SpongeBob SquarePants

[AquaGGR]

Here's a thread to talk about SpongeBob SquarePants (and it's massive decline in quality and humor).

I used to like the show, before Season 5 or 6 anyways. Season 1 was funny, even though it has a much slower pace and is the only season to be traditionally inked/colored. Season 2 was as funny as the first, and got digitally inked for the first tune. Season 3 was incredibly hilarious and definitely SB's best season. The big movie was the show's Magnum Opus, and a great movie. Season 4 was when the series started going downhill and jumping the shark (mainly due to a change in writers after the movie).

The show started out charming and witty, but has now been turned into a grotesque, disturbing, Nightmare Fuel-ish, boring, unfunny, ADHD show that gets Adored by the Network.

Strangely enough, the show got tons of hype, merchandise, and celebrity cameos from people like Johnny Depp, Patton Oswalt, Amy Poehler, Will Ferrel, Rosario Dawson, David Bowie and Johnny Knoxville AFTER it Jumped the Shark. The show seems highly overrated now, and gets way too much airtime on Nick.

I made a list of the best and worst episodes:

Top 10 Best SpongeBob Episodes:

1. Shanghaied
2. Nasty Patty
3. No Weenies Allowed
4. Band Geeks
5. Dying For Pie
6. The Algae's Always Greener
7. Pizza Delivery
8. The Smoking Peanut
9. Can You Spare a Dime?
10. Naughty Nautical Neighbors

Top 10 Worst SpongeBob Episodes:
(I seriously tried to put some pre-movie episodes on here, but I couldn't. There actually aren't really any bad pre-movie episodes. The Great Snail Race was boring, though)

1. Extreme Spots
2. Face Freeze!
3. Pet or Pests
4. Best Day Ever
5. No Hat For Pat
6. Penny Foolish
7. Keep Bikini Bottom Beautiful
8. Squid's Visit
9. A Pal for Gary
10. Shuffleboarding

 

[D'Snowth]

Why is there so much freakin' discussion about SpongeBob around here?

 

[AquaGGR]

Because it Jumped the Shark so hard we can't help but bring it up in the rant thread.

 

[Drtooth]

I honestly think Rugrats did a lot worse. Especially when they turned the show into a Muppet Babies clone, getting rid of the one thing that was really good about it. The sequences with the parents. Those wonderful adult moments are like the only thing I still enjoy about the show, aside from Chuckie that is.

Still, Spongebob is best watched sparingly. I don't have cable and I don't watch it frequently, so I can't see much of an obvious drop in quality. I see good episodes and okay ones. I will admit I was pretty disappointed by the Wild West special.

I just wish Nick would respect shows that don't automatically reach Spongebob popularity, as Spongebob didn't reach Spongebob popularity until like the second year or so. it's like they liked Tuff Puppy for a while, then they just stopped caring about it.

On the subject, I still like FOP also, but the show has too many new characters, it focuses almost exclusively on Poof and Foop, and just when they finally fixed Timmy's almost sociopathic selfishness, they bring it back again. But Timmy's Dad still cracks me up, and the episode where Dinkleberg pretended to be evil just so he could make Timmy's Dad happy was a surprisingly heart warming masterpiece.

 

[AquaGGR]

Some new SpongeBob episodes are near unwatchable. Face Freeze is a perfect example, the whole episode is nothing but SpongeBob and Patrick making High Octane Nightmare Fuel faces that are way more disgusting than they are funny. There aren't any jokes besides the hideous faces. Also, Patrick and SpongeBob act really obnoxious in the episode, especially when SpongeBob screams "IT'S AWESOME!" at the face that Patrick made. Also, I listed Extreme Spots as the worst SpongeBob episode ever, because it contains no humor or jokes in the episode at all. It's just Spongebob, Patrick, and some random guy voiced by Johnny Knoxville dumpster diving.

 

[Drtooth]

That's the problem with most shows that go on for longer than they should. All the creative talent leaves, leading to new writers who interpret thing differently, and it all leads to some escalating level of sort of understanding the show and said writer's sense of humor. A lot of the original people left after the movie, and they should have stuck around for a while.

Seems that, unlike most shows that get annoying by adding new characters (Dil and that step sister of Chuckie's for example), Spongebob forgets about characters left and right.

Of course, I never seen any of the bad episodes in question. Though I did see something about Spongebob wanting a rare Mermaid Man card and Patrick ruining it for 10 minutes. It's unwatchable from a collector's stand point, but the gags go on far too long to retain the humor.

 

[AquaGGR]

Of course, I never seen any of the bad episodes in question. Though I did see something about Spongebob wanting a rare Mermaid Man card and Patrick ruining it for 10 minutes. It's unwatchable from a collector's stand point, but the gags go on far too long to retain the humor.

I consider that episode good compared to some I've seen.

There's this one recent episode called "Pet or Pests", which is just Nausea Fuel the whole episode. The episode is about SpongeBob finding this disgusting looking fleshy worm, he dubs it "Mr. Wormsy" and takes it home with him. The next part of the episode you find it sprawled out on a piece of newspaper giving birth. SpongeBob thankfully runs out the door in terror. This is just like the first four or five minutes. There's much more grossness after that.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

I'm normally ok with this kind of thing and stuff, but there's this one episode that I can't remember the name of, or what its even about, but Spongebob (I think) is helping Squidward move furniture and the couch gets dropped on Squidwards toe and his toenail is dug out and that scene is incredibly hard to watch and painful.

 

[mr3urious]

The post-movie episodes are really obsessed with the Squidward torture porn. In episodes like "Jellyfishing" and "Club SpongeBob", his punishments were funny and justified in some way. But then there are episodes like "House Fancy" (with said hideous toenail ripping) and "Slide Whistle Stooges" (where Bob and Pat's childlike behavior is Flanderized to the breaking point) that just go too far in screwing poor Squiddy over. And the former was written by Aaron Springer of all people, the writer of the beloved "Band Geeks" that threw him a huge bone!

However, I do like a few post-movie episodes. A few are "The Abrasive Side", where SpongeBob literally and figuratively gets an abrasive side and becomes more assertive, including chewing out Mr. Krabs. It could be because one of the pre-movie writers, Mr. Lawrence, contributed to the script.

 

[Drtooth]

I'm normally ok with this kind of thing and stuff, but there's this one episode that I can't remember the name of, or what its even about, but Spongebob (I think) is helping Squidward move furniture and the couch gets dropped on Squidwards toe and his toenail is dug out and that scene is incredibly hard to watch and painful.

Sounds an awful lot like some post-Spumco Ren and Stimpy episodes... they just didn't know what the heck they were doing with the characters, and read too much into the wrong things. You'll note that the post-Spumco ones are actually more reliant on gross out humor than the earlier ones which were more subtle.

Of course, Spongebob took longer to get sour. Sure, there are some perfectly good Post-Spumco episodes, like Stimpy's Cartoon Show and Hermit Ren's okay... but you have that one where they were adopted by an old woman, and that was just a generic, crappy cartoon that could have featured any semi-anthro animal cartoon duo.