to do than his usual homicidal scheming. In fact, he isn't even the villain of this episode. Oh, but you know what's really a breath of fresh air about this one? He doesn't take a rake to the face. I'm deadly serious. There's a joke in there involving a rake, but for once it doesn't entail Bob being injured by it. Bart knocks him out with a giant lollipop and Homer boots him about inside a box, but that's all the physical abuse he endures in this one. HALLELUJAH! This truly is a Christmas miracle! As to who the real villain is, let's just say that "Bobby" finally gave us a scenario that Simpsons viewers had been baying to see for decades. I'm not sure if this is how they'd envisioned it playing out, but it happened.
Airing on December 15th 2019, this was Bob's second Christmas episode (unlike "Gone Boy", this one actually takes place during the festive period) and, at the time of writing, his last canon appearance. And if Bob was going to take a hiatus for a few years then this was honestly a really nice place in which to leave him. "Bobby" gets automatic credit for closing on what feels like an unambiguously optimistic note for our friend. Holy shit, Bob actually gets laid at the end of this one. That in itself is a very good thing, and I will happily accept it as an explanation for how he's been able to stay out of trouble for so long. I have noticed a pattern wherein Bob seems to be a lot more chill in situations where his sexual needs are being met. It obviously wasn't the case in "Black Widower", but there Bob wasn't really attracted to Selma and visibly struggled with the whole love-making side of his ruse. By contrast, in "The Italian Bob", where Bob and Francesca had a very active and mutually gratifying sex life, Bob seemed genuinely happy for a while. Then we have "Wedding For Disaster", a rare episode that has Bob show up casually and present no threat to anybody, right after he and Krusty were reportedly sleeping together..."for warmth" in Krusty's words. Yeah, I'll bet. [1] I'm not saying that I believe sexual frustration to be the root cause of Bob's personality flaws - just that, every now and then, a truly satisfying fuck clearly does wonders in relieving his symptoms.
On the subject of Bob's love life, we can thank "Bobby, It's Could Outside" for finally clarifying the status of Bob's marriage to Francesca, who hasn't been seen or referenced since "Funeral For A Fiend" of Season 19. She doesn't get so much as a shout-out here, either - Cassandra Patterson, his new lady love, makes explicit note of the fact that Bob isn't wearing a wedding ring, so it seems safe to assume that he and Francesca have officially called it quits (maybe his time with Krusty in "Wedding For Disaster" had something to do with it, we can only speculate). In other words, Bob's family arc just fizzled, and Francesca and Gino may never be seen again, the thought of which does not leave me unsentimental. It's ironic, because when "The Italian Bob" first aired, I remember seriously not liking the idea of Bob having a wife and son. For years, I'll admit that I'd harbored the same misconception about his sexual orientation as Homer. In our defence, Bob is queer-coded AF, as many classic animated villains are, and their insistence on making him heterosexual still seems kind of suspect to me. (For the record, I have Bob headcanoned as bisexual, and he and Krusty as bitter ex-lovers from the start of the series. I'm 100% convinced that their boys' night in in "Wedding For Disaster" wasn't the first occasion on which they fucked.) And then eventually I came around to it, right about the time that The Simpsons decided they were done with that entire thread. More accurately, I came around to Gino. Francesca I could take or leave; as a character she was serviceable, but there was nothing in her chemistry with Bob that ever crackled and had me thinking, "Yes! Absolutely! This is the girl for Bob!" Gino didn't have masses of depth either - he is only a toddler, after all - but the idea of Bob being a parent was one that slowly grew on me. I figured that it could be a good next step in bringing out a whole different side to his character. Of course it never happened, and by this point in time I suspect the writers have forgotten that Gino even exists. It's something I contemplated very recently, after watching "Pin Gal". Obviously this was nowhere near my biggest concern regarding that episode, but it didn't escape my notice that the Bowlarama had a portrait of Bob in its gallery, apparently participating in some kind of kids' bowling league, and he was pictured with Gerald, the baby with the one eyebrow, and not his own son. The implication there, I guess, is that Bob was dating Gerald's mother, which might be somebody's fanfic fodder, but to me it's just a missed opportunity to work in a nod to the littlest Terwilliger, however marginal. Because I'd like to think that Bob has maintained some form of relationship with Gino, even if he and Francesca are now history. Bob's got his share of shortcomings - he's mean to his brother, and his first marriage ended because he attempted to blow up his bride on their honeymoon - but the one thing I'd never pegged him for was a deadbeat dad. C'mon Bob, you do have some standards.
Alas, I'm not sure if even Bob remembers that Gino exists. Cassandra asks him if he's ever thought about children, and Gino blatantly doesn't cross Bob's mind. We see Bob's train of thought, and it goes directly to Bart, and to the various little moribund representations of him currently dangling from his Christmas tree. You know Bob, there was a time, way back in Season 1, when you came across as being very compassionate toward children. Although maybe that side of him hasn't completely evaporated. This episode involves Bob getting a gig playing Santa Claus at a local Christmas-themed amusement park, and using that guise to be a force of benevolence around the town. Like I say, he's not the villain.
While it's a lot less explicit on this point than "Gone Boy", "Bobby" continues its predecessor's basic themes in exploring Bob's duelling desires and what he genuinely wants out of life, and in that regard it is quite a neat little character study for him. The title of the episode, while obviously modelled on a controversial
festive standard that will come up later on, alludes to a lonely third party's efforts to get closer to him - the bookends with Cassandra underscore the tension between his urge to remain immured in his homicidal obsessions and his willingness to broaden his horizons by opening up to an intimate relationship. Cassandra occupies the lighthouse nearest to Bob's and is terribly unsubtle in her own yearnings to be better acquainted with her neighbour; Bob has evidently decided she poses no threat to him (when he goes to answer the door, he instinctively takes a machete, but puts it down when he sees that it's her), but remains guarded against her. He is, after all, in hiding after breaking out of prison, and is acting on the assumption that Cassandra doesn't know who he is. Spoiler - she knows exactly who he is, and when she asks Bob if he has any dark secrets of his own, this is her attempt to impart this to him, and not just an excuse for an exposition dump, although we get that too. The circumstances under which Bob managed to escape are revealed in a flashback that also incorporates elements of "Cape Feare" (yeah, predictable) and "The Bob Next Door" (the really gross stuff, so if you have a problem with body horror you should look away). Turns out he knocked out a priest, stole his clothes and bicycle and pedalled his way out without being challenged (I assumed at first that the priest was visiting the prison, but the guard at the gates tells him to stay out of trouble, so I guess the implication is that he was a fellow inmate being released? Hmm). Yeah, it's silly, but it's still less of a contrivance than Bob's (largely unexplained) escape in "Gone Boy", and it did have me giggling, so it will suffice.
"Bobby" also has shades of "Brother From Another Series", in that it explores Bob's capacity to do good whilst having to deal with the suspicions of a prying Bart. Bob is scouted out for the role of Santa on account of his mellifluous baritone, and his ego naturally overrides his inclination to keep himself hidden. Then when the Simpsons visit the park, and Bart unwittingly strolls directly into his clutches (why Bart is so anxious to see Santa is not revealed, but we've already observed that the show tends to vacillate on how much reverence he has for the Santa mythos), there is absolutely no fighting his urge to reveal to him his true identity. He makes an opportune attempt to off his nemesis by strangling him with Christmas lights, but this is really the script getting what it clearly sees as an obligatory plot point out of the way. Bob discovers, not for the first time, that his killer instinct is not forthcoming, which he here attributes to his commitment to staying in character: "I am a trained method actor. I inhabit my roles, like Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, or Mike Myers in The Love Guru!" Phantom Thread is a movie I could totally envision Bob enjoying. I'm surprised he'd even want to acknowledge The Love Guru, though.
I said in my piece on "Gone Boy" that Bob's dynamic with Bart had by then come to resemble that of Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, but in this episode it's really more akin to that of Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf. The characters are so accustomed to encountering one another that there's a certain degree of familiarity underpinning their interactions throughout. Bart attempts to expose Santa's identity but discovers that everyone else is entirely indifferent to the arrangement - if anything, Homer seems only too happy to have that common ground with Bob, pointing out that he also played Santa at the Springfield mall on a previous Yuletide. While Bart himself remains wary of Bob, even he doesn't attack his part as lone objector with quite the same level of frantic paranoia as he exhibited in "Brother From Another Series". I mean, he actually accepts a ride with Bob on this occasion, something I absolutely couldn't see him doing back then, whether or not he had a shotgun to brandish. And after all they've been through with Bob, it seems wild that the Simpsons would be so relaxed about having him inside their living room. But I also think of Sam and Ralph in terms of the idea that Bob sees himself as inhabiting a role. The episode operates on the conceit that he's in an unusually clement mood because he's so determined to be the embodiment of Santa - an explanation that's technically superfluous given how "Gone Boy" concluded, but my take is that Bob is less inhibited by the role of Santa than he is relishing the freedoms he's gained from stepping out of his designated role as town homicidal maniac. In doing so, he gets to be an asset to the community and experience a taste of what his psychiatrist previously alluded to when he asked Bob if he'd considered how his life might have gone had he devoted it to good. There is some unspoken sadness in the implication that this can only be temporary - Bob and the Simpsons demonstrate that they are entirely capable of getting along and functioning as a team, but it's tempered by the nagging knowledge that as soon as this narrative trajectory has run its course, they'll go back to being enemies again, for no deeper reason than that the Powers That Be demand it.
Meanwhile, there's this other story thread unfolding where Springfield is being ravaged by "The Ghost of Christmas Presents", a mysterious thief pillaging their online purchases from their doorsteps before they can access them. One of the victims is Lenny, who devises a plan to catch the thief by setting out a decoy package with an exploding dye marker inside. Unfortunately, the package ends up exploding in his hands, injuring him - quite badly; Carl finds him lying in a pool of his own blood in the aftermath - but he gets a glimpse of the looter and is able to identify them by writing the letters "SB" with his fluids. When word of this reaches Bart, he naturally assumes that "SB" refers to Sideshow Bob, and that his nemesis is out for revenge on the town by stealing Christmas (a scheme that frankly seems a bit banal for Bob's tastes). If this narrative misdirect is sounding familiar, it's because it was cheekily recycled from "Wedding For Disaster", where Homer was kidnapped and Bart and Lisa, on finding a keychain with the initials "S.B.", presumed Bob to be responsible (as it turned out, wrongly...Krusty was able to vouch for Bob's whereabouts when the kidnapping occurred). It could be that "Bobby" is making a deliberate callback to that episode, since there's a gag with Homer turning in Selma Bouvier, aka the real perpetrator of "Wedding For Disaster" (along with Patty), prompting the police to release their prior suspects Scott Bakula, Steve Ballmer and Sandra Bullock. In "Wedding For Disaster" there was an obvious flaw in Bart and Lisa's deduction, in that "S.B." aren't actually Bob's initials; Sideshow Bob isn't his real name, and I get the impression that Bob himself doesn't much care for the sobriquet, even if he is resigned to it. Here, Bart is working second-hand off of Lenny's identification, so I guess we can go easier on him. Bart returns to the Christmas park after dark and infiltrates Santa's workshop, hoping to find evidence of Bob's latest diabolical plan, but all he finds is a folder listing some rather dry life's goals. (I have a question - are these meant to be Bob's actual life goals, or just a character-building exercise for his performance as Santa? Because one of the listed actions is "Find birth father", and well...you're telling us that the man we met in "Funeral For A Fiend" wasn't Bob's biological father? Come on.) Bob shows up and vows to prove his innocence by assisting the Simpsons in pinpointing the real thief. He conceals himself inside a package (Bob is quite the contortionist, thanks to his background in clowning), which is subsequently stolen, and trailed by the Simpsons to a warehouse, where they discover that the culprits are...Smithers and Burns! Homer is quick to point out the blatant contrivance: "Since when does Smithers go first?" (No kidding; despite being our secondary antagonist, Smithers gets exactly one line this entire episode.)
That aforementioned scenario that Simpsons fans had been wanting to see for decades? Bob and Mr Burns finally meet. Viewers had always figured that if the show's two most prominent bad boys were ever to cross paths, we'd be in for a truly explosive match-up. I suspect most of them were anticipating that Bob and Burns would either team up in a nefarious alliance or to go head-to-head in an exhilarating face-off. So, what happens? Burns sits on Bob's knee and opens up about the emotional trauma his parents inflicted on him at Christmastime. Look, you've got to see the funny side. Burns recalls how, as a child, he was so starved for affection from his parents that he went to a Gimbels Department Store Santa and requested a hug from his mommy and a smile from his daddy. The store Santa, not seeing any reason why the young Monty wouldn't be getting these, told him that they'd surely be coming. Instead, Burns was packed off to boarding school on Christmas day, and both of his parents were dead by the time he returned. (Discontinuity alert! Burns' mater was alive during the events of "Homer The Smithers", remember?) Burns admits that he and Smithers were stealing the town's presents because he wanted everybody to experience the same Yuletide dejection that he did. "[My parents] never gave me anything except a hundred million dollars! Santa lied!" Bob has a diplomatic solution - using his skills as a dramatic thespian, he's able to convince the emotionally pliable Burns that he's the real Santa and that his mom and pop really did love him, their detached child-rearing style being the essential factor that made him so strong. Bob asks Burns to consider what's become of all the other billionaires of his day (Burns: "Broke, dead, a lot of #MeToo...") and points out that Burns himself has endured, thanks to his parents' love. It goes without saying that this whole sequence is swathed in a thick, thick layer of insincerity; it has it all, right down to a close-up shot of Burns shedding silent tears at Bob's blatant distortion of the truth and then experiencing an inevitable 180 degree change of heart. Manipulative sod that Bob is, what is clearly genuine is the relish with which he seizes the opportunity to act out the perfect Santa to ease Burns' pain, and that's goodwill enough. The seasonal spirit is transmitted from one misanthropic loner to another, and Burns resolves to return all of the stolen packages to everyone's doors, prompting the townspeople to sing his praises.
"Bobby, It's Cold Outside" is by no means a perfect episode, and I do have my share of nitpicks to dish out. There's a sequence with the Simpsons singing "Baby Shark" that's
already looking kind of dated (are tots still into "Baby Shark"? My
nieces outgrew that particular development stage long ago), and I could have lived without that sight gag
where Bob kills a pelican, albeit by accident. And while I'm accustomed
to criticising episodes made under Al Jean's watch for the abruptness of their endings, this one has basically the opposite problem, in that it seems to struggle in figuring out where to tie itself up. In part, this is to do with how the ending is structured, as there are three different story threads that are resolved separately in consecutive vignettes, giving the sense of an especially protracted conclusion. The Simpsons get a mundane wrap-up that involves Homer and Marge wanting to make out on the living room couch on Christmas morn but getting interrupted by their inconsiderate kids, who insist on creating bedlam with their presents. Then there's one where Burns meets Steve Ballmer at the airport, which is incredibly drawn-out and feels tacked on primarily to beef up Ballmer's guest role. Sandwiched in between is the ending that most matters, where Bob, the unsung hero of the season, receives his overdue share of the festive zest.
Now that Christmas Day has arrived and his obligations as the amusement park Santa have been fulfilled, Bob has little choice but to return to his lighthouse and resume his position as a societal exile. Yet, even with this being his seeming lot in life, he discovers that he doesn't have to be alone out here; there is someone who's prepared to receive him, not in the assumed guise of Santa, but as regular old Bob. He's resigned to spending his evening watching It's A Wonderful Life on the chattering cyclops (footage from the actual movie, not an animated parody, which is apparently a modern Simpsons thing; there was a small moment in "Gone Boy" where Bart watched real footage of a John F. Kennedy speech), and has gotten to the part where George Bailey blows up with his family. His sympathies are firmly with George ("That girl is pretty bad at the piano"). Just then, Cassandra comes knocking, wanting to give Bob a Christmas gift (a rake), and to reveal point blank that she knows all his dark secrets and is itching to kiss him. It becomes apparent at this point that Cassandra is a hybristophile, meaning that she finds Bob's criminal history a turn-on. Bob is still reluctant to let her in, and the ensuing interplay takes the form of a modified rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside", a call and response song written by Frank Loesser in 1944 that has since become a fixture of holiday albums. Traditionally performed as a duet between a male and female vocalist, who play a host and a guest respectively (known as "Wolf" and "Mouse" in the sheet music), it charts the former's efforts to dissuade the latter from ducking out of a romantic interlude prematurely by citing the inclement weather conditions. You'll be aware that there's been a ton of discourse surrounding this song in recent years, since the lyrics can be interpreted as alluding to a date rape scenario, with the line "Say, what's in this drink?" being a point of particular contention (that the participants are called "Wolf" and "Mouse" doesn't exactly dispel that sense of a predator-prey dynamic). The counterargument goes that the song was written as a subversive takedown of the social conventions of the 1940s (ie: the exchange is all foreplay, designed to bypass the expectation that a woman wouldn't spend the night with a man to whom she wasn't married), and while I find that credible, I can understand why it might still be uncomfortable listening for some. Here, Bob and Cassandra sing a gender-flipped version that's very attuned to contemporary concerns about the central scenario - Bob is, initially, the one trying to push Cassandra away and back into the cold, insisting that, "I'm being a gent...", but he comes around when Cassandra says the magic words: "I'm giving consent..." She's even willing to put that consent in writing, producing a contract that both parties sign (I've freeze-framed and tried to read what's on the contract, but alas, my eyes can't pick out much that's legible). Bob finally accepts her companionship, and while their tender moment is briefly interrupted by Captain McCallister, who's crashed his boat outside and needs them to turn the lights on, I've no doubt they resumed right after and were still on their hormonal high come Groundhog Day.
That's all very lovely, but if there's a festive song I'm going to predominantly associate with Bob, it's "Christmas Is Going To The Dogs" by Eels - you know, the one Max parties to in the Jim Carrey version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Granted, it was written to reflect a distinctly canine perspective, but the lyrics do seem to suit his morbid, gloomy outlook.
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