‘Bob’s Burgers’ Creator Loren Bouchard Talks About His Big-Hearted Show’s 300th Episode and 16th Season

Bob and Linda Belcher, their eccentric children Tina, Gene and Louise and their cozy diner are such a beloved part of the pop culture landscape in 2025 that it’s tough to believe that the world was only introduced to Loren Bouchard’s animated clan less than 14 years ago. The whimsical, hilarious and kind-hearted Bob’s Burgers series, which has won the Emmy for Best Animated Series twice (and has been nominated 15 times) is celebrating its 300th episode this week.

The episode, which is titled “Grand Pre-Pre-Pre-Opening” catches up with Bob and Linda as they are to make an important decisions, which opens a floodgate of memories of when the duo decided to open the restaurant. At the same time, the kids are also working on a musical project, which dovetails back to the early days of the family. The usual voice cast features H. Jon Benjamin as Bob Belcher, John Roberts as Linda Belcher, Kristen Schaal as Louise Belcher Eugene Mirman as Gene Belcher, Dan Mintz as Tina Belcher and Larry Murphy as family friend and restaurant regular, Teddy.

To mark the big episode, we had the chance to catch up with the brilliant Loren Bouchard, who was kind enough to put everything in perspective for us:

 

Animation Magazine: Big congrats to you and your team on the 300th episode! How does it feel for you and the beloved Belchers to hit this major milestone?

Loren Bouchard: You know, frankly they all feel freaking amazing— 300th is good, 301 is really good, 299 is really good too. In a way, you prepare because you want to celebrate these milestones, but you also kind of want to do nothing. That’ s a little bit our work ethic here: You come to work believing that every episode is the most important one and every episode is your favorite. We really want to recognize that that 300 episodes is meaningful and longevity is important. But for us, it’s also really important that the show has such a life of its own after we release it into the world. I think it’s really interesting that people are watching the 100th, the 200th, the 300th episodes of the show closer together than we are. In some ways, that’s really nerve-wracking — and kind of cool.

 

I was looking at the numbers, and it looks like the show does really well on demand. In fact, I read a study that showed that 24% more people are likely to watch Bob’s Burgers than any other show on TV. That’s quite amazing. How does your preparation for each episode different now than the early days of show back in 2011?

Some of it harder for us to see than you know than anyone else because we’re in it every day. To us, it’s a long continuum: it’s a job we’ve been going to every day for 15 years, so you don’t notice the difference as much. For us going to a screening or a mix, it feels like another day. But I will say this: One thing that has been really nice to figure out on the show is how we can play more than one note. We can hit more than one tone in an episode. Now, I think the challenge for us is figuring out just how to do it so that it doesn’t feel stale or trite. We do not want the show to feel like it’s turned especially soft. We want it to feel like it’s matured and aged. It’s OK for it to change, but we don’t want to be losing any of its fundamental edge either. So, I would say that’s probably different.

When we first started out, we were happy just to put in a little sweet little ukulele cue in the third act, and we see that Bob’s sad, standing in front of the restaurant, and the family is going to make him feel better. Now, you’ve got to be really creative in how you handle those moments because this family has not aged. We have, and the world has. Fifteen years have gone by, but this is the story we’re telling about a family running a restaurant that may or may not make it.

So, for example with the 300th episode, we’re going back in time and showing how they decided to start this damn thing in the first place. Why it was crazy timing and how they were starting a family at the same time. That was really fun for us because, in a way, we’re looking back on how we started this show 15 years ago, and some of us were also starting our own families back then too.

 

I love the story you once told about how you knew that the show was a big hit when your kids were in preschool, a father pulled you aside and told you about how his four-year-old son was chanting “I’m good at sex, you’re bad at sex…” [which he had learned from the show] to the neighbors. Can you think of other similar stories about the show that have stayed with you through the years?

That story I hold near and dear, and I still tell it. The other ones that that stay with us usually happen when somebody’s going through a hard time and we find out that the show was helpful to them in a way that transcends just comfort watching. I’m very happy if the show is a comfort show for people, that’s great. But when I find out that somebody used it in a way to get through something, and it’s specific to our show, that something obviously stood out, those really mean a lot.

I mean obviously, when you’re making a comedy, you want people to laugh, and that’s great. We still measure our success in laughs. You screen the episode and you see where people laugh — but you want to think that your work has a little bit of meaning beyond that, that it’s not just to make people laugh. That it has some value that lasts a little longer and goes a little deeper. So those stories really do help us feel like we’re putting our efforts to be making the best thing we could be doing right.

 

 

As you mentioned, the world is different now, and the animation scene is quite different now than it was 15 years ago. As someone who has been working in animation since the days of Dr. Katz (1995-2002) and Home Movies (1999-2004), what is your take on this always changing animation world?

I’m a pathological optimist, so I can’t help it; I just always get excited about the future. I still feel that way about animation. I would say one of the things that’s really exciting to me is the possibility of how hand-drawn animation might start to become really valuable to people. Audiences might seek it out, kind of the way people seek out stop-motion animation. There’s something about the hand touching the material, even if it’s through a computer. I look forward to being a champion of that whether it’s a niche thing that only some people want or whether it’s a mass market thing. I’m excited to just keep doing it and keep finding out what it can look like.

I also really liked Flow, which was not hand drawn, but it’s beautiful. I’m always interested in independent animation and some of the fringe stuff. I always say the same thing, which is: Do it if it calls you, not because it’s a guaranteed way to make a living, not because you’re guaranteed to get your work in front of people. Do it because it calls you. Some people just know animation is what we want to think about. You can just spend the rest of your life studying it.

 

 

When was the first time you realized you wanted to spend your life creating animation?

As a young adult, it was The Simpsons. When I was a kid, I appreciated animation: I loved Bugs Bunny and Disney’s Robin Hood. I always felt a real connection to it. My dad was an art teacher, and he did a little bit of animation in his art class. So I’d done a little animation, but it never occurred to me that it was something that I could do, until I was a little bit older and The Simpsons came out. I didn’t understand how I could get there. That took a lot of luck, and a lot of help beyond myself. It didn’t pop into my head that it was visual art meets writing, meets music, and I know that all of those things were interesting to me.

 

 

I remember you mentioned before that there’s a specific place in the brain where we receive animation, animated characters and music. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

I am still looking for the explanation. I want to meet the neurologist or someone who has an MRI machine that is willing to study how this stuff light up our brains, but my theory is that for some of us, it hits us differently. When you look at an animated image, or a Muppet, or even if it’s computer generated, it can slip past the part of your brain that sees it as a representation of reality, and gets into something else. I don’t know where that something else is; perhaps it’s where our dreams are made or where memories are stored. But somehow when you look at, let’s say a drawing of Louise, you know that is a drawing, and you know that Kristen Schaal’s voice is not a child’s voice, and you on some level, you completely accept that she is a nine-year-old girl. And in that moment, something magical is happening.

In my opinion, that is just such a beautiful thing that the human brain is capable of doing, and I love that we get to activate that part of the brain. That’s something that other forms just can’t do or can’t do as immediately as we can do with the voice, the picture and the storytelling.

 

Of course, we all know what a big part the terrific voice cast plays in bringing the show to life. I believe you once mentioned that getting Kevin Kline to voice Calvin Fischoeder, the Belchers’ landlord on the show, was a big get for you. Can you think of any of the other casting highlights for you?

I don’t like to pick favorites. You know I love actors and working with actors to bring their voices into the show. I will say there’s an actor who gave who lent us his voice for the upcoming Halloween episode — Jamie Demetriou, his voice is incredible. He has one of those supernatural voices, and he’s also funny. I love it when you find that combination of somebody who can do something with their throat that others people can’t, and they’re funny too, that’s just miraculous. There’s also somebody that we have had before, but I mourn the fact that Jordan Peele is now one of the most successful living directors of our time. I miss working with him as a voice actor. I’ve told this to him in person, too. I think his skills in the recording booth were extraordinary, and I miss working with him as an actor.

 

 

Going back to the new season, what are you excited for fans to watch on the show?

Well, we are happy that we’re kicking off with the 300th episode. That feels really nice that that this special episode lined up as our premiere. We didn’t have to manipulate the schedule very much for that to be the reality. We’re also excited that we have a Halloween episode and a Christmas episode. Those are always fun.

We always want to surprise our audience. If you come and just want Bob’s Burgers the way it was, that’s understandable, and that’s a reasonable expectation. We try to give you enough of that, but what I always want to have is the possibility that we could surprise people still at this stage, that this show can feel alive and fresh and surprising after so many seasons. That’s what I think we did with this season and what we try to do with every season.

 

 

We live in a very different world than we did 14, 15 years ago. Do you think the insanity of our lives has impacted the writing on the show in any way?

We think about that a lot. I’m really interested in what storytelling can do if it’s not explicitly political, but it’s inherently political. That’s the way I think of Bob’s Burgers. it’s not going to be social satire, and it’s not going to be razor-sharp critique of the moment we are living in while you’re watching the episode. But, it’s grounded storytelling, so by definition it’s going to have a point of view that is inherently — you could say, not necessarily political, but at least humanist. We’re studying real life in order to find our stories. We’re not mining know fairy tales and story tropes that exist outside of life. We’re always trying to bring it back to like what if this family was real, what if this town was real, what if this business was real? What are the details that we can find and highlight that make you feel like you might know this family or you might be this family?

I think that by definition in this day and age, the show is going to be on some level political and then on some level it’s going to be a little quiet. But I don’t think the quiet voices that speak to the times we’re living in are necessarily irrelevant. It doesn’t mean they’re not trying to speak to the moment. I think the quiet voices can slip the message past somebody’s guard. They can get the conversation started in someone’s mind that perhaps wouldn’t happen if it was delivered in a different way.

 

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Bob’s Burgers Season 16 kicks off on FOX on Sunday, September 28 at 9:30 p.m. with the 300th episode: “Grand Pre-Pre-Pre-Opening.” FOX has renewed the season through its 19th season.