Oh boy, a Gary episode! Clearly nothing can go wrong here, and I will be rating "Shell Shocked" 100/10 for featuring my favorite guy, right? lol. At this point it’s comical how I keep being disappointed by Gary episodes. Like honestly I feel like this was done to spite me in particular, because why is it that whenever we finally get a chance to have Gary shine, it’s fumbled? “Gary Takes A Bath” is so far the only episode to understand the assignment, although “The Great Snail Race” and “I Was A Teenage Gary” did indeed try, just barely missing the mark. Honestly, this episode did actually try its hardest, and I like this episode too, but I wouldn’t call it a good Gary feature, considering I don’t like how Gary was treated in this episode.
We start off with an air of intrigue in this episode as SpongeBob wakes up to a bunch of noise, and his phone line being cut. I like when episodes pull us right in with a reason to keep watching beyond just the show’s name. This little bit of SpongeBob trying to figure out what’s going on is entertaining, and then we find out that it was Gary stuck in a boot. Of course, that’s the end of my enjoyment for a bit because then we get to see Gary thrown around a lot, which isn’t too bad, but then his shell breaks, which is bad. I mean firstly, the fleshy mass on his back is not appealing to look at. And as I keep saying, I know that this is the point, doesn’t mean I have to like it. And then Gary starts crying and now I’m not happy. Happy now, episode? At the very least, SpongeBob trying to find Gary a new shell is entertaining, and I like that this episode does not take a page from “Pet Or Pests” and actually has SpongeBob treat Gary far more like an equal, and like someone with sentience that he can have an actual conversation with, in a sense. And I like how apparently snail shells are a whole business lol (well, like is a strong word, but let me not get on the soapbox).
Moving on, just like many other people in this forum, I love the Angry Jack commercial, it’s super great. Angry Jack is such a character, and I love it. If commercials were like this, I wouldn’t hate them so much (just kidding I absolutely would. Anyway, this is clearly a parody of like…furniture store commercials. I feel like those are the ones that would have this kind of tone, but the fact is I’ve definitely seen real commercials like this). I love the whole “don’t bring your kids” part, that got me laughing for real. So this bit was definitely much needed for this episode, as I was starting to feel disappointed with it.
This episode raises a lot of questions about snail shells, because why is it that when SpongeBob and Gary go to Angry Jack’s store, and he puts a new shell on Gary, the thing just slides off??? Shouldn’t they be more secure than that??? Eh, whatever. See, from here it becomes obvious just what this episode is about to be, and while that’s not a bad thing, it does depend heavily on the execution of SpongeBob breaking every shell he comes across. And the execution here is…alright. The way SpongeBob breaks the shells is varied, and then of course he ends up breaking a whole bunch when he’s blinded by a reflective shell (which why did they even have that LMAO). Frankly I think that Angry Jack can only blame himself for all this destruction. I mean first he’s not securing shells, and now apparently he’s not securing shelves because those shelves should not have tipped over so easily…I’m mostly joking here. But anyway, back to what I was saying, this bit with the shelves is at least visually entertaining, especially with the “oops” part. It’s also fun because I do enjoy watching domino videos from time to time. I just like how SpongeBob is such a bad luck magnet in this part of the episode, breaking literally all the shells. The episode does stop all of its momentum though when SpongeBob takes his “precautionary measures” before handling the “indestructible” shell. So I think that could’ve been cut.
After this dip, the episode does return to being entertaining once we get the callback to the Angry Jack commercial when Jack actually gets legitimately angry. And I love the subtle arm and a leg joke here too. Honestly, this whole part is like a kid-friendly joke surrounding black market deals LMAO. And I love how SpongeBob just looks on blankly as he just strips himself of body parts, it makes for a pretty funny scene. And I also love that once the scene is over, this episode doesn’t pull an “All That Glitters” and actually has SpongeBob remain clothed for the rest of the episode, despite being told to remove them. Maybe they’ve finally gotten the memo that we do not want to see SpongeBob run around naked all the time. And this time, when Gary and SpongeBob start crying again, it’s not as unpleasant for me. Maybe because we have seen SpongeBob’s care for Gary throughout this episode, even if it is undermined by his clumsiness.
As the episode draws to a close, we get a surprise appearance from Mr. Krabs, who was apparently just chilling in the dumpster. I’m taking this to mean that my interpretation that Mr. Krabs was just in the trash can the whole time in “Pet or Pests” is true lol. But seriously, I was not expecting to see Mr. Krabs here (I remembered him being in this episode, but I was considering it being a false memory), so this was a nice surprise. Mr. Krabs being such a greedy lowlife is always funny to me, sorry not sorry. The way they snuck in “only if I can cut your health benefits” was great too, like that was definitely for the adults watching. The ending of the episode is really good. I liked the call-back to the beginning of the episode, and I like the reveal that they ended up using Mr. Krabs’ shell for Gary in the end. And the gross drawing of Mr. Krabs is actually used well here, considering this whole bit is supposed to be mysterious and creepy before we learn that it’s Mr. Krabs, so I like it. And then I love how Gary ends up locking SpongeBob out because of his awful pun. As he should. Good ending.
“Shell Shocked” was really pulling me every which way in terms of my opinion on it. It had good moments and bad moments, but I think the good outweighed the bad. And I liked our one-off side character in this episode, Angry Jack, a lot, so that was very helpful in terms of my opinion on this episode. I think some of the humor could’ve been improved, but I mean this episode got me laughing a lot more than some of the other episodes of this season, so that’s definitely a win. I’d say altogether, this episode fits in the middle of my “Great” tier. Because it is very enjoyable, but I do wish that certain parts of it had been improved, and I wish that Gary was featured in a better way.
Episode Tier: Great
Episode Score: 8.4/10
