For a good long while now, Bob’s Burgers has displaced The Simpsons as my favorite animated series of all time (and, to tell the truth, it may also be my favorite TV show right now, period). While Simpsons went into a sad and depressing dive into tired cameos while giving up the honest dynamic between its main characters, Bob’s Burgers has stayed true to its core — and that core is family. The Belchers are low-income entrepreneurs whose greatest strength is the love and support that Bob, Linda, Tina, Gene, and Louise show to each other.

Even when they’re getting into the minutia of life or truly bizarre situations.

These are the people that I want to hang out with at the end of my day, and so for a while now I’ve wanted to review the series, season by season. And perhaps the strangest and most difficult season to discuss is its first, which debuted with a 13-episode run in 2011.

What’s always jarring to me when I go back to this season is how it’s not quite there yet. It’s not quite the Bob’s Burgers that the series would become in seasons two onward. The animation and designs are a little different in spots (particularly with Linda’s head and Gene’s hair). There’s an overreliance on EXTREEEEEME closeups. Eldest son Daniel had been changed into eldest daughter Tina between pilots, and as a result, her character doesn’t quite land yet.

And probably the biggest difference on display is that season 1 tends to dip into subjects that are a bit more… risqué, shall we say, than successive seasons. I mean, it’s no Family Guy or South Park or anything, but you can see the writers flirting with shock comedy when they start the series with the accusation that the Belchers are cooking people into their burgers, or have Bob drive transvestite prostitutes around as a side job, or spend an entire episode focused on the butts of animals. Again, it’s not horribly offensive, but it’s clearly experimenting around with the kind of comedy that the show wanted to have, and a mere season later, this sort of thing was largely toned down.

So let’s take an overview of the season itself. The show centers around the Belchers, who live in a small apartment above a burger joint that makes up the main job for both Bob and Linda. Bob’s passionate about making good food and bad puns, while Linda… well, Linda’s kind of like an unrestrained id who over-loves her kids and seems to exist to annoy me. Out of all of the characters in this show, I like Linda the least, and she’s far more grating in the first few seasons than anywhere else.

Then there are the kids. Tina is a horse-loving, boy crazy dork who has a delightful array of noises and habits (including thrashing around in her sleep and doing a monotone groan when her brain is locking up out of fear or uncertainty). Gene is a genuinely weird kid who pounds away on his keyboard and says the odd stuff that kids often say. And Louise is an evil mastermind who just so happens to be a total Daddy’s Girl.

And again, they all love and support each other. I know that doesn’t seem like a big thing, but consider how many shows often have families at each other’s throats and scheming against each other. The Belchers? They’re family “from the womb to the tomb,” as Gene says.

The first season is a mixed bag in quality. There are a few stinkers here that I hate to put myself through, particularly “Burger War” (which is a very unfunny foundation for the rivalry between Bob and a pizzeria owner across the street), the dull “Torpedo,” and “Hamburger Dinner Theater,” which only serves to frustrate me with every plot point. As this is an early point in the series’ evolution, a lot of secondary characters are completely missing — for instance, most of the other kids at the school — which is keenly felt in these episodes.

However, there are some real gems here. I do like the odd pilot “Human Flesh” for its rapid-fire dialogue. “Art Crawl” gave us the delightfully batty Aunt Gale, who is one of my favorite side characters. Seeing Bob get stranded in his home’s own walls in “Crawl Space” and Linda try to force the family to run a Bed and Breakfast both feel like episodes that would fit in well with later seasons. And for an episode that pushes the peculiar barrier past the limit, “Sacred Cow” is like a fever dream masterfully told.

I’ve seen a lot of first seasons that I cannot stand to rewatch, but that never seems to be the case with Bob’s Burgers. Whenever I finish a full run of the show, I’ll gladly turn the clock back to Season 1, Episode 1 to start all over again. After all, any unsettling feelings I have here are quickly gone considering that this is just a half-season in length — and even so, there are a lot of great moments and classic quotes to enjoy.