If You Love It So Much, Why Don't You Marionette?

"" is the eighteenth episode in Season 9, being the one-hundred-and-sixty-eighth episode overall.
==Plot==
The kids visit a marionette theater for a school field trip and Louise gets on the theater owner's bad side. Meanwhile, Bob takes pity on a flyer guy who's handing out flyers in front of the restaurant.
==Synopsis==
Kuchi Kopi and Dodomeki are going off on a quest in a swamp to find an amulet before getting sidetracked about a sound Dodomeki made, before they are interrupted by Tina. Louise is playing with the Dodomeki and Kuchi toys before school in her room, and wraps it up to go to breakfast. Linda gives the kids a lunch with chunky peanut butter, and excitedly talks about Louise’s first time going to the marionette theater for a field trip, but Tina tells her she’s setting Louise up for disappointment. Linda asks why, as she thought they loved the marionette theater, but Tina and gene explain it is the same boring show every year, with even Bob admitting that when he took the kids when they were little that it so boring that he wanted to start actively work against the arts. Louise dismisses their complaints.
 
At the Esther Margaret Marionette-odeum, school buses are parked outside, and Frond is addressing the kids. He runs down the day for the kids who have never been there: first they will watch a puppet show, then a puppet-building workshop, and finally the kids will perform their own puppet shows in groups, before leading everyone inside. Jimmy Jr and Zeke are not thrilled, and Louise expresses disbelief. Until she and the others are inside, watching a boring and monotonous puppet song performance about stamps. Esther, the old lady who runs the theater, controls “Stampson”, while Ron the health inspector portrays another puppet who points out a lost box (which makes Louise wonder if he is there for community service due to being arrested). Louise is horrified and wants to get away.
 
At the restaurant, Bob and Linda notice a young man outside in a furry pink vest and a hat with blue, red and yellow tentacles passing out flyers to passerby. Bob goes out to see what he is doing; the young man gives him a flyer for Thursday rave Nights at “the Dance Hold” club (which offers dubstep, trip-trance, electro-hop, and doo-wop-hop, and Polynesian speed gospel), but Bob asks him to move away from the front window of his restaurant, but the guy refuses; his boss told him to pass out flyers in that exact spot, and he will be by to make sure. If the guy with the flyers isn’t in that exact spot, he won’t be paid, even if he moves 20 feet over, and he needs the money to pay for Karat, his ferret’s medical bills. Linda comes out and asks why he cannot move, and suggests picking up the guy and moving him, which he refuses and tries to make himself “heavy”.
 
After the puppet show, the students are standing listening to Mr. Frond, who gives the floor to Esther. She tells them to sit on the floor and build their own marionettes, but which really entails putting stickers on already-built marionette puppets. Louise is surprised and disappointed, getting Esther’s attention, who calls Ron over to help them after Louise dismisses it as “building puppets”. He points where to put a sticker, but Louise is irritated and asks where the bathroom is. After Ron gives directions, she leaves the theater area into the lobby while Esther mutters about how kids get worse every year. Before reaching the bathrooms, however, Louise sees an open storage closet with a red and gold, six-legged dragon puppet. She enters the room for a look, but Ron closes the door, telling her it’s off limits. Louise asks what the puppet was, but Esther appears and says it is none of her business, and Louise then see the “No Not Enter” sign. An irritated Esther then gives Louise a new “assignment”.
 
Esther takes Louise to the tech booth in the back of the theater, and leaves her with Dot, the technician, who offers Louise dried fish skins and chew with her mouth open. Louise wonders if she is there as punishment, while Dot gives a “tour” of the lackluster booth (master tape deck, small cassette library, sound mixer, a flashlight and dimmer switch for the stage lights). Gene and Tina assemble their puppets and wonder if Louise is taking long in the bathroom, but Ron reveals to them that she’s been reassigned to the tech booth, which concerns them. Dot plays one of the instrumental beats she make son her phone to Louise, and says that she keeps asking Esther if they can use one of her beats in the show, but Esther keeps refusing. Louise says it’s Esther’s loss, and asks about the puppet she saw. Dot explains that is Vladikus, and warns Louise not to let Esther catch her looking at the puppet (to which Louise says “too late”). Louise asks if Esther was jealous she couldn’t make that puppet, but is surprised when Dot says she did make it. Dt shows Louise a newspaper clipping of a young Esther circa the 1970s with Vladikus and how she used to make all sorts of crazy puppets. But she says Esther just one day stopped.
 
At the restaurant, Bob and Linda see the young guy freaking out and Bob geos out to check on him. The flyer guy is upset because his roommate refused to give Karat a suppository, and now he has to leave to administer it otherwise the ferret will die. Bob is happy since it means he’ll leave, but the guy tells him he’ll be fired and cannot risk his boss checking on him. He asks Bob to hand out the flyers, and before Bob knows it, he is wearing the vets and hat, holding the flyers as the guy runs off and promises to be back. Linda asks Bob what happened, and refuses a flyer from Bob.
 
At the theater, Esther and the volunteers give the kids their scripts, which are really more “Mad Libs” types dialogues with blank spaces for names. In the etch booth, Louise makes a Vladikus lookalike puppet out of electrical cords, tape, and a plastic cup, and gives it an awkward dance to one of Dot’s beats. 
 
Outside the restaurant, Bob, now fully dressed in the rave guy’s outfit, is trying to hand out rave flyers to people on the street to no success. Linda points out that he shouldn’t be doing this, but suggests he at least be more confident, and “flick” the flyers into people’s hands (after admitting that she flicks her boogers while in bed into the radiator, to Bob’s disgust). Bob does get some flyers passed out with a confident flick technique.
 
In the theater, Louise steps out of the tech booth, which Tina tells her she can’t, before Esther tells Louise to go back in, before seeing the “scrap pile” she has. Esther points out that Louise didn’t come up with the design herself, and Louise admits she borrowed a few ideas from Vladikus, and asks what is her problem. Esther states Louise is her problem, and says that by Louise’s attitude, she is both a lot of people’s problems, and doesn’t want to be there. Louise yells back that no one wants to be there, including apparently Esther, to everyone’s shock. She asks who does the same show for 30 years, and is given numerous examples of musicals, before she proclaims the theater a “soul-sucking cycle of suck.” Esther in turn bans Louise from the puppet theater, and Mr. Frond tells her to go sit on the bus with Ms. LaBonz Louise storms out while her siblings note that they didn’t stand up for her. 
 
On the bus outside, Louise is complaining while M. LaBonz tells her to be quiet since she is in trouble. While LaBonz plays a phone game called Dippin’ Chips, Louise asks her if all grown-ups give up and become awful, but LaBonz is too into the game and gives a half-hearted answer about some of them getting better (like her). In the theater, Jimmy jr., Zeke, Tammy and Jocelyn give their play, which they forgot to fill in the last blank space for. Tina and gene want to sneak out to see if Louise is okay, but Esther and frond are blocking the exits. Ron offers to help them, as he believes Esther was too hard on Louise and everyone else. He gets the two past Frond and Esther by pretending to take a Christmas backdrop outside to shake off a spider and hiding them behind the backdrop. 
 
On the bus, Louise is bored when her siblings show up. She asks them to get her out of there, so she can “tangle some strings” despite Tina’s hesitation. She drops out of the bus window onto the two, using her shoes and the electrical cords from the tech booth to make it appear to LaBonz that she is still there. The three run into the theater.
 
Bob is still successfully passing out flyers when Linda asks him to come back inside, but he wants to stay, in case the guy’s boss checks in, and talks about he is actually good at this. But then his good mood dissipates when Jimmy Pesto sees him from across the street and calls over Trev to mock Bob. Linda yells form across the street that Bob is helping out someone with a sick ferret (after mistaking it for a carrot), and Bob says he doesn’t care what Jimmy thinks, until he drops the flyers, which then are blown away by a passing car. Bob finally has enough and says he is done.
 
In the theater, the trio sneak back inside the lobby, and Louise gets into the “Do not Enter” room. She then sneaks to the tech booth and tells Dot there are new cues for the next show, Gene and Tina’s. Esther accompanies the two with a blank human puppet, and gives the go-ahead to Dot. But then the lights dim, fog machines start going (to Rudy’s horror, as he was told there would not be any), and a beat going, which the kids in the audience like. Louise then appears on stage, holding Vladikus, to Esther’s surprise. The two begin to have an old-fashioned puppet battle.
 
The two circle the other on the stage, each holding a puppet and serving as their hypothetical voice. Esther doubts Louise can handle Vladikus, but Louise as Vladikus, accuses her of locking up the puppet for 30 years. Esther as the puppet man says that Vladikus wouldn’t understand, but they cannot hear, and Louise asks Dot to turn the volume down. Esther admits that she gave up at some point and the puppets stopped talking to her, and so put her favorites away and stuck with the easier shows. Louise is a bit crestfallen, thinking that it all goes away, that people put away their puppets and kids stop playing with their favorite toys. Esther/puppet says that maybe it didn’t have to be, and it only goes away if you let it. Esther has the puppet pet Vladikus and she says how much she missed it, and apologizes for putting it away (with Tammy and Jocelyn in the audience thinking the puppets are going to make out). Louise hands Esther Vladikus, and Louise tells Dot to turn up the fog machines and the music; Dot obliges. 
 
Esther dances and flies Vladikus around, which even Frond says is beautiful; however, Dot turns up the fog machines too high, making it impossible to see anything, and Esther ends up falling and crashing. Later outside, Esther is taken to an ambulance in a gurney while Dot apologizes and learns from the EMTs that she will be fine, just a few bruised ribs. Louise runs over to the ambulance and give Vladikus to Esther. Esther thanks her and says she is glad they had the puppet battle, and that she should change things up at the theater, before asking the others if they saw Vladikus wink at her (and the EMTs admit they gave her some drugs). 
 
At the restaurant, Bob is cleaning up when the guy comes back and asks why he’s not handing out flyers, and Linda blurts out that Bob dropped the flyers. The guy panics, and just as Bob says no one will check on him, the guy’s boss shows up and asks why he’s not out front. Linda and Bob cover for him by saying he did pass out all the flyers. As the boss says to past hem out the same time and location the next day, Bob stops him and suggest the guy would do better handing out flyers in front of Jimmy Pesto’s, with Linda helping sell it. The boss agrees and even offers to send two guys the next day.
 
On the school bus ride back, Tina asks sLousie if she wants to become a volunteer puppeteer, since she has the moves, but Louise refuses, since there are only so many times one can reunite an old lady with her favorite puppet. She will however, keep the electrical cord dragon puppet and have it battle Kuchi Kopi at home. Tina asks if Dot let her keep the stuff from the tech booth; realizing she hadn’t, Louise hesitantly says yes, and then suggests they all sit quietly and stare ahead for the rest of the ride.
==Videos==
Tina Walks In On Louise Season 9 Ep. 18 BOB'S BURGERS
Mr. Frond Welcomes The Kids To The Puppet Show Season 9 Ep. 18 BOB'S BURGERS
Bob Doesn't Want Flyers Handed Out In Front Of The Restaurant Season 9 Ep. 18 BOB'S BURGERS
==External links==
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Category:Episodes
Category:8ASA Episodes
Category:Season 9 Episodes
Category:2019 Episodes
Category:Episodes Written by Katie Crown
Category:Episodes Directed by Ryan Mattos