Listen carefully. It’s not jingle bells ringing nearby. No, it’s the roar of a truck getting too damn close! Bob’s Burgers always mixes the absurd with the family support the Belchers give each other, even in the wackiest of times. Season 4’s “Christmas in the Car” is no exception, blending the weirdness the show can pull off into a horror-themed premise and serving it up as one of its creepiest holiday episodes. And just as important as the absurd gags or plot points are, pop culture references are too.
“Christmas in the Car” pays a big homage to director Steven Spielberg, who made beloved movies out of a sweet, homesick alien and a fedora-wearing archaeologist. Bob’s Burgers loves those classics too, but for Season 4, it decided to look to Spielberg’s less talked about project from the 1970s to base an episode around. Five years before he submerged a man-eating shark, the director hit the road for a TV movie about a traveling salesman who realizes a tanker truck is out for blood. It will make you fear passing one of those gas-guzzling monstrosities next time on the highway. Bob’s Burgers makes sure you don’t forget it, by creating a wacky homage that has the Yuletide spirit come nearly crashing into the Belcher family car.
What Is “Christmas in the Car” About?
Linda’s (John Roberts) need for a Christmas tree the day after Halloween, causes it to be “dehydrated and covered in tinseled” halfway through November. Her youngest child, Louise (Kristen Schaal), adds, “sounds like a gay pride parade,” and if anyone has experienced NYC pride during the balmy June heatwave, they will know she is on to something. Tossed into the trash, Linda decides another tree is needed right after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, this means it dies by the time Christmas Eve rolls in. Horrified at the absence of a pine-decorated centerpiece, Linda is frantic to fill in the empty space and forces Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) to drive out and get a healthy one that won’t be a fire hazard. The road trip will not go as planned, that is for sure.
The kids tag along, anticipating the results of their scheme to set a trap for Santa in their apartment’s kitchen when they return. With each Belcher member preoccupied with their concerns, this leaves Bob as the only one to realize the driver of a large candy cane-themed truck has a grudge against the family. Soon though, everyone finds out they are being chased by a peppermint-striped nightmare. Although the hijinks the Belcher clan get themselves into during holiday episodes are mostly wholesome, there are times it slips into depressing storylines or even outright Christmas horror.
A Gloomy Holiday Isn’t Unusual for ‘Bob’s Burgers’
The series has lightened up on the edge it had in earlier seasons. But the original concept for the series was completely different from the wholesome family that fans know. The Belchers were cannibals, with some of the story left in the pilot episode, just with a much different tone. Some darkness has lingered, as seen with the creepiest Halloween they offered in Season 6 or, in no particular order, the other Christmas episodes of the show. The Bleaken is a mythical beast the Belcher kids learn about in Season 8, inspired by the not-so-jolly Krampus.
Another entry has a painfully relatable dilemma where Bob gets into a heated fight with his disapproving father during a holiday party, a conflict that has been years in the making. Season 7’s “The Last Gingerbread House on the Left” is named after the infamous Wes Craven horror film, where there is neighborhood gossip about a mysterious house that is home to a murderous owner, and Bob gets caught in a gun shootout over a gingerbread contest. None of these can beat the strange melancholy found in the show’s first Christmas episode back in Season 3.
A somewhat unhinged man (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) is in love with a mannequin, but the Belchers overlook that odd detail due to the beautiful window displays he creates for them. That is until Bob says the wrong thing, causing the man to create a morbid display where ketchup bottles are supposed to be squirting out “blood.” What should give off the spirit of Miracle on 34th Street, creeps a bit closer to the gore of Silent Night, Deadly Night. However, what these entries don’t have is the maintained sense of danger from “Christmas in the Car” that leans it closer into horror movie territory than Yuletide episodes that have been released before or after. There is a lack of help, thanks to the setting.
The tree stand Linda begs to journey to is an hour away. The Belchers drive there on a snowy, dark, and isolated road where there is a diner as the only rest stop. Typically, no one listening to Bob and making him get flustered is done for laughs; here, the situation builds dread when he’s the only one who knows the approaching candy cane truck in the rearview mirror is up to no good. Like in horror movies, a cop doesn’t help when Bob seeks them out and the family doesn’t have a working phone, thanks to middle child Gene’s (Eugene Mirman) dedication to staying on the line to request a holiday song on the radio. But wait a minute — what does any of this have to do with the connection that this episode has to an early Steven Spielberg thriller? If no one has seen the nail-biting Duel (1971), they might not realize just how much of a direct homage this episode is.
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Spielberg Hits the Gas on a Speed Demon in ‘Duel’
Spielberg, being the famous director he is, has been referenced elsewhere in Bob’s Burgers — Season 3’s “The Deepening” has a mechanical shark prop from a ‘80s B-movie go haywire and destroy the street outside the Belcher restaurant. Before Jaws made everyone fear going into the water, Spielberg turned a tanker truck into a seemingly unstoppable killing machine. In the TV movie Duel, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) encounters a tanker truck going too slow for his liking. Billowing, black smoke coming from the exhaust pipes isn’t helping. He passes it, only for the truck to speed up and pass him. When the trucker waves him on, David sees it as a much-needed gesture of goodwill. He goes to pass, nearly crashing into an oncoming vehicle. David does manage to speed ahead. The problem is, he can’t lose it. The truck finds him. Brody (Roy Scheider) has Bruce the Shark, and without the driver being seen, the tanker truck becomes David’s monster.
David is a husband with a strained relationship with an off-screen wife. When David gets into the cat-and-mouse game with the tanker truck, he survives being run off the road and retreats to a diner (a location the Belchers also retreat to). David grows paranoid when he thinks the trucker could be one of the customers in the same diner. Bob Belcher can’t be so stuck in his head though, his family stops him from that. They ignore his fears over the candy cane truck. After getting run off the road, they retreat to a diner, where Linda desires to get the advertised Dutch Baby pastry, and the kids joke about their dad’s concerns.
David didn’t find any help at his diner, and neither did Bob. There is a grumpy cop who is unbothered and quite frankly annoyed upon hearing about Bob’s statement of surviving road rage. At another point in Duel, David gets stuck helping a school bus. The youths inside are bratty, with too much energy. The camera goes in with close-ups to rack up the tension. The kids make faces in David’s way as he tries to help the bus, all the while he sees the tanker truck lurking in the distance. In Bob’s, no bus with out-of-control kids is needed, not when the Belcher kids instigate everything in the first place.
‘Bob’s Burgers’ Gives a Christmas-Themed Homage to Steven Spielberg
When Bob needs help backing the car out of the tree lot, the kids say he’s clear to do so — without paying attention to what he might hit. The candy cane truck hits on the brakes and presses on the horn. Linda chooses retaliation by hitting the family’s car horn back, angrily beeping out a rendition of “Jingle Bells.” There are plenty of gags to ease the tension. The usual absurdity and humor keep the episode from becoming too menacing. Check out the show’s opening credits. The storefront next to the Belcher’s restaurant constantly gets a new pun and this time it’s an eggnog shop: “Nog Nog Who’s There?” At the tree stands, Linda can only pick from slim options: three sticks with pine needles. Hey, if it worked for Charlie Brown, it could work for the Belchers. Away from the A-story, a B-story involves a luckless handyman and family friend, Teddy (Larry Murphy), getting caught in the kids’ Santa trap.
The episode’s most recognizable piece of Christmas imagery is taken out, with the multiple Christmas trees tossed into the garbage. The candy cane truck replaces it as the main holiday image for the episode. It’s not the first time that candy canes have become deadly. In the movies, the 2006 Black Christmas remake and 2022’s Violent Night used the red-and-white striped piece of candy as a jagged weapon. Leave it to Bob’s Burgers to exaggerate it further with the first depiction of the candy as a gargantuan vehicle hellbent on chasing after a family. It’s a hilarious visual that matches the Yuletide setting without losing the hostility of what hunted down David in Duel. While the truck from Duel looks more like a rusted vehicle leaving Krampus’ netherworld, the candy cane truck appears to be lost on the way to Whoville.
Even though much of the road suspense is taken from Duel, it’s not hard to also see comparisons to an iconic Christmas movie. The driver speeds up when Bob hits the gas and crosses the highway lane to pass the truck. Bob tries to go faster, which the truck does too, and he almost gets into a wreckage when Bob narrowly avoids an oncoming plow. Bob finally gets to pass, finishing a scene similar to Duel, which also resembles the opening of Christmas Vacation with a darker twist. In that holiday classic, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) attempts to pass a truck of rednecks, who speed up to antagonize him. The back-and-forth aggression ends with Clark eventually getting his vehicle, occupied with his family, stuck underneath an 18-wheeler.
It’s the funny moments that help thaw the icy tension. But while Duel hides its driver, the final minutes of “Christmas in the Car” reveal the truck driver and why he’s such a hothead with a short fuse. Linda is at the ready. “Come on, punk!” she shouts. This isn’t Duel though. The driver is ticked off by road rage after spending a lonely Christmas Eve on the highway. Bob de-escalates the situation. He just has to take a punch to the gut to do so. When everyone gets home, the kids are excited that their trap has worked, but it only caught the wrong cookie eater. Teddy gets himself stuck in the Santa trap the kids put together in the fridge and causes the fridge to topple over in his struggle to be free. Obviously, we know our favorite burger-loving family can’t be in too much peril, but holding off to reveal this until the end makes for an effectively creepy holiday episode that pays homage to an underrated Spielberg thriller.
Bob Belcher runs a struggling burger shop with his wife and three children.
- Release Date
- January 9, 2011
- Seasons
- 15
- Network
- FOX
- Streaming Service(s)
- Hulu
Bob’s Burgers is streaming on Hulu.
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