From a DragonCon panel with the voice of Squidward.
Fan: Growing up watching SpongeBob, my favorite episodes were the older ones compared to the newer ones. And I wanna know, do you prefer the older episodes to the newer ones?
Rodger Bumpass: Now that's a good question, cause I've heard this comment several times and I'm wondering, cause I'm gonna ask you to critique this, what's the difference between the early episodes and the ones you're talking about? Cause it could be you experienced the early episodes when you were a much younger age, and animation was a different animal to you that you got older, smarter, wiser and more perceptive. So I'm wondering what is the real difference? All shows have evolution, writers come and go, and sometimes the new writers are good with keeping what made the initial show good and sometimes they're not, they get away from that. And they get back to it a little later when they realize they made a mistake. So do you have any idea what the initial shows were to let you make that comment?
Fan: I honestly thought they were more clever and funnier the way they went on, like the episode where they got stranded in the forest, and the plane dropped a bunch of supplies. I loved it, it was genus to me. And in the newer episodes like how Plankton does stuff, all that jazz.
Rodger: Yeah, I have to say, one of the things I like about the initial episodes, I'm answering my own question here, was they would do things called an abstraction, where they would take a little action and repeat it over and over until it became funny. Like SpongeBob's laughter. It was simple, not a whole lot of dialog. And the pour writers, as they do with lots of things, they get wordy, and it becomes a sitcom after awhile, and it's not indicative of what a real cartoon is, which is this visual, sound, and voice sort of quality. Plankton's a great example of that. I don't mean to bad-mouth him but, when Plankton's in an episode, he's very verbal. It's just all him talking the entire time, and although it's funny, it's not what cartoons are about. You don't even have to have a cartoon, it could be live-action. So my favorite thing, I think this might be what you're referring to, is that simplicity, that abstraction I just mentioned, that I think is absolutely the essence of SB and that's what we had in the initial episodes. So thank you for helping me answer your question.
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Jim Henson Idea Man
Back to the Rock Season 2
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
