Although the Bob’s Burgers season 15 finale pits Bob against his family for a while, viewers won’t be shocked to find out who wins in the end. The season 16 renewal of Bob’s Burgers means the Belcher family still has plenty more adventures to share with the show’s large fan base.

However, season 15, episode 22, “InsomniBob,” remains a big moment for the show. The season 15 finale is the show’s 298th episode, and, as Bob’s Burgers’ sister series The Great North faces potential cancellation, the original show’s longevity seems more impressive than ever.

Bob’s Burgers may not have been around for as long as The Simpsons yet, but the show has built a big following and established a unique tone and style that makes the series stand out in a packed adult animated comedy landscape. After Bob’s Burgers season 15 flipped an earlier storyline, “InsomniBob” returned to the show’s core themes for a life-affirming plot.

Why Bob Can’t Sleep In Bob’s Burgers Season 15 Finale

“InsomniBob” Sees Bob Become Obsessed With Cooking at Night

“InsomniBob” began with Bob struggling to sleep. When Linda snored contentedly beside him, Bob remained awake and anxious until, eventually, he decided to start experimenting in the kitchen when he couldn’t sleep. Accompanied by celebrity chef Skip Marooch’s book, Bob began attempting to make not a Burger of the Day, but a “Burger of the Year.”

This gastronomic innovation involved anchovies and pineapple, which clued viewers into the possibility that Bob’s nighttime cooking sessions weren’t necessarily as inspired as he thought. However, since the pilot of Bob’s Burgers saw the eponymous restaurant get accused of using human meat in their burgers, this was hardly the riskiest culinary stretch Bob had ever made.

Bob started cooking at night because he felt he had more freedom from his family, and therefore more access to his creativity, when he was alone with the cookbook. Eventually, Linda began taking offence at this lack of quality time, while Teddy grew a little creeped out by Bob’s increasingly unhinged demeanor. The less Bob slept, the more obsessive he became.

Meanwhile, the kids were tasked with throwing a jar of mushy pickles in the trash. They soon started to amuse themselves by throwing them against the wall instead, seeing how high they could toss them, and accidentally making a mural of their father in the process.

When Linda saw this, she mistakenly assumed the kids were expressing their distance from their father with this piece of avant-garde art. Eager to avoid getting in trouble, the kids played along, and Linda decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. She convinced Bob to take melatonin.

Bob’s Insomnia Cure Is A Callback to Bob’s Burgers’ Biggest Theme

Bob Returns To Bed After Realizing What Really Matters To Him

Upon discovering he had hidden the pill instead of taking it, Linda ended up chasing him throughout the apartment. She eventually gave up on her quest to stop Bob’s nighttime cooking chaos, so it took another intervention to halt his obsession. There’s a reason the best episodes of Bob’s Burgers center on family rather than food, one Bob was reminded of.

As he hallucinated another late-night conversation with Marooch, the chef started prying into the real reasons behind his cooking renaissance. Bob admitted that he wanted to have a tangible legacy like that of Marooch, and the chef reminded him that he had his own restaurant. Moreover, Bob then realized he also had his family.

In a hilarious twist, Marooch insisted that he meant Bob’s restaurant was his real legacy, since he didn’t really know his family. However, by then, Bob had come to his senses and realized that he didn’t need time away from his wife and kids to make life-defining memories, since his time with them was exactly those.

The idea that Bob’s happy family is his life’s work is a theme the show has returned to repeatedly before, even as early as the pilot. Pivotally, Linda’s attempts to slip him melatonin didn’t work, since the realization was something Bob had to come to on his own in “InsomniBob.” If his wife had successfully stopped his nighttime sojourns to the kitchen, Bob would never have understood how much he missed her.

What The Finale Means For Bob’s Burgers Season 16

“InsomniBob” Proves Season 16 Could Center the Restaurant

From bringing back Bob’s father Big Bob to focusing numerous episodes on Tina’s struggles in school and in the Thunder Girls, Bob’s Burgers season 15 has been all about family. The same could arguably be said about most seasons on the show, but there are plenty of other outings that focus on life outside the Belcher family unit.

Season 14, episode 2, “The Amazing Rudy,” centered on Regular-Sized Ride’s moment in the spotlight and barely even included the Belchers, while season 6, episode 12, “Stand By Gene,” was so focused on Zeke, Jimmy Junior, Tammy, Darryl, and the kids that Bob and Linda barely appeared. In contrast, season 15 was a family affair through and through.

The significance of “InsomniBob” could be that season 15’s finale is subtly hinting at the thematic preoccupations of the show’s next outing. The series is called Bob’s Burgers, rather than The Belchers, so season 16 could focus on the family’s restaurant more than its predecessor did.

The restaurant played a surprisingly small role in season 15, save for this finale, even though it has historically been the locus of some of the show’s most important plots. Compared to The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers foregrounds the family’s financial struggles, and the restaurant epitomizes this.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie focused on the threat of the restaurant closing, as did the show’s pilot. Thus, Bob’s Burgers season 1, centering on the restaurant’s future would make a lot of sense given the history of the series and the themes explored in “Insomnibob.”

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Bob’s Burgers

8/10

Release Date

January 9, 2011

Network

FOX

Showrunner

Loren Bouchard

Directors

Tyree Dillihay, Anthony Chun, Jennifer Coyle, Wes Archer, Ian Hamilton, Tom Riggin, Bernard Derriman, Don MacKinnon, Kevin Wotton, John Rice, Simon Chong

Writers

Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin, Wendy Molyneux, Kelvin Yu, Scott Jacobson, Greg Thompson, Katie Crown, Aron Abrams

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  H. Jon Benjamin

  Bob Belcher (voice)

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  John Roberts

  Linda Belcher (voice)