Next up, we have a pretty nostalgic episode for me. But spoilers, I don't adore this one as much as I do other very nostalgic episodes. I at least know why this episode is nostalgic for me though. One of the two first SpongeBob DVDs I owned was SpongeGuard on Duty, so before I started my collection of every episode of the show, this episode was one of the very limited options I had. Not to mention the entire DVD was themed on this episode. But, alas, "SpongeGuard on Duty" is not that great of an episode for me. Let's talk about it.
The plot of this episode is just...off. I don't know how else to describe it. SpongeBob wanting to be a lifeguard to be cool does not really feel like something he'd do. And so that just makes it a bit of a chore to watch the whole episode because it's like...this feels forced. The way Patrick exits the episode in the beginning also feels forced. Everything in this episode feels rather forced. But let's ignore that right now, and talk about some of the other content in the episode. I'll get back to this later though.
I do like the beginning well enough, seeing SpongeBob and Patrick hang out at the beach with some fun visual jokes. The ice cream truck bit is hilarious (not to mention a great provider of a reaction meme). The whole sunscreen thing is dumb to me, which means that joke never ends up landing for me, but I can ignore it well enough.
Okay, so back to the whole forced thing. I think the entirety of the plot after Larry exits is extremely forced. Like...why is SpongeBob in charge of the beach? If SpongeBob wasn't actually a lifeguard (which he wasn't), shouldn't there have been someone to watch the beach after Larry's shift ended? I'm not usually one to get caught up in plot holes, but this episode is dull enough that I start to pay attention to these things, which makes the whole enterprise fall apart more in my eyes. This makes the rest of the episode more difficult to watch as these questions keep bouncing around in my brain, and it's hardly funny enough to distract me. The excuses SpongeBob makes to get the beachgoers out of the water make no sense to me either, because if they all live in the ocean why are we singling out sharks and sea monsters? Is SpongeBob prejudiced????? I'm slightly joking but I am somewhat serious, this all feels weak.
The drowning scene is the most entertaining thing in this segment of the episode, because of how Patrick keeps disproviing everything SpongeBob says, but once SpongeBob gets into the water all the momentum the scene had been building dies out, and I get bored again. The part where SpongeBob absorbs the lagoon does get a chuckle out of me, but then it's back to dullness until Larry returns with a pretty funny line delivery from both Mr. Lawrence and Tom Kenny.
The ending of this episode doesn't even have that great of a stinger either, so it really is a rather disappointing venture. I won't call this episode bad, because I don't think it was. I won't even put it in my "Mediocre" tier, because I think it's better than that, and it didn't make me mad or annoyed or anything. But it's far from great, and I don't think I can call it good anymore, like I had before. It's perfectly "Okay". It's just a dull episode that tried to be funny and entertaining, but simply fell short.
Episode Tier: Okay
Episode Score: 6.5/10