Ha! Y’all thought I’d be mixing this episode up with “Extreme Spots”, didn’t you? Well nope, not me! I remember this episode just fine. Probably because it uses different characters than that one. And besides, that episode has more in common with “Pre-Hibernation Week” than it does with this episode, in my opinion. Not much reason to confuse the two.
“Sportz?” takes absolutely no time to get started, which is a haste that I can appreciate. The episode begins with SpongeBob and Patrick doing…something…involving a trash can, and this lasts about 5 seconds when a box of Sandy’s stuff makes its way to their front yard. And from here, the base plot of the episode becomes obvious, as SpongeBob and Patrick open the box to find that it has all sorts of sports equipment…sports equipment that they don’t understand. I can always appreciate an episode where our underwater friends don’t understand human or land-based objects. The two subsequently use these sports objects to do a variety of things that allow the writers to flex their creative muscles. This part of the episode is decently entertaining. I guess the humor comes from the fact that SpongeBob and Patrick are misusing these objects that we as an audience know what they’re for. But I would’ve wanted something more than just that for jokes.
Anyway, the episode cuts over to Squidward, whose just made himself a delicious meal. It doesn’t take a genius to know that this is going to go wrong for him very quickly. And it does, as we get a scene that reminds me of “A Friendly Game” (which now that I’m thinking about it, completely contradicts this episode…oh well, looking for continuity in SpongeBob SquarePants is a lost cause). Anywho, once Squidward finds SpongeBob and Patrick, he explains to them what the objects are. That’s kinda a shame, because even though I did say I wanted more substance to these jokes, I did enjoy SpongeBob and Patrick fundamentally misunderstanding the objects they were playing with. I was expecting Sandy to be the one to teach them, but nah, Squidward’s got a bigger role to play here than I thought (previous memories of this episode notwithstanding).
Squidward decides to teach SpongeBob and Patrick how to play sports so that he can get them hurt. Funny that this episode is coming so soon after “Life Insurance”, because I’m seeing some real similarities here. And also, I think this was a less interesting direction for this episode to go in, to be honest. But whatever, we move. Squidward manages to get SpongeBob and Patrick hurt in a variety of ways. None of the jokes here really do it for me, except for the one with the sharks, that was pretty funny (reminds me of the whole critics bit in “The Googly Artist”).
Finally, Sandy enters the scene after SpongeBob and Patrick have amassed quite the audience watching their painful attempts at “sports”. So I guess Sandy does play the role of teaching SpongeBob and Patrick what sports is actually about, since Squidward was corrupted by the potential lol. And she schools Squidward thoroughly while doing it. So that was pretty entertaining. Probably the best part of the episode. It just makes me wish Sandy was used more.
Episode Tier: Okay
Episode Score: 6.8/10