Bob’s Burgers to do one-hour Christmas musical special

Adam Driver will be featured in the holiday episode

Bob’s Burgers always serves up a tasty special holiday episode (“Tina and the Real Ghost,” “The Quirkducers,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins”) but there’s one in the works for later this year that’s extra special.

Creator Loren Bouchard announced at the animated Fox comedy’s Comic-Con panel on Friday that this year’s Christmas episode will be an hourlong special, which marks a first for the show. (Last season, fellow Fox animated comedy The Simpsons offered up an hourlong episode.)

“It should feel almost like a little Christmas movie,” he said. “It’s kind of epic. It’s got an hourlong feel to it.”

He also revealed that Adam Driver would be featured in the special, which is slated to air in December.

The panel also unspooled a sneak peek at the season 8 premiere, a “completely fan-drawn episode,” Bouchard said, featuring a “new style in every scene.” The show solicited fan-animated (fanimated?) from viewers earlier this year in three categories: title sequence animations, background static panel, and character static panel. “It is crazy-making to watch, but it is also incredible,” Bouchard teased. “It’s so fun to hear these guys’ words coming out of a different design.”

When asked by a fan whether any crossovers were in the works, Bouchard said the Bob’s Burgers team was working on a couch gag for The Simpsons. (Bob Belcher previously shared the screen with Homer Simpson in the Simpsons–Family Guy crossover episode in 2014.)

Also being featured in season 8 is the voice of Silicon Valley star Thomas Middleditch, playing a kid named Alex who hosts Gene for his first sleepover. “Gene, as you can imagine, has really horrible time,” Bouchard said.

Season 8 of Bob’s Burgers begins Oct. 1.

Dr. Z. was, easily, the best and most competent doctor or dentist I’ve ever encountered – and after that accident, I encountered quite a number. He came stunningly highly recommended, had an excellent record, and the most calming bedside manner I’ve ever seen.

That last wasn’t the sweet gentle caretaking sort of manner, which some nurses have but you wouldn’t expect to see in a surgeon. No; when Dr. Z. told me that one of my broken molars was too badly damaged to save, and I (being seventeen and still moderately in shock) broke down crying, he stared at me incredulously and said, in a tone of utter bemusement, “But – I am very good.”

I stopped crying on the spot. In the last twenty-four hours or so of one doctor after another, no one had said anything that reassuring to me. He clearly just knew his own competence so well that the idea of someone being scared anyway was literally incomprehensible to him. What more could I possibly ask for?

(He was right. The procedure was very extended, because the tooth that needed to be removed was in bits, but there was zero pain at any point. And, as he promised, my teeth were so close together that they shifted to fill the gap to where there genuinely is none anymore, it’s just a little easier to floss on that side.)

But Dr. Z.’s insane competence wasn’t just limited to oral surgery.

When I met Dr. Z., he, like most doctors I’ve had, asked me if I was in college, and where, and what I was studying. When I say “math,” most doctors respond with “oh, wow, good for you” or possibly “what do you want to do with that after college?”

Dr. Z. wanted to know what kind of math.

I gave him the thirty-second layman’s summary that I give people who are foolish enough to ask that. He responded with “oh, you mean–” and the correct technical terms. I confirmed that was indeed what I meant (and keep in mind, this was upper-division college math, you don’t take this unless you’re a math major). He asked cogent follow-up questions, and there ensued ten or so minutes of what I’d call “small talk” except for how it was an intensely technical mathematical discussion.

He didn’t, as far as I can tell, have any kind of formal math background. He just … knew stuff.

I was a competitive fencer at this point in time, so when he asked if I had any questions about the surgery that would be necessary, I asked him if I’d be okay to fence while I had my jaw wired shut, or if it would interfere with breathing.

“Fencing?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “like swordfighting,” because this is another conversation I got to have a lot. (People assume they’ve misheard you, or occasionally they think you mean building fences.)

“Which weapon?”

“Uh. Foil.”

“No, it won’t be safe,” and he went off into an explanation of why.

Turns out, he was also a serious fencer – and, when I mentioned my fencing coach, an old friend of his. (I asked my fencing coach later, and, oh yes, Dr. Z., a good friend of mine, excellent fencer.) (My coach was French. Dr. Z. was Israeli. I never saw Dr. Z. around the club or anything. I have no idea how they knew each other.)

So this was weird enough that later, when I was home, I looked Dr. Z. up on Yelp. His reviews were stellar, of course, but that wasn’t the weird thing.

The weird thing was that the reviews were full of people – professionals in lots of different fields – saying the same thing: I went to Dr. Z. for oral surgery, and he asked me about what I did, and it turned out he knew all about my field and had a competent and educated discussion with me about the obscure technical details of such-and-such.

All sorts of different fields, saying this. Lawyers. Businessmen. Musicians.

As far as I can tell, it’s not that I just happened to be pursuing the two fields he had a serious amateur interest in – he just seemed to be extremely good at literally everything.

I have no explanation for this. Possibly he sold his soul to the devil.