#louise almost electrocuted her sister

[pinazee]

Im sorry but “9 year old girl solves murder and saves Wonder Wharf” is a pretty big fucking deal. That kid is a fucking legend Chloe

[guiltycharge--a]

remember that time louise almost electrocuted her sister all to crush a teachers dreams

[guiltycharge-a]

what a nice night to think about the time louise almost electrocuted her sister

[frogbutane57-blog]

Bob's Burgers considers the hidden dangers of flirting with aliens

It was never going to be aliens. A lot of Bob’s Burgers’ animated siblings have an elastic enough continuity that it would be at least possible for actual aliens to pick up the kids’ signal—even The Simpsons did kind of canonize Kang and Kodos, to say nothing of still more off-the-wall shows like South Park or Family Guy—but the Belchers’ suspension of disbelief tops out at right around a two-butted goat. Since there’s no actual danger Tina and her science fair partner Susmita will actually contact extraterrestrials, the trick for “UFO No You Didn’t” is giving their story some semblance of stakes or a point. Otherwise, the episode risks being just too silly to work, reliant entirely on the solid but minor amusement of watching Tina and Susmita painstakingly lay out a detailed first contact procedure that will obviously fail. Indeed, that’s still the source of a good chunk of the episode’s low-key humor. Tonight’s episode doesn’t hide the fact that nothing much is happening outside the kids’ fervent imaginations. It’s just that, by story’s end, “UFO No You Didn’t” offers a simultaneously funny and heartfelt argument for why Tina and company’s wild imaginings matter.

As Tina explains at the science fair, the real question of her and Susmita’s project isn’t if aliens are out there, but why peanut butter is called butter—sorry, sorry, the question is whether it’s worth accepting the risk of drawing attention to ourselves and trying to make contact. As this is Tina we’re talking about, her answer is always going to be on the side of taking a chance and hoping for the best. Her closing speech is something of an inversion of what we usually get from Tina in these situations. Typically, her arguments reflect her all-encompassing belief that life is better with boys and butts, and it’s borderline coincidental that she makes some applicable point. Here, she actually engages with all the startlingly downbeat science fair presentations to make a cogent point about how aliens could be a much-needed source of help, because we clearly aren’t able to figure out answers on our own. It’s only then that the episode brings this back round to more familiar romantic territory for Tina, with her closing point about dying alone inspiring Susmita to send some saucy Morse code Henry Haber’s way.

That’s a sweet ending—or at least as sweet as an ending can be with Henry involved—and it does a nice job of demonstrating why Tina isn’t a total loser. We don’t meet that many actual smart kids at Wagstaff outside of Henry, who’s really more an aspiring supervillain than anything else. So it’s striking to hear Susmita drop actual scientific knowledge, with Tina’s weird ignorance seeming far more embarrassing when not paired with her siblings or still dumber kids like Jimmy Jr. or Jocelyn. Tina comes off as totally useless for a good chunk of “UFO No You Didn’t”—she can’t even commit to bubble letters!—but she shows what makes her special when Susmita reveals her own debilitating shyness. Tina, who I will never get tired of remembering was originally presented as the ultimate wallflower, is a paragon of confidence and boldness next to her partner. I mean, she’s still crushingly awkward, as ably demonstrated by her hilariously ill-conceived initial message, which requires her to both explain what bacon is and assure the alien readers that they won’t eat them. But Dan Mintz is so adept at conveying Tina’s underlying belief in herself, even as her words and thoughts and literally everything else fails her. She just keeps going, even if—no, especially if!—that ends in her kissing Zeke out of fear aliens are about to vaporize the planet.

Because I’m exactly the kind of person you would guess I am, I’ve spent a lot of time watching The Simpsons DVD commentaries. A mantra that writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein frequently share to describe their approach as showrunners in seasons seven and eight is that stories should be all about the family: A story might first be about Milhouse’s parents getting a divorce, but the eventual crux of the story should be about the Simpsons themselves. The logic behind this is that the show is at its strongest when it’s most tightly focused on the characters that audiences are most invested in. The potential downside is that always bringing the story back to the family limits the narrative possibilities, eventually robbing something like Homer and Marge having marital problems of its impact through three decades of repetition. Bob’s Burgers has impressed by taking the opposite tack and investing in its ever-expanding ensemble of weirdoes. The entire Wagstaff story takes as read that there’s nothing new here we need to learn about Tina or her siblings, even after they betray her for Henry. The theoretical conflict between the Belcher kids is quickly dismissed with Louise and Gene passing on Henry’s gift card reward to Tina as a supposed apology gift.

To the extent anyone changes over the course of “UFO No You Didn’t”, it’s not Tina, but rather Susmita and Henry. One is a character we’ve never met before, while the other is one we’ve never really been asked to care about previously, at least not by Bob’s Burgers standards. Yes, Louise is there as an audience stand-in to wish for the planet’s destruction when Susmita and Henry start swapping Morse code, but their growth leading up to that silly moment still reads as something the show wants the audience to care about. It’s okay for the Belchers to take a backseat here because Tina and Louise are so well-drawn—the episode trusts us to know immediately that Louise isn’t comfortable betraying her sister, with no expectation that this requires further comment or exploration—and because Gene is such a reliable delivery mechanism for one-liners and also farts.

And, as ever, none of these storytelling choices would work if the show didn’t care about all the weirdoes it has created. The result is a good-natured, relatively subdued episode, one that trusts in the kids and their goofy passions to drive the story. The episode would never ask us to take any of this seriously, other than the fact that the kids themselves do. As is typically the case with Bob’s Burgers, the show makes that an entire reasonable thing to ask of its audience.

Stray observations

“First off, amazing boards. Great job, everyone. Seems like a lot of parents got involved, but no judgment.” Tina always calls them like she sees them.

Tina and Zeke remain the show’s truest true pairing. Well, give or take Louise and Regular-Size Rudy, obviously.

Maybe I’m overstating the case when I say this is a more subdued Bob’s Burgers episode, but then again, consider the last time we saw the Wagstaff Science Fair: Any story that doesn’t end with Tina almost getting electrocuted to prove a point about Thomas Edison has to be considered sedate.

The story with Bob and the tiny coatracks is such a wonderfully silly throwaway subplot. There’s barely anything to it, even by the standard of flimsy restaurant side stories, so it’s a smart choice to make it ultimately be about Bob’s endless rivalry with Jimmy Pesto. That actually might be a case of the show wisely following The Simpsons’ lead and taking things back to the show’s core characters and conflicts, come to think of it.

Source: https://tv.avclub.com/bobs-burgers-considers-the-hidden-dangers-of-flirting-1830815483

[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Scheduled to Death

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Scheduled to Death by Mary Feliz

The mystery kept me guessing through the entire book…I was blaming the wrong person for about 80% of the story! ~Book Babble

… fast paced and fun to read. ~Sleuth Cafe

Each character was written with such care and love that they really jump from the page and they, like the books, just keeping getting better. ~Classy Cheapskate

I had a difficult time deciding who was my favorite character in this book. Each is well rounded and has something special bout them. ~Laura’s Interests

This captivating and fast-paced whodunit tale has enough quirky characters, witty humor, drama, a growing list of suspects, intriguing twists and turns, and conspiracy theories that will keep you guessing. ~Jersey Girl Book Reviews

The plot is well developed, suspects are numerous, and I enjoyed using my detecting skills right along with Maggie. ~The Power of Words

Scheduled to Death (A Maggie McDonald Mystery) Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series Lyrical Underground (January 17, 2017) Paperback: 236 pages ISBN-13: 978-1601836663 Digital Ebook – ASIN: B01EQ2N1QM

Professional organizer Maggie McDonald has a knack for cleaning up other people’s messes. So when the fiancée of her latest client turns up dead, it’s up to her to sort through the untidy list of suspects and identify the real killer.

Maggie McDonald is hoping to raise the profile of her new Orchard View organizing business via her first high-profile client. Professor Lincoln Sinclair may be up for a Nobel Prize, but he’s hopeless when it comes to organizing anything other than his thoughts. For an academic, he’s also amassed more than his share of enemies. When Sinclair’s fiancée is found dead on the floor of his home laboratory—electrocuted in a puddle of water—Maggie takes on the added task of finding the woman’s murderer. To do so, she’ll have to outmaneuver the suspicious, obnoxious police investigator she’s nicknamed “Detective Awful” before a shadowy figure can check off the first item on their personal to-do list—Kill Maggie McDonald.

Author Interview

  What initially got you interested in writing? I started my writing career in Corporate Communications writing about vacuum tubes and other industrial products — including my favorite project, which was writing about a giant piece of high-tech equipment that found its way to a jungle customer with the help of an elephant.

For someone who has always been constrained by reality, fiction is working without a net. A novel is like running a marathon. I’m not sure any writer can adequately explain the special kind of insanity that makes running a marathon across a tight rope seem like a good idea.

What genres do you write in?

I’m currently writing cozy mysteries, although I’ve also written two (unpublished) young adult historical novels that I hope to someday retool as romance. And then there’s this true crime story I’m itching to explore…like most writers, I have more ideas than I have time to pursue.

What drew you to writing these specific genres? I love cozy mysteries because they are essentially stories about good triumphing over evil. I love to read them because violence and gore give me nightmares and sex scenes make me blush. Cozy mysteries let me avoid the blood and guts and graphic romance, but still allow me to explore good, evil, and where they intersect. I find it interesting to consider why good people do bad things and why bad people do good things.

How did you break into the field? My story starts the same way it does for many writers…after 10-15 years of die-hard stubbornness, doubt, and too much chocolate, I “suddenly” woke up to the reality that one of the bazillions of people to whom I’d pitched my story was calling to say they loved my book and wanted to publish it. It was the third book I’d written. I’m still pinching myself.

What do you want readers to take away from reading your works? I hope that readers will fall in love with Maggie and her family, and be willing to hang in there with her when she makes mistakes on her journey to solve the crimes and save the day. Maggie’s intelligence and connections to her community help her follow the clues, but it’s the wrong turns she takes and her hopelessly bad luck that that move the plot along. I also hope they’ll come to know some of the complexities of life in Silicon Valley that aren’t covered in news broadcasts.

What do you find most rewarding about writing?

When someone writes a review that makes it clear they “get” Maggie, or when someone tells me they love a character and hope I’ll write more about them, it makes my day. What I love about reading is finding an author whose characters become so real to me that I miss when I finish the book. Whenever I hear that someone had an experience like that while reading one of my books, it definitely takes the sting out of long days, persistent typos, and nasty reviews.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

In order to stick with it long enough to have a book published, you have to love the process. And I do. But it’s not without some serious ups and downs. When I hit one of those lows, I turn to my writer friends to keep me balanced. Every one of the writers I know has received a text or email from me complaining that I’ll never resolve a plot problem that has me chasing down inconsistencies that make it feel as though I’m trying to put socks and sneakers on an octopus. Depending on the friend, they laugh and prescribe chocolate, wine, coffee, naps or a walk.

What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field? If you don’t love it, don’t do it. Those who get published are those who stick with it…for years. Use those years to make friends with other writers, learn as much as you can, practice, and to make your writing the best it can be. Then make it better the next day. Those who don’t get published are those who give up. Also, don’t do it alone. Find teachers, friends, critiquers, editors, and beta readers who can help you strengthen your writing and support you on your journey. Don’t forget to give back–at every stage of the game. And have fun.

What type of books do you enjoy reading? I’m a promiscuous reader. I read everything from cereal boxes to epic novels and admire the story structure of song lyrics and television ads. My favorites, though, are those with complex characters I care deeply about. I’m a huge fan of Laurie King and Louise Penny.

Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you?

I walk on the beach nearly every day and know the names of almost all the dogs but only a few of the people.

What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

My website is a good place to start: www.maryfeliz.com From there you can find links to my Facebook page, Twitter account, and how to email me or sign up for my newsletter. I love to hear from readers and answer my emails.

About The Author

Mary Feliz has lived in five states and two countries but calls Silicon Valley home. Traveling to other areas of the United States, she’s frequently reminded that what seems normal in the high-tech heartland can seem decidedly odd to the rest of the country. A big fan of irony, serendipity, diversity, and quirky intelligence tempered with gentle humor, Mary strives to bring these elements into her writing, although her characters tend to take these elements to a whole new level. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and National Association of Professional Organizers. Mary is a Smith College graduate with a degree in Sociology. She lives in Northern California with her husband, near the homes of their two adult offspring. Visit Mary online at MaryFeliz.com, or follow her on Twitter @MaryFelizAuthor.

  Purchase Links Amazon B&N

You can win your own copy! Giveaway – On February 10, the author will be giving away five ebook editions of both books to randomly selected names on my newsletter list. Here is the link where your followers can sign up for the newsletter – http://www.maryfeliz.com/newsletter/

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BLOG TOUR – Scheduled to Death was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf