Here it goes. The first of probably many.
Writers: Casey Alexander, Zeus Cervas, Mr. Lawrence
Airdate: March 25, 2010
I don't even know where to start with this one. It is probably one of the most sadistic SpongeBob episodes I have ever seen and to make it even worse, it just comes across as being very clumsy and sloppy at the same time. It's the kind of episode that doesn't seem to have any other aim besides turning Mr. Krabs into an unlikable sociopath and a criminal on top of that.
There are a few other episodes in Season 7 that are also very similar with its sadism, especially something like "A Pal for Gary" and from what I can remember "Summer Job" to a lesser extent. Just like Season 6 is pretty much very focused on gross out humor, they decided to make Season 7 focus on whatever reason darker topics with lots of darker elements added into the mix. Nickelodeon has a problem with the gasoline gag in "Just One Bite" but somehow later SpongeBob episodes are able to get away with a lot more than ever without a hitch. Talk about double standards right there!
Anyway, this episode actually starts out really well and the audience doesn't expect that the episode is going to become the depressing crapfest that it devolves into later on. We see Mr. Krabs taking a soothing money bath when he smells some explosives and asks SpongeBob about it. Then we cut to Plankton destroying the roof of the Krusty Krab and they engage in a very cool battle involving SpongeBob shooting peas at Plankton. After all of that, the missile thing that Plankton launches doesn't launch like Mr. Krabs thought it would and it entraps Krabs and SpongeBob.
Plankton then tries to make them talk squeezing them with the trap and then proceeding to tickle both of them with a pink feather. Krabs of course is smart enough not to blab, but for hardly any reason whatsoever, an oblivious SpongeBob instantly blurts out the location of the secret formula. Now here's the first major problem I have with this episode. Why do the writers think that characterizing SpongeBob in such a way would be funny? They didn't even bother to add a joke in there to make the scene a bit less painful to watch. It's not nearly as bad as his characterization in "A Pal for Gary" but it still annoyed the heck out of me when I saw this episode multiple times. SB's supposed to keep the secret formula safe not idiotically tell Plankton just because he was tickled a little bit. This seems like something that Patrick might have done in the same situation.
After that unfunny, awkward moment, we get another cringeworthy scene where Pearl out of nowhere just walks in and Plankton for whatever reason is suddenly scared of whales. I can only assume that this episode is supposed to take place before Plankton ever had an interaction with Pearl. I mean this show has never really had good continuity in the first place but it's still kinda stupid to me to make someone like Plankton suddenly scared of Krabs's daughter and even worse to imply that she has eaten plankton before! It only gets worse from here as Pearl asks Krabs for some mall money before helping SpongeBob and Krabs get out of Plankton's trap. Ugh, I really hate Pearl in a lot of these newer episodes. Her voice gets really grating and irritating after a while. It's almost as bad as a characterization as Krabs in this episode. I mean Krabs himself had a point when he said that she was becoming more like him by the day and it really does show.
Krabs then asks her to go over to the Chum Bucket and scare Plankton but in order for her to do that, she asks for even more mall money and SpongeBob proceeds to give her some when in reality, he pays her with Krabs' counterfeit money. I know that Mr. Krabs is supposed to be really cheap but they just overexaggerated that trait so much to the point where he's willing to break the law just to satisfy his greedy nature. Who's really the villain here so far? Krabs or Plankton? I really can't tell from this point and that's another major problem with the episode. They make Krabs such an unlikable criminal that the audience ends up empathizing much more with Plankton! Wtf.
Pearl still won't shut up with her highly annoying voice and then Mr. Krabs continues to astound me with how much of a sick character he is. He asks Pearl if he can borrow one of her dresses. That should really speak for itself.
On top of both Pearl and Krabs being unlikable jerks, Karen steps in to make things even worse when Plankton tells her about the situation and how he's so afraid of whales and how his ancestors were also eaten by whales. More screwed up, dark "humor" added in to make us cringe.
Pearl (Mr. Krabs in disguise of course) terrifies Plankton and somehow manages to get into The Chum Bucket to scare him even more. Karen doesn't believe the story Plankton tells her and ignores him completely. The following title card implies that Krabs has been doing this over and over for the past 16 days in the episode. He's willing to go to whatever length it takes to get revenge on Plankton for what? A burglary that didn't do as much psychological damage as what Krabs did? This really doesn't make any sense whatsoever and just one example of how poorly executed and sloppy this episode is on top of having most of the characters be as unlikable and mean spirited as possible.
Mr. Krabs laughs maliciously as Plankton cries in the window. Later that night, Plankton has a nightmare about being eaten by Pearl and being digested in gastric acid with his ancestors watching. Wow. This episode just keeps getting more and more messed up as we go. I'm shocked that this episode didn't get like a TV-14 rating because none of the stuff that happens in this episode is kid friendly or subtle about the "humor" that it's going for.
What is Plankton to do now? He considers getting himself run over by a bus and SpongeBob walks by to see what the trouble is about. Plankton then asks SpongeBob to step on him but he refuses saying that it's against his good nature. Kind of hypocritical for him to say that since he idiotically revealed the location of the secret formula earlier in the episode. Plothole much????
SpongeBob also pisses me off in this episode almost as much as Krabs. He just walks away leaving Plankton all forlorn. He didn't even make that much of an effort to help him. To be fair, he does try to tell Krabs about the situation only for him to laugh again at Plankton's pain and suffering. I just want to punch my computer monitor as hard as I can after watching this scene. Even if Krabs didn't know that Plankton was really trying to off himself, he's already proven himself to be a rotten character in this episode with the other instances that I provided. I'm hoping that karma will catch up to him and he'll get the consequence that he so justly deserves like back in the episode "Krabby Land" where he's tied up and forced fed lima beans.
Krabs continue to contradict himself even further. He considers SpongeBob being an idiot about keeping the formula a secret much worse than tormenting Plankton psychologically. Just wow. Now I want all sorts of horrible things to happen to Mr. Krabs because he has clearly shown a much darker side of himself that wasn't really as emphasized in earlier episodes though we did have ones like "Jellyfish Hunter" and the end of "Life of Crime" that hint towards these things. I would have never thought that Krabs would go THIS far to try to get what he wants.
SpongeBob actually tries to do the right thing and tells Plankton all about what Krabs had been up to. He also claims that he lied about the location of the secret formula. This inspires and motivates Plankton to come up with another scheme to get revenge on Mr. Krabs and tries to scare him with a mime. All seems to be going well until idiot SpongeBob grabs a projector and displays footage of a bunch of whales to startle Plankton off and then we get a shoehorned, anticlimactic ending where it turns out that Krabs wasn't afraid of the mime the whole time.
This episode SUCKED. Almost everything about it is completely wrong and full of mean spirited, dark overtones and turning a bunch of great characters we can root for into ones that we have not the slightest bit of empathy for except for Plankton, who is normally the bad guy in these episodes. Even the premise itself was disorganized as if the writers didn't really think too hard about the implications that such an episode could have and suggest.
I mean if they really wanted to do something dark and have a plot sort of like this, then you have to show Plankton dong something similar to Mr. Krabs and make sure to have BOTH of them suffer the consequences of their misdeeds in the end, which would have made for a much better message too and also add a twist to this whole Plankton vs. Krabs series of episodes. Also the writers have got to stop thinking that an overly oblivious SpongeBob is funny, which is far from being in the first place and stop making Pearl so obnoxious too. You also need to show on screen that deep down that Krabs would never want Plankton to die because of a business rivalry they have. That scene where Krabs laughs at what SpongeBob tells him about Plankton is so poorly done and edited in that it leaves way too much interpretation for the audience. It makes me sad knowing that Mr. Lawrence himself was involved in writing this episode. Face palm.
1/10 only because I really liked the way the writers chose to start the episode. It seemed to be going so well and then they murdered whatever potential this episode had with super unlikable, sick character traits. This really is one of the worst episodes that has ever been done and very worthy of making it into the Top 5.
