Hmmm, let me guess. This is going to be an episode that takes place at the Krusty Krab? As a title, “There Will Be Grease” does intrigue me, because it doesn’t give much away. And, I’m immediately reminded of “Greasy Buffoons”, which is an episode that I enjoyed. So that’s a pretty good association. So now I wonder what health violations are going to be committed in this one haha.
Mr. Krabs is nasty for walking around with grease on his feet. Especially because we know that he doesn’t wear shoes. As this first minute goes on, I get more and more interested in what the plot of this episode is gonna be. Because we’ve got Mr. Krabs walking in with grease on his feet, SpongeBob trying to clean the puddle of grease, and then Plankton and Karen conducting science experiments on their front lawn. Science experiments that then blow up in Plankton’s face because SpongeBob’s trying to clean the grease.
Tangent Alert: I really love how at this point, Plankton and SpongeBob have a friendly relationship. Even though the show doesn’t have a continuity, there was a sort of evolution present here. And that’s something I noted part of in my previous review when I talked about the incorporation of gags into lore and background detail. Plankton and SpongeBob no longer being adversarial is something that has organically grown from the fact that we’ve gotten multiple episodes now with them having some kind of rapport. It would make no sense to write Plankton as always trying to do something villainous (towards SpongeBob or otherwise) when many episode plots rely on him being neutral at times. So that’s why he isn’t written the same way as he was in his inception. And this logic applies to a lot of the things in the show. So I’ll be noting this down for further analysis at a future time (perhaps my season 13 overview. Perhaps something else).
Alright back to the episode. I like how Plankton and Mr. Krabs end up getting into a fight over the “oil” that’s not even oil at all. Their bickering and fighting will never fail to bring me entertainment. Turns out that the “oil” is grease, as I’ve been saying because duh. But it’s grease resulting from both the Chum Bucket and the Krusty Krab, which I was more surprised about. Somehow this is going to end in a Plankton-Krabs team-up, isn’t it. Oh please, please let it be so. It’s so fun being able to make these hopeful predictions like this now…watching episodes that are new to me is such a fun experience!
Clearly I’ve got watching this show down to a science, because guess what happens. That’s right, they’ve gotta work together. This joke is hilarious, I love how it becomes a visual gag out of nowhere. Mr. Krabs and Plankton then have to figure out what they want to do with the large deposit of grease they’re both sitting on. Of course, the first idea we hear from Plankton is that he wants to support the military-industrial complex. I know you’re a villain, Plankton, but I thought you were better than that smh. SpongeBob then reveals that he’s been using the grease for “everything”…ew. These grease episodes do love their health violations LMAO.
Okay so you know how I’ve been kinda ragging on the show for their ultra-specific references to things that take me out of the immersion (like the Salvation Army reference)? Yeah? Well ignore that for a second because the Dr. Bronner’s reference actually just made me laugh so hard. Probably because I love me some Dr. Bronner’s soap. Now that I think about it, this episode is a lot like “Chocolate With Nuts”. The bit with Sandy is so…I feel like there’s a layer of very dark humor here that would go over kids heads. At least it depends on your interpretation of Plankton offering the juice as a potential aid to Sandy’s
oxygen machine, and how much of what is being said about the miracle juice is true. After this Sandy section, we get a gorgeous background
alert (the purples are so lovely), and a song. Well y’all know I don’t even care for random songs, but at least it’s not very long.
And there’s an actual reason for the song here.
So now Mr. Krabs and Plankton are truly swimming in it. And I love how the episode almost maybe for one second pretends it’s going to have an emotional moment, but we all know better. And of course, it’s at this moment that a whole bunch of angry customers come in. Looks like Plankton and Mr. Krabs are about to have their “Patty Hype” moment. And they do, because all the customers are angry about the grease giving them all sorts of side effects. Which I guess means that they’ve realized it was grease, as I don’t think they knew that right? I love how instead of Plankton and Krabs running for their life or something, they just kinda let everyone destroy their penthouse while they themselves bicker and walk away. It’s a good subversion of expectation that I think was very subtly done. And their bickering leaves them as mortal enemies once again…and with both of their restaurants fallen into the sinkhole left by the excavation of the grease deposit. At least SpongeBob’s happy.
“There Will Be Grease” was a really fun episode. The humor here was really good and had all kinds of layers to it in multiple places, so I really liked that. The plot was also quite fun. Even though Mr. Krabs and Plankton being partners was a major plot point of the episode, the episode wasn’t exactly about them learning how to work together, it was more about them successfully doing so and then successfully making everything worse when it turns out the grease was more trouble than it was worth. And I love seeing them bicker, so this is fine with me. SpongeBob is also a good supporting character in this one, the little dude is just so happy and enthusiastic. And I really like the inclusion of Sandy and Mrs. Puff. They need more appearances like this along with episodes where they’re the main character. Same goes for Karen. And Gary.
Episode Tier: Amazing
Episode Score: 9.4/10
