Oh, what’s this? “Patrick’s Coupon”, a Patrick-focused episode? Oh boy…y’all know how I feel about those. Let’s just say that I am…cautious. But Patrick’s character has been treated quite well as of late, so I’m not as cautious as I would’ve been a couple months ago.
This episode begins with Patrick dealing with a sea urchin in a sequence that is more entertaining than the entirety of “Rise and Shine”. Considering how low that bar is, I shouldn’t be impressed, but I am. And this “fight” leads to Patrick finding a lost coupon for free ice cream. The episode proceeds to fully assuage all of my concerns (for now) about this being a Patrick-focused episode as Patrick declares that he’s going to use the coupon to buy an ice cream for his best friend (yes, he does forget SpongeBob’s name, but for once I didn’t hate this joke so…that’s a win). Finally, we got Patrick acting like a good friend with no prompting needed! Let’s continue this! And the following joke with Patrick forcefully making sure that he gets SpongeBob an ice cream is funny. That’s how you do jerk Patrick!
Moving on, Patrick goes to try and get SpongeBob an ice cream, and he’s faced with some entertaining obstacles. Like Mr. Krabs, who just has a sense for when free things are around him, and so he wants to steal Patrick’s coupon. I love how Squidward is the one to stop the stealing too, that was unexpected, and I love it. And after this incident, Patrick gets extremely paranoid over people stealing his coupon…comedically so. I just adore how dramatic Patrick is.
Eventually, Patrick makes it to the ice cream shop, after a pretty funny…well, it’s not quite a chase scene, so I’ll just say sequence of shenanigans. Now that’s an ice cream shop I want to go to. It looks amazing. And I know this is a low bar, but I love how Patrick didn’t forget that he was getting an ice cream for SpongeBob. You already know if this episode took place in…certain seasons…that would’ve been the plot, don’t even argue. And yes, I know Patrick starts getting very tempted to eat the ice cream himself, but SpongeBob is not forgotten here, and that’s what I’m looking for.
Of course, Patrick’s coupon is woefully out of date, and the store snatches the ice cream away from him. This causes Patrick to snap in a way I haven’t seen since “Valentine’s Day”, and I love it. Especially with the expressive animation, it looks so good. Though I do wish it didn’t just end with him having a crying fit. It would’ve been better if he fully went “Valentine’s Day”. But I’ll take what I can get. Bill Fagerbakke is just so good in this one. And the way the worker just keeps roasting him is hilarious. And the episode surprises me with the worker telling Patrick that there’s someone who might be able to honor the coupon, the “Ice Cream King”. At this point I was worried the episode might start to bore me, but then it came out with this, so that was a good move on its part, because this sounds interesting!
Well…turns out that it wasn’t as interesting as I expected. Patrick meets the king, who turns out to be a dumb starfish like him. Yeah, watching two characters be this dumb together rarely works for me, and this is no exception. It feels like all this momentum the episode had been building just ground to a halt, because this scene takes too long and lacks anything for me to laugh at. And the king’s challenge isn’t that fun either. Finally, Patrick wins himself a free ice cream cone for SpongeBob. And when he makes it to the pineapple…the ice cream has melted. But Patrick got Mr. Krabs’ severed arm for SpongeBob instead, and perhaps that’s better. Or maybe not, because turns out SpongeBob got a whole boatload of ice cream for him and Patrick to share, how wholesome!
“Patrick’s Coupon” disappoints me because it was doing so dang good, being one of the best Patrick episodes in a while (though “Patrick! The Game” wasn’t that long ago I suppose), until we get to the Ice Cream King, and then everything falls apart. From there, the episode is just kinda boring until Patrick arrives at SpongeBob’s house. I can’t stand when episodes do this, just shoot themselves in the foot. It’s so disappointing.
Episode Tier: Good
Episode Score: 7.2/10
