Fictional Women Around the World: Tina Belcher

Tina Belcher is a teenage girl who is unapologetically who she is - an awkward romantic who likes butts. We dish on this fan favorite Bob's Burgers character.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I' ho come to
stuff one never told you a prediction of iHeartRadio And
today welcome to another sub sub sub sub sub sub segment,
Fictional women around the World. Yes, and for this one,

(00:26):
shout out to my friend Katie, who has been on
the show, because today we are talking about one of
her favorite characters from one of her very favorite shows,
Tina Belcher from the ongoing animated comedy Bob's Burgers. Of course,
I actually had to check that we hadn't already done this.
I think it's just kind of gotten woven in a

(00:47):
couple of times we have not covered her. Also, I
haven't told Katie I'm doing this episode because I'm worried
I'm gonna let her down. Oh yes, I'm sure you
would never. I'm gonna do my best because I have
not seen it. I've only seen a handful of episodes
through Katie. I will say before we get into this,

(01:11):
you can go see or hear more accurately the savorite
episode we did on the food of Bob's Burgers, and
that has a more general history of the show and
also of course delves into the wonderful food puns because
there is a food pun in every episode at least one.

(01:34):
So yes, even though I haven't seen a show, I
am very familiar with it because of my friend Katie.
It is her comfort show. She calls it her Bob's
and through her, I have now gone to not one,
but two Bob's Burgers drag Brunches. Dressed as Tina. She
told us we were dressing as Tina. So we all

(01:56):
dressed as Tina, our whole crew. There's probably like eight
to ten of us. We were a table of Tinas.
That's what they called us. This time. We up the game.
The second time, which happened like a couple of weeks ago,
we really upped the game too, Like got the costume
down pat more and she Katie gave me like super

(02:20):
cartoony glasses. I loved them and I looked right. Yes, yes, fantastic.
We had the burrett, we had the whole thing. We
looked good. We looked good, and we got a lot
of like looks and comments while we were walking around
as a group of like ten people dressed the same way.

(02:43):
It's fantastic anyway, Okay, So Tina is the oldest child
of Bob and Linda, Belcher and Bob and Linda run
a restaurant called Bob's Burgers with their family. She's the
older sibling of Gene and Louise. She is perpetually thirteen
and in eighth grade, just the way kind of cartoons

(03:06):
always stay in that one state. You know. She's awkward
but owns it. She's romantic. She likes butts and writing
erotic fiction and what she calls friend of fiction, which
is fan fiction the friends in it, yeah, sometimes about
her own life. Her primary crush is Jimmy Pesto Junior,

(03:29):
which is fun because Jimmy Pesto is her father's enemy.
But she goes through a lot of crushes, including with
a goose and a ghost, the members of her favorite band,
Boys for Now, a band she is Boys for Now,
which is she's also in the fan club and I

(03:50):
believe the secretary of the fan club. The character is
voiced by Dan Mintz and very The lines are delivered
very flat and monotoned, typically, and she does have a
pretty iconic look. She's got a black bob haircut, thick
black glasses, a light blue T shirt, dark blue skirt,

(04:10):
red striped white sox, and black high top. Shoes, and yes,
the yellow Brett. This show is going on like its
sixteenth season, so obviously we cannot cover all the shenanigans
that Tina gets up to. Also, it's like this is
kind of different than any other one I've ever done,

(04:31):
because it's not there's not like an overarching plot, Like
there are plot lines that continue in plot lines that
continue over multiple episodes, but generally every episode is kind
of a twenty minute ish contained adventure, and there is
character growth and development, but it's not like I can

(04:52):
give you the here's the moment where this happened, and
this happened, but we all try to hit on some
cu character points. So very basically, if you don't know,
the show follows the Belchers and their friends and enemies
as they navigate their lives and relationships. There are, yes,

(05:12):
a lot of food puns involved, and the vibe is
generally very funny, heartfelt sweet because Tina is at that
messy adolescent age. She retains some of her innocent childhood
loves like rainbows and horses, while also entering a phase
of thinking about boys and sex and butts and also

(05:34):
like ankles and stuff, like she's she's into stuff Okay, yeah.
A lot of her plotlines do involve her getting into
trouble while chasing after a crush. Since she's very awkward
as well, her efforts can be pretty funny but also
very endearing. It's it's much more of a we're laughing

(05:55):
with her than laughing at her situation. She has a
very strong sense of right and wrong, which can be
a big driver for her character. As the oldest child,
she sometimes acts as almost the third parent caring for
her siblings, and it's usually kind of it seems like
she knows more about her siblings than her parents do,

(06:15):
which I think is the case for a lot of people.
She's genuinely pretty confident in herself too. She does have
moments of doubt, but she's generally pretty confident, so sometimes
she learns lessons around holding on to that confidence in episodes.
For example, once she caved to peer pressure and shaved

(06:36):
her legs and then later regretted it, feeling that she
did it for the wrong reasons, not because she wanted to,
because people told her she had to. She calls herself
a smart, strong, sensual woman. Tina is close with her
family members, and their relationships are the heart of the show,
I would say as the oldest, her dad bob off

(07:00):
and wants her to experience rites of passages, our rituals
from his own childhood. When she helps out at the restaurant,
she's the only one he trusts with flipping the burgers,
though he does not trust her with customer service. Both
her care always big on TikTok. Really, yeah, the whole
autistic she's autistic. No, I'm not. Yes, sure count the toothpicks. Yeah, yes,

(07:26):
I almost went into that because I was like, there's
a whole section about that in her character biography, and
I was like, well, this is too much, too unpack
for me. But yes, that is a whole conversation about
autism versus is she just awkward? But she does have
a lot of like she has a lot of things uh.

(07:49):
Or she like groans when she gets really nervous or anxious. Uh,
she like shuts down certain cases, she hides under tables.
Like there's a lot of stuff people have been talking
about with their character. But yes, that is a quote.
That is a thing that happened in the show. So

(08:18):
both her parents do experience sadness about Tina growing up. Linda,
her mom, sometimes embarrasses Tina, but is very very supportive
of her, including her crushes, barring Jimmy Pesto Junior. She
thinks she can do better than Jimmy Pesto Junior obviously,

(08:38):
and is very protective of Tina. It seems that while
all the siblings do hang out, it's usually more Gene
and Louise getting into trouble, with Gene occasionally siding with
Tina if Louise has gone too far. If you don't know,
Louise is like the chaos agent. So, but they do
all hang out, like even though their ages are I

(08:59):
believe Louise is four years younger than Tina, they still
hang out at school. Tina likes sharing her interest with Louise,
who is very good at manipulating Tina. Tina often acts
as Louise is conscious, however, and teaches her like important
lessons this is why you shouldn't do this to someone

(09:20):
type thing. Yes, yes, and she does have she does
have a friend group. She's got like a frenemy Tammy,
and she has like a funny line somewhere about like
this is my only chance at a peer group. So
she has a friend group. But I feel like in
the show, her family dynamic is more important. But yeah,

(09:44):
she is a very popular character. Here is a quote
from The Artifice, an article by Priyanka Prasade titled the
Significance of Tina to Bob's Burger's. Tina's comedy largely stems
from the fact that she remarks about so not often
broached by thirteen year old girls on television. She is
unashamed about her sexuality. She often fantasizes about boys butts,

(10:08):
and writes erotic friend fiction about her crush Jimmy Junior.
Her obsession with boys is not completely naive or innocent. Instead,
it translates into bizarre scenarios. She dreams about zombies making
out with each other, and of an island where she
can kiss as many boys as she wants. The show

(10:28):
unapologetically delves into what being a thirteen year old girl
really feels like, despite how occasionally odd and uncomfortable it
may be. Tina is socially awkward and quirky and at
times inappropriate, but always utterly unafraid to be herself. This
kind of reminded me of when we did Turning Red.
I was thinking of that too as our feminist Maybe

(10:50):
friday yev kind of the examination of that stage where
you've got your crushes and you're you're still young, but
you're also starting to experience like, ooh, let me withdraw
this a kind of erotic picture of my crush. And

(11:11):
we have as a society, we've been very uncomfortable with it.
We don't talk about it, and that's why it does
stand out when there is a character like this. And
I thought this was interesting. Apparently in the Unaired pilot,
she was originally going to be a boy, and they
kept some of the lines despite the change. So here's

(11:34):
another quote from the Artifice. For example, her very first
line in the pilot is that her crotch is itchy,
A joke that is funny, though overdone for a teenage boy,
suddenly becomes unconventional, slightly shocking, and even funnier when written
for a teenage girl. I agree. And another thing, as

(11:58):
I said, it's very much a lie being with her,
not at her situation. The whole show is kind of
like that, not just this character, but the importance of
her family celebrating who she is. Her likes her fan fiction,
which I believe they get her to read in one episode,
like they're celebrating it, and they're supporting her. There's like

(12:20):
one I have seen that episode where her dad, like
inful traits a basically kind of a broney scenario, like
my little pony scenario to get her a toy that
she really wants because I guess she wasn't allowed. But
they celebrate all those aspects of her. And when I

(12:42):
was reading about it, I saw that a lot of
people wrote about how multifaceted she is. She's not just
a one dimensional stereotypical teenage girl that we often see
on TV, and that she's really heartfelt. She's a really
heartfelt character, and we can all relate to the awkwardness
of puberty, which is where she perpetually is. Yeah, she's

(13:09):
often kind of the heart of the show. She has
the like emotional this is why we'd treat people nicely.
And I can say from personal experience it's the character
is certainly a hit at drag Brunch, and not just us.
Other people were dressed as er as well a lot

(13:31):
of other people. And her character is the second to
last one to perform, which I think, you know, you
saved the best for last. I think that says something
about about how popular Tina is. Well, I hope Katie.
If you listen to this I did a justice. Any listeners,

(13:53):
you can write in and let me know what I'm
missing or why you love this character. If you do,
you can email us at Hello Stuff willevertold You dot com.
You can find us on Plue, Scott Mom Stuff Podcast
on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff Never Told You. We're
also on YouTube. We have some merchandise atcom Bureau and
we have a book you can get where you get
your books. Thanks, It's always too our super produce Christine

(14:15):
and are Excavator prucer My and your contributor Joey. Thank
you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff Will Never
Told You is production of my Heart Radio. For more
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