Hey, a Patrick episode! When was the last time we had one of those? Yeah, not that long ago, but let me pretend it’s been a while for the sake of this introduction. I feel like really good Patrick-focused episodes are…far and few in-between, unless we’re talking about The Patrick Star Show.
This episode begins with Patrick walking into the Krusty Krab. I’ll always enjoy Mr. Krabs’ constant disdain of Patrick, I like to think it all results from “Pat No Pay”. But it also probably results from SpongeBob constantly bringing Patrick to the Krusty Krab, which leads to chaos. Anyway, the clientele of the Krusty Krab is full of a bunch of suited businesspeople on their lunch break, which I’d say is a stroke of realism haha. I love how overexaggerated the business-speak is here. It makes me think of how I like bullying people in the business school…I should do that more when the semester starts. Anyway, I love how Mr. Krabs seems to be on this train too, given that he’s upcharging food for these business executives (which is interesting because they can’t all be executives, right?).
Alas, poor Patrick is kept away from his patty as he’s mistaken for an actual executive by the businesspeople, and swept away by the crowd. From here, the path the episode will take is pretty clear to me, and I’m fine with that, because I’m interested in seeing what shenanigans Patrick will get up to when he’s forced to act like an executive of a company. HIs horror at this fact is really funny…I too scream in horror about attending meetings in conference rooms. Patrick’s idiocy plays off the exaggerated business culture in this episode very well. In the end, Patrick wins because he gets his sandwich, even if he loses by going to jail. Because he doesn’t deserve to lose, he just wanted a sandwich. And it’s always fun to see our protagonists win. I love episodes like these where a character is out of their element, especially when it’s done so well! Patrick having a Perry the Platypus moment with his executive outfit is a great running gag too.
The only “bad” thing I can say about this episode is that it’s not super funny to me. It’s funny, but not outstandingly so. And I think that’s mostly because this episode suffers from the curse of “I never found Patrick to be laugh out loud hilarious (for the most part)”, so the episode was kind of at a disadvantage from the get-go. But this is easily the best Patrick episode we’ve had in a long time (since “No Hat For Pat”), so I’m very impressed with how much enjoyment I did get out of this one. I think it’s because “The Executive Treatment” finally returned to some of the fundamentals of Patrick…he’s stupid, but not insanely incompetent, and he has real motivations and emotions just like any other character. That’s the formula. And it worked here.
Episode Tier: Amazing
Episode Score: 9.1/10
