The Chaperone (Season 1, Episode 12a)
Original Airdate: October 2 1999 (Episode 24)
Plot: SpongeBob is hired to be Pearl's replacement date for Prom Night
Written by Sherm Cohen, Aaron Springer and Peter Burns
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Title Card Music: Border Run
Right off the bat, the title is a bit misleading. A "chaperone" is generally an older person who looks after a person or group of people during a social gathering. There aren't really any examples portrayed in the episode, and if it's supposed to be referring to SpongeBob, then it's a bit debatable whether he consitutes as one. He was intended to be Pearl's backup date to the prom by Mr Krabs, and SpongeBob's age is one of those eternal mysteries, so it's hard to tell if he's older than Pearl, or can even be seen as an authority figure over her. Heck, most of the time, she's looking after him.
With that out of the way, this episode starts with SpongeBob flipping Krabby Patties (I notice no stereotypes of French/American chefs. Sorry for pointing it out, it just seemed like it was going to be a running gag, and even had a good amount of potential), when he hears Mr Krabs and Pearl having a bit of a father-daughter talk. One funny thing that I would like to note is that Pearl's tears flood the room to such an extent that Mr Krabs is thrust out into-HOLY CRUD, WHAT IS THIS!? It's clones! It's an army of Freds! Look, it's like 7 Freds in the same frame!
Sorry, but I can't get over this, he's just become such a memetic background character now (TV Tropes call this sort of character an "Ensemble Darkhorse", for whatever reason), and it's pretty obvious that Nickelodeon was being a bit lazy with the animation in this scene, which makes it all the more unintentionally amusing to watch.
I generally don't put in all-caps or use the bold font, because it makes me look like I'm shouting, and as such, less respectable as a critic, but this, my friends, was a special occasion.
It was at this point, after the crying, that I realised just how tolerable Pearl's voice was in Season 1. Every season after this, they'd make it a little louder and raspier (the same can be said for a lot of characters, in that their voices changed as time went on), while here, so just sounds like…a teenage girl. I guess Lori Alan (her voice actress) made it raspy so that it would stick out more, espcially among the background fish she plays, and I can understand that, but I digress, because I've still got a lot to cover.
It appears that Pearl's date to the prom, who's apparently tall and tan, has stood her up, so Mr Krabs offers Squidward (remember him?) and then SpongeBob, and it's at this point when Mr Krabs is holding SpongeBob that he seems a little bit…dead. If you're one of those people who keeps an eye out for the animation, you may think that it was pretty lazy not having SpongeBob react to anything, but then it's revealed that it was, in fact, a dummy that SpongeBob just so happened to have on standby. It feels like a classic cartoon gag, but it doesn't really have much effect on the scene. SpongeBob still knows that he has to go to the prom with Pearl, and it's only brought up once again, where it makes even less sense, but that's for the end of the episode.
SpongeBob gets a little pessemistic once he goes home and realises that he is, in fact, terrible with proms. Him and Patrick, who apparently went with his mom. Who's Patrick's mom? Not even he knows. But…
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…we'll get to that when we get to that!
After that shocking realization, SpongeBob tries to look tall and tan (mostly tall) by buying a snazzy suit and building extendo-legs, or whatever you call them, and since it's a cartoon and it's the 90s, you know that extendo-legs are gonna be a bad idea. It's not like they appeared all that often, you just know. On the subject of them, I have to say that they're a little inconsistent when it comes to just how tall they make SpongeBob look. He had the ability to control their height (specifically going down) when he went over to Mr Krabs' house, but didn't think to do the same thing when using the punch bowl, which really could've saved some time, not to mention, conflict.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the prom itself. I have no idea if it's accurate to typical high school portrayals, and I'm in high school! Then again, I didn't grow up in the 90s, plus the way that high schools/colleges/schools in general are portrayed in fiction are a little different to my personal experiences with them, generally due to New Zealand schooling having differences to America, where most of these depictions come from. With that said, I will admit that the teenagers generally look stunning in their outfits, and the school hall doesn't look half bad, both of these statements are from a design aspect, not a presentational one, as I have no idea if they're 100% accurate or not.
Also, remember what I said back in my Help Wanted review about anchovies essentially being lower forms of life in Bikini Bottom (at least lower than normal fish)? Well, seeing them reappear here, I still stand by that opinion, as they're not as mindless as they were in Help Wanted, but they are generally depicted as dumber/dorkier than the other fish. Case in point, all but one of them still say, "Eep", like it's their catchphrase.
Moving on, let's talk about the song here (and the second fully-fledged song in the show after "The Fun Song" from F.U.N.), "Do The Sponge". In my opinion, it's not the highlight of the episode (that would be the scene where SpongeBob's in the bathroom crying and Pearl's talking to him, with his blubbering being somewhat intelligible and funny to listen to, just because of now silly it sounds), but it's an okay song in it's own right. I guess it's meant to parody dance crazes, espacially those from near the end of the millennium, but because I've grown up with 2007-2013 music, and have seen completely ridiculous dances in that time (cough cough, Gangnam Style), it comes off as more like a genuine attempt at creating something that kids would be talking about on the playground the next day. Whether that makes it funnier or not is hard to tell, as they get kicked out of the building for inadvertedly causing chaos (really all they were doing was dancing, it was the other fish that took it out of proportion).
Now let's talk about the ending, as in after they get kicked out. It starts with shipping (seriously, you can't watch it without thinking "What a cute couple", even though SpongeBob is asexual and somewhat aromantic), and then we get potentially the best joke in the episode. SpongeBob and Pearl are walking back to Pearl's house talking, then Mr Krabs thrusts the door open yelling "Get away from me flower!", holding a rake. Both get frightened, and then it's revealed that Mr Krabs was talking about a literal flower that he got a rake out for, because he was afraid someone would step on it. However, it seems that SpongeBob hasn't quite recovered from the shock…but then it's revealed to be the dummy.
Despite being a rehash of a joke that wasn't really
that funny, it really makes you wonder when the cut-off between watching SpongeBob and watching the dummy was. It seems to be during the montage of SpongeBob preparing himself for the date, but then why would SpongeBob pluck his eyelashes and have a shower if he's not the one getting prepared? You could also say that it was at some other random point later in the episode, but then how could SpongeBob have changed back into his typical outfit so quickly, and why would he just start using the dummy at whatever random point he felt like? The more you look into it, the more confusing it gets.
Is there anything else that I can say about this episode? Well, Pearl was certainly a good character here, certainly a bit better than in Squeaky Boots. The scenes of her crying at the Krusty Krab at the beginning are sad, relateable and even a little funny, because you know what's at stake for her, and why it would be so important for someone at her age, yet as a child, it looks bratty but somewhat enjoyable, as an adult, you're probably going to look back on it as being young and stupid but somewhat enjoyable, and if you're a teenager like me, you'd understand the dilemma she's going through a lot more clearly…and it's somewhat enjoyable. The reason being that she never really loses anything by the end, and seemed to have had a good time at the prom, which was her biggest fear.
But aside from that, the story is a bit slow, particularly by SpongeBob standards (it takes 4 minutes to actually get to the prom), has a few flaws, or otherwise mildly frustrating oddities, there were only a couple jokes that were really funny, and while the prom looks nice, I just can't relate to it in the same way that most others can, due to slight cultural differences. I'm not saying that this is a bad episode, remember, I have pointed out some positive things about it, but it's certainly not very memorable, especially because Season 1 was generally a time where they were still trying to find their footing, so an episode like this that goes a bit out-of-genre (it feels more slice-of-life than a good chunk of the show at this point) is to be expected.
My rating for this episode on my personal scale would be an "Average".
On a scale of 1-10, it would be a 5/10.
It's worse than Nature Pants, but better than Jellyfishing.
Better increase your workload and look sharp, because the next episode is all about being the perfect employee. Until then, let's just do the sponge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqZB9QDQpAI
:sbthumbs: