Shanghaied

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"Shanghaied" is the first segment of the 33rd episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It was originally shown as part of a special half-hour episode titled "SpongeBob's You Wish Spectacular Special", in which viewers could call in or place a vote on Nick.com for how the cartoon would end.
==Plot==
The episode begins with a short Patchy the Pirate segment. Patchy tells the audience that today they will be watching his favorite episode, "Shanghaied", but Potty shoots him out of a cannon.
The actual episode starts with SpongeBob opening a box of Kelpo cereal, trying to find "one of eight essential prizes inside", when a giant anchor suddenly crashes into his house. He and Patrick alert Squidward that "the sky had a baby", and he explains that it is an anchor. Suddenly, the anchor moves, crashing in to Squidward's house as well. Squidward begins climbing up the anchor's rope to go complain to the owner, and SpongeBob and Patrick follow.
Up in the sky, they find out that the anchor was dropped from the Flying Dutchman's ghostly pirate ship. When the trio set foot on the ship, the Flying Dutchman emerges from his cabin, terrifying Squidward. SpongeBob and Patrick tell the Dutchman of Squidward's intentions to complain to him, and he repeatedly burns Squidward with fire from his nostrils. When he tells SpongeBob and Patrick that he will do the same to them, they repeatedly attempt to jump over board, but land back on the ship every time. The Dutchman then tells the three that, since they set foot on his ship, they shall now be forced to work as his ghostly crew for all eternity. Squidward keeps complaining about this, however, so the Dutchman throws him through a zipper-like portal into a nightmarish dimension he calls the "Fly of Despair". Frightened by what just happened to their unfortunate friend, SpongeBob and Patrick surrender to the Dutchman's order.
The Flying Dutchman then has SpongeBob and Patrick help him go around Bikini Bottom and scare people. However, they cause more harm than good for the Dutchman, and he eventually tells him that he has decided to eat them for dinner instead. He locks them in their room, as he prepares for his dinner. SpongeBob and Patrick reluctantly decide to escape through the ship's live-action "perfume department" (filmed at a real department store), where perfume is constantly sprayed in their faces as they walk through.
After getting through the perfume department, SpongeBob and Patrick overhear the Dutchman saying that that he can't eat without his dining sock, and promptly steal it, but the Dutchman catches the two as they try to escape. SpongeBob and the Dutchman begin fighting over the sock, until the Dutchman decides to grant them three wishes in exchange for it. Patrick says he wishes that they'd learned about this sooner, thus wasting the first wish. SpongeBob then excitedly blurts out that he wishes Squidward was here to see this. Sure enough, Squidward, who has just made it out of the Fly of Despair and back into his bedroom, is immediately transported back to the Dutchman's ship. The trio begin arguing over who should get the last wish, until the Dutchman calls a halt to their fight and decides to randomly pick which one of them gets the last wish, ultimately picking SpongeBob. SpongeBob wishes that the Flying Dutchman turns into a vegetarian, which at first seems to work in the trio's favor. But then, SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward are turned into fruit and are chased by the Dutchman, who is now a hippie, around his ship which turned into a hippie van.
The episode itself ends and Patchy returns to greet the audience. After a totally random outburst in which he tells the audience to walk the plank, he announces that they are going to read a fan letter. Unfortunately, Potty shows up with a fuse in his head from an evidently unplanned explosives stunt. Potty and Patchy are blown up and Patchy decides to sign off the show.
==History==
When this episode first aired, the segments with Patchy the Pirate were much longer, and had Patchy hosting a poll in which the viewers would decide between three possible endings to the episode, with a different character receiving the final wish in each ending. When the scene of the Flying Dutchman deciding who gets the last wish came up, the episode paused and Patchy informed the viewers that it was now time to call in and cast their vote, at which point the show went to commercials.
After the commercial break, before proceeding to the winning ending (in which SpongeBob got the wish), Patchy played the other two alternate endings that did not get the most votes:
* Patrick's ending: He wishes that he had gum that would never lose its flavor, and thus, they are eaten by the Flying Dutchman.
* Squidward's ending: He wishes that he had never met SpongeBob and Patrick; unfortunately, all this means is that the Flying Dutchman only erases their memories of having ever met Squidward. They get eaten and are still introducing themselves in the Dutchman's belly.
In later airings, the Patchy segments, now retitled "Patchy's Pick", were trimmed down to make room for the shorter partner episode, "Gary Takes a Bath". All references to polls were removed, and a few of the scenes that were kept were redubbed. (For instance, the shot of Patchy announcing that SpongeBob's ending had won now has him about to read a fan letter.)
The "Patchy's Pick" segment accompanies the episode on The Complete 2nd Season DVD set in 2004, while the original "You Wish" footage with the voting references was released on The First 100 Episodes DVD set seven years later (though the graphic showing the phone number to call in to vote was changed to say that it "was retired to Davy Jones' locker"). The Sea Stories DVD includes the episode (without the Patchy segments) as a bonus feature, giving the viewer the option to watch the cartoon in full with one of the three endings.
==Trivia==
*The cartoon is the first SpongeBob episode to be shorter than a double-length episode (22 minutes), but longer than a regular episode (11 minutes), at the length of 16 minutes (or 13 minutes if you exclude the Patchy sequences).
*The Flying Dutchman was first mentioned to wear a sock in "Your Shoe's Untied".
*Patrick saying "Leedle leedle leedle lee" became an internet meme.
*Patrick says here that his hands are clean. However, in the Season 5 episode "The Battle of Bikini Bottom", he claims that he's never washed his hands in his life.
*The scene where the Flying Dutchman's head turns 360 degrees around is a reference to the film The Exorcist.
*In the PC version of SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights, Camera, Pants!, the player can visit the Flying Dutchman's ship and find the ice skates in SpongeBob and Patrick's room.
*This episode (along with "Gary Takes a Bath") was banned in the United Kingdom and Australia due to its frightening and dark storyline involving ghosts. Both episodes eventually returned to Nickelodeon (UK & Ireland) and Nickelodeon Australia in September 2008 for a single airing. It also aired with "Gary Takes a Bath" in Australia in November 2010, and in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2011.
*In Latin America, all endings have aired at least twice and are randomly chosen.
*In the Latin versions, the Squidward ending is canon.
*During the shot where Patchy is fired away, his foot and peg leg look like they are still standing on the ground, which is probably true as the foot doesn't move at all. It is just the peg leg that is moving off of the set while the moving background is made and the flying pirate is tilted after recording.
*Patrick and the Flying Dutchman arguing about how many wishes they're allowed to have is similar to Patrick's arguments with King Neptune about how many tasks SpongeBob must complete in "Neptune's Spatula", and how many days in which SpongeBob can find the stolen crown in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
==Home video releases==
;VHS
* SpongeBob SquarePants: Sea Stories
;DVD
* SpongeBob SquarePants: Sea Stories
* SpongeBob SquarePants: The Complete 2nd Season (SpongeBob's ending only)
* SpongeBob SquarePants: The First 100 Episodes (original "You Wish" version)
;iTunes
* SpongeBob SquarePants: Vol. 3
* SpongeBob SquarePants: From the Beginning - Part 1
==Cast==
Voice actor 	Character(s)
Tom Kenny 	SpongeBobPatchy
Bill Fagerbakke 	Patrick
Rodger Bumpass 	Squidward
Brian Doyle-Murray	Flying Dutchman
Doug Lawrence 	Larry
Sara Paxton 	Kid fish
Stephen Hillenburg	Potty
==External links==
* Encyclopedia SpongeBobia: Shanghaied
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Category:Censored episodes