Pickles (Season 1, Episode 6b)
Original Airdate: August 21 1999 (Episode 13)
Plot: SpongeBob forgets to put pickles on a Krabby Patty and starts losing his sanity/memory
Written by Steve Fonti, Chris Mitchell and Peter Burns
[titlecard]6B[/titlecard]
Title Card Music: The Gunfighter
I usually like to split seasons up into about 3 individual parts (early, mid and late) and I usually see Season 1 as being:
Early Season 1- Episode 1-6 (Help Wanted-Pickles)
Mid Season 1- Episode 7-13 (Hall Monitor-I Was a Teenage Gary)
Late Season 1- Episode 14-20 (SB-129-Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy II)
That's not to say the other 20-episode seasons follow this order, but these are the orders that I find the most fitting in how the show grows and develops, as well as when the episode(s) air(s). Either that or my mind just likes this pattern better for some seasons than others. Either way, I find Pickles to be the end of early Season 1, because I personally find it to be one of the most overlooked/underrated episodes of it (besides Reef Blower and Jellyfishing). That's a shame, because this episode far surpasses both of them, and might be my favourite of this current batch next to Pizza Delivery.
So what's the story? SpongeBob is making Krabby Patties at the Krusty Krab as usual, and seeming to be much more careful with the ingredients and their placement than back in Help Wanted and Plankton!, before a rude, fat guy called Bubble Bass orders a seemingly impossible yet ridiculous item, to which Squidward flatly replies, "We serve food here.", which is then immediately followed by SpongeBob claiming to have perfected the dish. This already shows that the episode has a great sense of humour.
SpongeBob seems to recognise Bubble Bass, and all happiness washes off his face when he first sees him. The way that Bubble Bass says that he heard that SpongeBob makes a mean Krabby Patty seems to suggest that he hasn't had SpongeBob's cooking, but that they've crossed paths at some point in the past. What happened and which one of them started the vague fued is up to the audience's imagination, but it doesn't matter much because SpongeBob and Bubble Bass only interact again in F.U.N. in a non-threatening way, and Bubble Bass is only seen again 12 years later in Plankton's Good Eye, and Sponge Out of Water after that. (I know that he appeared in the video game, Nicktoons: Globs of Doom in some capacity, however, for the sake of this thread, I'm only going to be talking about the show's canon).
At this point, I'd just like to point out the atmosphere that this episode has - it seems to be based on Western movies with SpongeBob and Bubble Bass occasionally staring at each other like cowboys, and SpongeBob even blows a bubble as if his wand were a cigarette! (So for those who complain about the cigarette references in What Ever Happened to SpongeBob and Little Yellow Book, just remember, you saw it here first). Heck, one of the ways they sneakily set this up is by having SpongeBob's rambling in the kitchen seem much more…let's just say American than before. (Which is odd, because Plankton! had him rambling mostly in French. I guess a running gag that quickly died out was that SpongeBob was supposed to act like a different ethnicity every time he was shown making a Krabby Patty, but it never caught on).
So Bubble Bass eats the Krabby Patty that SpongeBob made just for him, and…failure! SpongeBob appears to have forgotten to add pickles. The crowd that had built around the two of them disappears, disappointed by SpongeBob's easy defeat, while SpongeBob picks apart the Krabby Patty, because he knows that he couldn't have forgotten to add them! He just couldn't have! Then we get Mr Krabs being very hesitant to give the unsatisfied customer's money back, which leads me to the realisation that this was the first time that Mr Krabs was portrayed as being a cheapskate. He was shown to love greenbacks back in Help Wanted, and in production order, Squeaky Boots came before this, but in Squeaky Boots, it's more of a family thing than a business thing.
Mr Krabs sharply orders SpongeBob back into the kitchen, and SpongeBob gets back to work on the patties. However, something's clearly off with his mind. The overwhelming stress seems to have made him forget the order of ingredients in which Krabby Patties are composed. Mr Krabs understands and gives SpongeBob the day off to recollect his bearings, and hiring Squidward as SpongeBob's substitute in the meantime. What follows soon establishes that Squidward should be nowhere near a fast food kitchen. I mean, who burns milkshakes?
[titlecard]181A[/titlecard]
Those who haven't attended Milkshake Academy, that's who!
Meanwhile, back at home, SpongeBob's mind is derailing at an alarming rate. It's lucky that he's still able to hold a pencil and notepad! What I mean is that not only has he forgotten how to make Krabby Patties, which had been established as his life's calling, but he can no longer get into bed properly and turns his alarm clock off by shoving Gary into the speaker! I'd also like to point out that I love how, during the segment where SpongeBob is getting into bed, he let's out several "Wrong"s, then out of nowhere a "Negatory"! That's just such a SpongeBob-ish touch that would make a small thing that would otherwise be seen as redundant into something genuinely humourous.
Speaking of SpongeBob and language, is you watch closely as SpongeBob is saying "This pickles thing's got my head all messed up.", so you can sorta see his lips say "screwed up" instead of "messed up". It could either be that Tom Kenny just didn't want to say something slightly rude, or it's just because this is the same network that censored an episode of The Angry Beavers which had the phrase "Shut up" in it. I'm leaning more toward the former, because SpongeBob (being controlled by Plankton) told Squidward to "Shut his mouth" in Plankton!, so maybe the censors were a little more lax on SpongeBob and The Angry Beavers. Either way, they aired around the same time originally.
Now may I just say, because the this is where the episode gets a lot better. Squidward's poor cooking (and shake-mixing) has driven customers away from the Krusty Krab, which prompts Mr Krabs to say, "I gotta get SpongeBob back!". I'm not making that up, see for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ly3ItLRAw
Now I know what you're probably thinking of…and please stop thinking about it, because it's a pretty gory video.
I digress, because Mr Krabs makes it to SpongeBob's house where…let's just say that it's a madhouse filled with pretty much everything that can go not-right, like a toaster hanging on the door, egg on toast being hammered to the walls, walking through doors instead of around them being the norm and a random bicycle being boiled on a stove! Not to mention, SpongeBob wearing underwear on his face instead of in his pants. But the thing I love the most about this whole scene is the fact that the otherwise generic hawaiian music plays backwards through the whole thing. Just listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54TaxU1uli4
I'm starting to see why a metric butt-ton of creepypastas just assume that normal music backwards is creepy…that's because it is!
Mr Krabs decides to do the impossible and try to train SpongeBob how to make a Krabby Patty again. He lays out all the ingredients for SpongeBob and tells him to take his time. A day passes before SpongeBob even bothers to move a muscle, seeming to have regained his confidence, he reaches his hand out and…goes back to thinking. 2 days pass and SpongeBob finally has an epiphany - he can't do it! He's so frustrated with himself that, in his rage, he calls Mr Krabs a cheapskate and assembles a perfectly normal Krabby Patty without even thinking! Note that he said that he couldn't make a Double Krabby Patty, and he kept his word because he only made one with one patty.
With his confidence restored, he heads back to the Krusty Krab and meets up with Bubble Bass again and engages with another stare-off. It's very dramatic…and amusing to see Squidward twice checking himself out in the mirror before realising the camera's focused on him. I think this is the first time that SpongeBob broke the fourth wall, because with all the fish focused on SpongeBob and Bubble Bass, who's going to gaze upon Squidward besides the audience? Either way, it's very funny.
Bubble Bass has himself his Krabby Patty and…failure! SpongeBob still seemed to have forgotten the pickles. Fortunately, Bubble Bass laughs about his victory so hard that SpongeBob notices something under his tongue…the pickles! As it turns out, he also hid the pickles under his tongue the first time too, not to mention a poor fish's car keys (which shouldn't it be boat keys? This was after Boating School.) causing Bubble Bass to leave the Krusty Krab in a cowering panic.
With SpongeBob the victor and the reigning champion of fry cook against customer, he gets 3 cheers from the crowd, while Squidward gets 3 boos and 1 "BOO YOU STINK!" for not doing anything positive for the Krusty Krab during SpongeBob's absence, and seeing his facial expression get more depressed throughout those couple seconds really caps off this episode nicely.
So yeah, this episode is a good one, and I mean a really good one! It's not brought up nearly as much as it should be, and if you haven't seen it, go check it out. It's not a magnum opus per se, but it's still among the most enjoyable episodes of the series at this point.
My rating for this episode on my personal scale would be a "
Spongey".
On a scale of 1-10, it would be a 9/10.
It's worse than Pizza Delivery, but better than Ripped Pants.
Nest time, we'll be dealing with some more spongey shenanigans, ironically outside of the hall. Until then, play me out, anti-Pickle and anti-Peanut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCMRzxTQ3es
Still sounds better than the actual intro!
:sbthumbs:
Also, I have no idea why sometimes the YouTube videos I present are links, and sometimes they're the actual videos on the website. I don't mind, because I'm still showing you the videos, but I can understand why it would be confusing or even stressful for some of you.