SpongeBob SquarePants (Seasons 1-5, 9-present)
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SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television created by the late, great marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It has aired since May 1, 1999.
Plot
The character-driven toon chronicles the nautical and sometimes nonsensical adventures of SpongeBob, an incurably optimistic and earnest sea sponge, and his undersea friends. Dwelling a few fathoms beneath the tropical isle of Bikini Atoll in the sub-surface city of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob lives in a two-story pineapple. Instead of taking the logical approach to everyday challenges, SpongeBob approaches life in a wayward and unconventional way. Whether searching for the ultimate spatula to perfect his burger flipping technique at the Krusty Krab or just hanging out with his best friend Patrick (an amiable starfish), SpongeBob's good intentions and overzealous approach to life usually create chaos in his underwater world.
Why These Seasons Rock
- It's one of the most popular and iconic cartoons on kids' television.
- Very talented voice actors, such as Tom Kenny. Special mention to when he does amazing impressions of characters in "Mimic Madness".
- Great songs, such as "Sweet Victory" from Band Geeks.
- Nickelodeon's animation in its purest form.
- Is never afraid to handle serious topics at times, examples include:
- "Suds" handles the subject of self medication.
- "Just One Bite" handles the subject of addiction.
- "Plankton Paranoia" handles the subject of paranoia and anxiety.
- "Squirrel Jokes" deals with the subject of stereotypical and racist jokes in a kids' show.
- "Squid's Day Off" deals with obsessive compulsive disorder.
- "Nasty Patty" deals with the subject of murder, even though the Health Inspector wasn't really murdered. Not from what Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob thought.
- The characters have very distinct personalities, which give them a lot of charm.
- SpongeBob is the happy-go-lucky protagonist.
- Patrick is SpongeBob's dimwitted, yet good-natured friend.
- Squidward is SpongeBob's vain and grouchy neighbor.
- Mr. Krabs is SpongeBob's money-obsessed boss.
- Plankton is the short-tempered villain.
- Sandy is the smart and tough newcomer.
- Mrs. Puff is the beleaguered boating teacher.
- Karen is Plankton's sensible computer wife.
- Pearl is Mr. Krabs' bratty teenage daughter.
- Gary is SpongeBob's loyal pet snail.
- Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are affectionate parodies of Batman and Robin.
- There are so many great, hilarious and memorable episodes, such as:
- "Help Wanted"
- "Band Geeks"
- "Chocolate with Nuts
- "Pizza Delivery
- "My Pretty Seahorse"
- "Dying for Pie"
- "That's No Lady"
- "Idiot Box"
- "Have You Seen This Snail?"
- "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve"
- "Pest of the West" (depending on your view)
- "Mimic Madness"
- "SB-129"
- "Fear of a Krabby Patty"
- "Sailor Mouth"
- "Club SpongeBob"
- "What's Eating Patrick?"
- "Unreal Estate"
- "Roller Cowards"
- "Imitation Krabs"
- "No Free Rides"
- "My Leg!"
- "Karen's Virus"
- "Doodle Dimension"
- "The Krusty Bucket"
- "Plankton's Pet"
- "Big Pink Loser"
- "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic"
- "The Camping Episode"
- "Skill Crane"
- "Karate Choppers"
- "Best Day Ever" (depending on your view)
- "Plankton Paranoia"
- "The Original Fry Cook"
- "Krusty Towers"
- "Wet Painters"
- "SpongeBob in RandomLand"
- "Karate Island" (depending on your view)
- "Squirrel Record"
- "Goodbye, Krabby Patty?"
- "Feral Friends"
- "Goo Goo Gas"
- "Snowball Effect"
- "The Secret Box"
- "Pizza Delivery"
- "Squid Noir"
- "Welcome to the Chum Bucket"
- "F.U.N."
- "Ripped Pants"
- "MuscleBob BuffPants"
- "New Digs"
- "Krabs a la Mode"
- "Home Sweet Pineapple"
- "Tea at the Treedome"
- "Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy(s) I, II, III, V, & VI"
- "Whale of a Birthday" (depending on your view)
- "Sing a Song of Patrick"
- "Patrick-Man!"
- "Krabs vs. Plankton"
- "Wishing You Well"
- "The Chaperone"
- "New Leaf"
- "Just One Bite"
- "Krusty Krab Training Video"
- "Squidville"
- "Le Big Switch"
- "The Lost Mattress"
- "Karen's Baby"
- "Mind the Gap"
- "The Algae's Always Greener"
- "Plankton's Army"
- "Spy Buddies"
- "Reef Blower"
- "Boat Smarts"
- "Bulletin Board"
- "Patty Hype"
- "The Two Faces of Squidward"
- "Scaredy Pants"
- "Valentine's Day"
- "Shanghaied"
- "Ugh"
- "Selling Out"
- "Enemy In-Law"
- "Dunces and Dragons"
- "Patrick SmartPants"
- "Girls' Night Out"
- "To Save a Squirrel" (depending on your view)
- "Whale Watching"
- "Bubbletown"
- "Krusty Kleaners"
- "Scavenger Pants"
- "Squidtastic Voyage" (depending on your view)
- "Bucket Sweet Bucket"
- "Hocus Pocus" (depending on your view)
- "The Krusty Sponge"
- "Bummer Vacation" (depending on your view)
- "The Fry Cook Games"
- "The Battle of Bikini Bottom" (almost similar to Sand Castles in the Sand)
- "Mermaid Man vs. SpongeBob"
- "Night Light" (depending on your view)
- "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom"
- "Friend or Foe"
- "Pat the Horse"
- Beside SpongeBob himself who first appeared in Help Wanted in season 1 and other characters like Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs, many other characters made their debuts including Sandy and Plankton in later episodes.
- A lot of the title cards and time cards are creative. There was even a funny joke made with them in "Wet Painters", when Patrick says "Can you hurry it along? I'm out of time cards."
- Shares some elements with "Rocko's Modern Life" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show". Which makes sense, as some of the SpongeBob crew worked on those shows before coming to work on SpongeBob.
- Ever since the second half of Season 9 and most of the first half, the show has improved dramatically after its decline in quality and there have been a lot of unique episode plots that haven't been done before.
- The animation has also improved a lot and matches the style of zany cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation (especially the ones that Adam Paloian worked on) such as cartoons done by Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Ward Kimball, and many others.
- The Japanese Dub is just as good as the original English version.
- It's very funny, which explains all the memorable quotes and internet memes it spawned.
- The background music is Hawaiian-style ukulele, which matches the show's underwater aesthetic and is very calming to listen to, with a lot of memorable tracks such as "Grass Skirt Chase".
- It had two Christmas specials: "Christmas Who" and "It's A SpongeBob Christmas", which both were really good.
- It also had a two part stop-motion Halloween special called "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom", which is also good for it's top notch stop-motion animation, the same stop-motion animation from "It's a SpongeBob Christmas".
Bad Qualities
- Out of all the ten main characters, Mr. Krabs is most likely the least tolerable due to a perceived exaggeration of his parsimony throughout the series' run.
- Seasons 6-8 weren't well received for a number of reasons.
- There are even some bad episodes before and after Seasons 6-8, such as:
- "I Was a Teenage Gary"
- "Grandma's Kisses" (depending on your view)
- "Good Neighbors"
- "Fungus Among Us"
- "All That Glitters"
- "The Great Snail Race"
- "Sportz?" (depending on your view)
- "Driven to Tears"
- "Rule of Dumb"
- "Krabby Land"
- "The Thing"
- "Jolly Lodgers"
- "The Fish Bowl"
- "Spongebob's Bad Habit"
- "Wigstruck"
- "Squirrel Jelly"
- "To Love A Patty"
- "Atlantis SquarePantis"
- “Little Yellow Book”
- "I'm With Stupid"
- "Squid Wood"
- "Funny Pants"
- "SpongeBob You're Fired!"
- "House Worming"
- "Ink Lemonade" (the most infamous of the post-sequel era)
- "Squid Baby"
- "New Student Starfish" (depending on your view)
- "Dumped"
- "Party Pooper Pants"
- "The Sponge Who Could Fly"
- "What Ever Happend to Spongebob?"
- "Breath of Fresh Squidward"
- "Because of all the bad episodes, all episodes from SBSP were banned from being posted on the Terrible TV Shows Wiki due to them cluttering the website, they were later relocated to the Horrible TV Show Episodes Wiki.
- The first two TV movies, “Atlantis SquarePantis” and “Truth or Square”, were not well received. In the former’s case, it’s due to the executives forcing the crew to make it a TV movie, resulting in pointless songs and six character arcs. In the latter’s case, it’s due to the blatant bait-and-switches. As a result of negative reviews that these two movies got, Nickelodeon made no more movies for the show after “Truth or Square”. However, later in 2019, “SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout” aired for the series’ twentieth anniversary in July and was a well received TV movie, with some calling it a perfect apology for “Truth or Square”.
- While the animation is generally great, it isn't always perfect and has some hiccups.
- Season 1's animation is in traditional cell form. While it does look good, it's still not as good as the animation from Season 2 onwards, which are done in digital ink-and-paint.
- Season 2's animation is filled with errors and some episodes have color inconsistencies (most notably the episodes with washed-out colors), similarly to season six. Though to be fair, this is understandable since this is the very first season to use digital ink-and-paint animation.
- Season 4's animation starts off looking a bit clunky and inconsistent, but gets better as the season progresses.
- The animation went downhill in Seasons 6-8. While it doesn't look terrible, it has a lot of issues that weren't present in Seasons 1-5.
- Season 6 arguably has the worst animation in the entire series, as it suffers from washed-out colors, unappealing character designs, disturbing facial expressions, and way too many close ups of gross-out humor.
- Season 7's animation is really dull, weak, unimaginative, unappealing and is almost as washed-out as Season 6.
- Season 8's animation, while a slight improvement over that of Seasons 6 and 7, sometimes has frame rate issues.
- The animation for Season 11 onwards, while great, has a lot of weird and/or messed-up looking facial expressions. "Krabby Patty Creature Feature", in particular, while it does a decent job, uses this over the top.
- The earlier seasons have a poor blend of CGI and 2D animation, especially for its time.
- Some jokes in the pre-movie era are (poorly) covered-up innuendos, such as…
- SpongeBob watching a sea anemone in the episode "Your Shoe's Untied", which is basically a metaphor for watching pornography.
- In the episode "Gary Takes a Bath" SpongeBob warns Gary not to drop the "doubloons" (soap) and then winking making a reference to prison rape, which got that episode banned in the UK.
- Finally, in Texas, SpongeBob said "Patrick, your genius is showing", and Patrick obviously thought he said "penis" and said "Where?!".
- The episode, "The Kwarantined Krab", was delayed and skipped from the Season 12 DVD by Nickelodeon in the US due to them claiming the episode has "coincidental similarities to the COVID-19 pandemic", yet this episode was produced in 2019 before the pandemic ever even started on March 13th, 2020.
- Which not only it shows Nickelodeon is really wimpy with getting this episode aired in America at all, but it also shows evidence that Nickelodeon does not care or respect the intelligence of the fans of SpongeBob or even their audience. Let alone showing no care about the episode everyone wanted to see.
Critical Reception
SpongeBob SquarePants has received universal critical acclaim, being praised for its appeal to different age groups, and the show has earned numerous awards and accolades throughout its run. James Poniewozik of Time magazine described the title character as "the anti-Bart Simpson, temperamentally and physically: his head is as squared-off and neat as Bart's is unruly, and he has a personality to match—conscientious, optimistic and blind to the faults in the world and those around him.
Videos
Trivia
- Season 1 is the only season to be animated using cel animation; later seasons would use digital inking and painting animation.
- Many people already know the fact that in the episode "Sleepy Time", SpongeBob's and Mr. Krabs' driver licenses are seen, revealing that the former was born on July 14th, 1986 and the latter on November 30th, 1942, making them around 34 and 78 years old, respectively. However, a fact that is largely ignored is that "Sleepy Time" first aired on January 17th, 2000, making SpongeBob 13 years old and Mr. Krabs 57 years old. The franchise as a whole started on May 1st, 1999, which would make SpongeBob 12 and Mr. Krabs 56. Plankton would also be 56, as he was shown to have been born around the same time as Mr. Krabs in the Friend or Foe episodes. On "Whale of a Birthday", it was revealed that Pearl turned 16 on May 12, 2006, meaning she is currently 30 years of age. In the Kamp Koral sneak peek she was a baby which reveals that KK: SBUY takes place in 1990 or 1991.
- It should be noted though that SpongeBob and Pearl Krabs are supposed to be adults in the show.
- There is going to be a spin-off called Kamp Koral - SpongeBob's Under Years. The spin-off, however, is already receiving backlash from fans, and even Paul Tibbitt (the showrunner from Season 4 to the first half of Season 9) for “disrespecting Hillenburg’s legacy”, as Hillenburg is often said as not wanting any spinoffs to happen, despite the fact that he actually said he didn't see any spinoffs happening. Rob Renzetti also criticized the spinoff. Said spinoff is referenced in Sponge on the Run.
- Creator Stephen Hillenburg died at the age of 57 on November 26, 2018, from ALS.
- Stephen Hillenburg created Plankton and Karen as potential villains for the series, but he decided in 1997 that they didn't have much potential and that the "Plankton wants to steal a Krabby Patty" plot would become stale after a while. He wanted to have them be one-off characters, and Nickelodeon suggested hiring a one-time guest star like Bruce Willis for the voice of Plankton. However, staff writer Doug/Mr. Lawrence (who became the voice of Plankton) was convinced that his character had untapped potential; he gave Hillenburg a set of episode outlines about Plankton and Karen, many of which were used throughout the first three seasons. The episodes were popular with the writing team, and Plankton and Karen officially became main characters in the credits of the first theatrical movie. Lawrence considers season three as the first season where Plankton is part of the main cast.
- The main character "SpongeBob" was named because Stephen Hillenburg was worried that people will confuse him for a block of cheese.
- Stephen also wanted to call him "SpongeBoy", and the show SpongeBoy Ahoy, until he learned the name SpongeBoy was trademarked by a cleaning company. This appears in a gag where Mr. Krabs says" Sponge boy, me Bob!"
- Due to its popularity, it spawned merchandise, from DVDs to lunchboxes, to mini shorts, etc.
- The show was going to have a completely different intro with a more action-styled music piece, still images, and no lyrics. The intro was later changed to fit the show's style.
- Mr. Lawrence auditioned for the role of SpongeBob, using the same voice he'd later use for Plankton (which comes across as serious vocal dissonance for anyone more familiar with the character's more famous high-pitched voice).
- Barnacle Boy was originally a character called "Barnacle Bill", a salty old sailor whose body is a piece of log with his head sticking out, similar to Seamus from Family Guy. While he never appears in the show, he's the titular character of the two-part comic "The Ballad of Barnacle Bill" in the SpongeBob comic.
- In early sketches, Plankton was going to be so small that every shot of him would require an off-camera character to hold a magnifying glass over him, but it made acting too difficult, resulting in some artistic liberties being taken with his size.
- SpongeBob was originally designed to resemble an actual sea sponge, but Stephen Hillenburg couldn't do an appealing caricature of one. He went with a synthetic sink sponge instead to give the character a "squeaky clean nerd" appearance, as well as to imply the he's "a square peg trying to fit into a round hole."
- SpongeBob himself is based on Bob the Sponge from Hillenburg's old educational book, "The Intertidal Zone".
- In 1999, Nickelodeon released a press statement summarizing the first four episodes. At the time, these episodes were planned to be released in production order: "Help Wanted," "Tea at the Treedome," "Squeaky Boots," and "Jellyfishing." Sometime in April 1999, Nickelodeon decided to air the episodes in a different order instead; it was called the "packaging order." This order does not relate to production or airing order, and it most notably moved "Squeaky Boots" (the third produced segment overall) to episode 8b, much later than it was produced.
- In 1997, a draft of the pilot episode was completed. This is known today as "Help Wanted".
- According to Vincent Waller, an episode revealing Pearl's mother was written and reached the early development stages; however, Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against solving the mystery and shelved the episode indefinitely.
- This show has spawned theories. One example is that the fish were mutated into people-like after the nuclear testing of Bikini Atoll. Another example is that the secret formula is crab.
- Nick actually wanted the cast to be grade-schoolers instead of adults, due to the success of Hey Arnold!. Hillenburg was so opposed to this that he nearly abandoned the series, until he put SpongeBob in boating school as a compromise.
- Reef Blower was originally intended to have dialogue, but became a dialogue-free episode due to the sound equipment being damaged.
- Storyboard artist Adam Paloian mentioned one episode that had some storyboards, but was ultimately never made. It's called A Day In The Life Of Plankton, a 4-5 minute short with minimal dialogue that would've focused on Plankton when he isn't stealing the formula, just doing mundane things.
- According to Vincent Waller, one of Stephen Hillenberg's original ideas for the series was to have Sandy be SpongeBob's girlfriend. Though they've been ship teased at times, the show ultimately leaves them as really good friends.
- One early design for SpongeBob gave him a green baseball cap, seen at the end of "Home Sweet Pineapple".
- Patrick was intended to be a surly bar owner at one point.
- Squidward originally had eight legs, but the animators thought it made him look too burdened, so they cut them down to six.
- The name of the Krabby Patty was originally going to be the Barnacle Burger.
- At one point, Rob Paulsen auditioned for the voice of SpongeBob. Jess Harnell auditioned as well.
See Also
- The SpongeBob Wiki (aka Encyclopedia SpongeBobia)
- Anti-ScumBob Wiki
- The SpongeBob Wiki's Miraheze counterpart
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