'Bob's Burgers': New guests and plots reveals

On the heels of Bob’s Burgers recent Best Animated Series Emmy nomination, we caught up with series creator Loren Bouchard and star H. Jon Benjamin to chat about their upcoming third season (premiering Sept. 30 on FOX).

The duo (who’ve worked together before on Dr. Katz and Home Movies) gave us a taste of some of their favorite new plotlines and dished out on the top-notch guests they were able to snag this year — like Jon Hamm, who’ll be playing a talking toilet. “It’s a kind of E.T. homage, but instead of an alien, it’s this high-end talking electronic toilet that falls off a truck and lands in the woods,” says Bouchard. “And Gene [Eugene Mirman] finds it, E.T.-style. It’s kind of a love story between a boy and a toilet.”

And while the series has largely stayed away from holiday episodes so far, that will change in the new season. “There’s a good Thanksgiving one with [recurring guest] Kevin Kline as the weird landlord with the eyepatch,” Benjamin told us. “It’s funny, the family gets co-opted into pretending to be his family so that he can get laid.”

They’ve also got a Christmas episode starring Zach Galifianakis in the pipeline. “He plays this guy who believes he used to be a mannequin,” Bouchard says. “It’s a Christmas episode that’s kind of a very strange take on, like, A Christmas Story meets Mannequin.”

Other guests this season will include a real-life couple who swoop in when the kids find themselves unemployed. “It’s in the second episode of the season,” Bouchard explains. “’Bob Fires His Kids’ is both the name of the episode and what happens in it. And it gets complicated because they get other jobs — Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are the other job. They run this family operation that turns out to be a pot farm.”

And that’s just the start in terms of guest voices. Bouchard offered an impressive list of comedy stalwarts who’ll be dropping by this season: Kurt Braunohler, who’s cast member Kristen Schaal’s actual comedy partner, as “a teenage bully who steals Louise’s [Schaal] bunny ears”; Bob Odenkirk as “a crooked insurance adjustor”; Will Forte as “a douchey middle-school media guy who kind of brings high-end newscasting to Wagstaff Middle School and messes with Tina [Dan Mintz]; David Wain as “a girl who like-likes Gene and is basically Gene’s first girlfriend, even though she’s the most annoying girl in school — she’s always sucking on her necklace, and she sounds like David Wain”; Jeffrey Tambor as “a sea captain in an episode called ‘Mutiny on the Windbreak'”; and Linda Lavin as “a little old lady in a kind of big episode where Bob and the kids visit [Bob’s wife] Linda’s [John Roberts] parents at a retirement community in Florida — but it turns out that the entire retirement community is all swingers, including Lavin.”

There’ll also be plenty return cameos from a number of Bob’s Burgers alums. Gary Cole will return as Sgt. Bosco for the Valentine’s Day special, Bouchard says. “Linda tries to do speed-dating at the restaurant, and Gary’s character comes in and takes over with disastrous results.” And Aziz Ansari‘s memorable neighborhood geek Darryl will “show up in an episode called ‘Nude Beach,'” Bouchard continues. “He gets in on this little business with the kids, who find a hill that overlooks the nude beach. So they charge teenage boys to come and look down at the beach.” Fred Armisen will play a Jersey-accented nude-beach inspector in that episode.

Bouchard also revealed that a lot of familiar voices will be coming back in new roles as well: Paul F. Tompkins returns, “but not as [documentary filmmaker] Randy — as a ventriloquist on the boat, and Eugene develops a crush on this ventriloquist dummy, which is a manatee”; Robert Ben Garant also comes back, but not as [baseball pitcher] Torpedo — he’ll be a biker; and Tim Heidecker‘s services will be requested again, this time “as this bizarre mother-daughter guru who helps mothers and daughters repair their broken relationships.”

Well, that’s certainly a lot to chew on. So what about you, Bob’s Burgers fans — does all of this have you excited for the next season? Which guest voice are you most excited about?

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