Oh boy, another episode I literally don’t remember! The title of this one is familiar to me at least, but I fear that this episode has been rather overshadowed by its sister, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure if that’s the reason I don’t remember this episode, considering that its sister is not on the season 12 DVD, but that is a possible explanation. The other, also probable, explanation is that I’ve only seen this episode once. So let’s fix that.
This episode begins with SpongeBob acting lowkey similarly to the way he acted in “A Cabin in the Kelp”. But only a little bit. No, the episode really begins with SpongeBob just prancing around the zoo. Okay, full disclosure, I don’t like zoos, they make me sad. Now, I’m not really sad watching this cartoon version of a zoo, but what I am is apathetic because this immediately feels so outside of this show and I don’t entirely like it. This feels out of place, especially considering how many of the animals here are land animals (the giraffe??? and yes I can see they made all these animals fish versions, but I say what I want). The zookeeper is understandably upset that SpongeBob keeps entering the enclosures of the animals. So he puts an alarm on SpongeBob to make sure he can’t go inside the enclosures. But that doesn’t quite work. So now SpongeBob is banned from the zoo.
Patrick, who suddenly appears in the episode, tries to stop this, but he ends up banned too. As they should be. And so we cut to SpongeBob crying inconsolably about being banned. Okay here’s the problem: I don’t care. I’ve never seen SpongeBob at the zoo before this (except in “The Smoking Peanut”? He was at the zoo then, right?), and I’ve never seen him interact with zoo animals before. While we all know SpongeBob is an animal lover, I feel like it would make far more sense for him to be trying to break these animals out. But anyway, even without justifying it, I just don’t care lol. Probably because none of this is funny so far.
After a nasty moment involving snot, SpongeBob comes up with an idea to make new animals out of bubbles. See, now y’all are losing me again. Because I thought SpongeBob had a bond with the zoo animals…how is making replacements a solution? And I’m simply rather bored. SpongeBob and Patrick’s bubble zoo ends up becoming an attraction. I continue to be not very invested, though I did find the “spread ‘em” joke with Patrick to be funny (this show’s still got it when it comes to that older humor). Considering that this is right in front of their houses, how much you wanna bet Squidward shows up and is annoyed by this? Anyone? Anyone wanna bet? Well, I hope you didn’t bet against me, because I’m right! Squidward enters this episode preparing to tend to this garden, and once he finally opens his eyes, he realizes that he’s been eaten by a bubble sea monster. And then he gets his overalls eaten. So he starts running through the zoo, popping the enclosures kind of easily (I thought this was extra strength bubble soap????). Which then causes him to land on a bubble rhino that charges with him attached, causing all the enclosures to pop and everyone to run away.
I love a good devolving to chaos moment, but this feels sudden, even for this show. But I’m probably nitpicking on account of me already not caring for this episode, so let me refrain from doing so. I guess my question is why are the animals suddenly rampaging? I know that this kind of thing happens in real life, obviously, but this is a cartoon and so we don’t usually see this kind of unmotivated action, if that makes sense. I’d get it if this episode was about how we shouldn’t trap animals or something like that, but as far as I can tell, that’s not what this episode is about at all.
The bubble animals end up running all through Bikini Bottom, including the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket. I feel like I’m being reminded of my critiques of “Stormy Weather”…I guess I’ll add that to my list of trends to discuss in the season 12 overview…interesting. Anyway, SpongeBob ends up calling upon the zoo animals from the beginning of the episode, and they save the day. I mean, this is cute I suppose. But again, I don’t feel invested, sorry to say it.
“Who R Zoo?” was theoretically fine. Like there isn’t all that much specifically bad that I can say here. But as you can see, I wasn’t feeling the episode very much. And I’m trying to figure out why. I know I listed all sorts of things that I didn’t like, but none of them feel like an explanation. I think the best I can come up with is that this episode did what “Stormy Weather” did and had us follow characters we don’t care about too much, and also had SpongeBob acting in ways that are more foreign to us. Kind of. Not as bad as “Stormy Weather” in those regards, but that’s the best I can think of. I just don’t care for the plot. At all. It’s simply one of those episodes that wasn’t made for me.
Episode Tier: Okay
Episode Score: 6/10