“The Krabby Kronicle” is an episode I’ve always had pretty good memories of; I never remember a time where I disliked this episode. And after covering some notorious episodes, I’m definitely happy about this, because I love a good episode that I can simply compliment and move on with. And it feels like it’s been a little bit since we’ve had an episode focus on some Krusty Krab business practices, so that’s another reason why I’m excited for today’s review.
The episode starts out well enough, just doing some basic set-up that isn’t particularly funny, but is enjoyable to watch. There are some pretty nice visual gags in there though, like when Mr. Krabs gets the idea to print his own paper. As the episode progresses, I start thinking of how it was lowkey ahead of its time with the way that (American) news media is now…yikes. We love an episode that is topical and relevant haha. One thing I like about this episode is that it’s very different from other ones, like we haven’t had one quite like it up to this point. And I like how the gimmick for Mr. Krabs this time has absolutely nothing to do with the food that’s being cooked, so it makes this episode not even feel like quite a Krusty Krab episode either. It keeps things interesting and engaging for me. I also just really like all the newspaper aesthetics of this episode.
SpongeBob’s little reporter outfit is cute, and I love seeing him go around like a reporter, Tom Kenny is just perfection, what can I say? I love how he absolutely has no eye for news, which feels very in character to me, especially when you think of “A Life in a Day” and how SpongeBob doesn’t quite care for the exciting, preferring the mundane. Not to mention he cares about his friends, which is why he decides to go to Patrick and not any of the newsworthy events. And Patrick’s determination to see this random pole move is actually pretty funny lol.
Moving on, the social commentary starts getting especially loud as Mr. Krabs instructs SpongeBob to…embellish the stories (yeah, couldn’t think of a fun euphemism lol). The reference to “Idiot Box” was quite nice too. I also liked how this episode kind of diverted a little bit from the normal structure of this kind of episode and showed the consequences of the false stories pretty much immediately with the cut to Mrs. Puff. It doesn’t necessarily make the episode any better or worse, it just makes it different. Another thing I like is that SpongeBob keeps his morals throughout the episode, he’s just misled by Mr. Krabs. And later when he confronts Mr. Krabs, Mr. Krabs is able to convince him that everything is fine. Seeing SpongeBob get increasingly disillusioned is hard to watch in a good way, since I prefer to see the little guy happy (like he was in the beginning of the episode), and it makes me anticipate just how everything is going to blow up in Mr. Krabs’ face.
All of the scenes showing how SpongeBob’s stories are affecting the subjects are at least entertaining, although the one with Sandy unfortunately just makes me annoyed with how dirty SpongeBob did Sandy, even if he’s clearly being coerced. I’m noticing a very weird trend of using Sandy’s status as a different species to make very thinly-veiled references to racist humor, and I don’t like it. It happened in “No Nose Knows” and it happened here. “Squirrel Jokes” did it about 10x better because that was the moral of the story, but including it among just the typical jokes of an episode is not the move. Okay that was my little soapbox, back to the show.
The last minute or so of this episode is absolutely glorious universal justice. After Mr. Krabs pushes SpongeBob too far, and SpongeBob turns things around and writes about him, both exposing Mr. Krabs and clearing his own name, I’m basically cheering. Seeing everyone get upset is satisfying and hilarious, especially with the fish that gets all up in Mr. Krabs’ face. And then I liked the whole bit with Mr. Krabs printing his own money. And that leads into an amazing call-back with Patrick coming in (because he was conspicuously absent from both the scenes of people’s lives being ruined and from the crowd in the end) with his new wife, the pole. And the way SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs just stare at him? Just hysterical.
Episode Tier: Amazing
Episode Score: 9/10