"Home Sweet Pineapple" is an episode that I've never had particularly strong feelings about. It's a good episode, but for the longest time, I've never had much to say beyond that. Now that I've been writing these long episode reviews, I've got a little more practice in fleshing out what I have to say. And here's what I've come up with: "Home Sweet Pineapple" is a good, solid episode. It has humor and emotional moments at the right places. However, there is nothing remarkable about this episode, and it has a rather dull start. Now, let me get into this a little bit.
First, the good. This episode is funny. All the jokes land for me, though none of them really get me rolling on the floor like they have in some of the previous episodes. I liked the whole "is it time to ruin Squidward's day" gag, and the ending with Squidward under the pineapple was pretty funny too. I also did like the SpongeBob trying to sleep at Patrick's scene, though it dragged on just a bit too long for my liking. And in terms of emotional moments, the episode does deliver, with some masterful usage of
South Pacific Island II might I add. I also appreciated seeing more of Gary this episode, you already know I love that snail. This is the first appearance of SpongeBob's parents, and while we don't really get to see much of them, I do appreciate their character design. Lastly, I thought the background art in this episode was very well done, especially with the early morning scenes.
Now, the "bad". That's a bit of a misnomer, as there's nothing really "bad" about this episode in my opinion. There's more just things that didn't quite work for me. Firstly, as I said before, the beginning was a bit slow for me. The nematodes bit just wasn't all that funny for me, so I found that to be a bit dull. The scene with Patrick just kinda kept going long after I thought it would be over. In general, I feel like this episode is an example of what I call the "slowness" of season 1, and in this case that quality just didn't work in its favor.
The episode is still very enjoyable even with these small problems I have with it, and because of that I think it fits right into my "Good" tier. This is the first episode of the show I'm rating with this tier, so perhaps that's a milestone in itself? Well, I guess that sounds a little insulting since "Good" is under "Great" and "Amazing".
Episode Tier: Good
Episode Score: 7/10
