SpongeBob SquarePants (Season 1-5, 9-Present)

***SpongeBob SquarePants*** is an American animated television created by the late, great marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It has aired since May 1, 1999.

## P​lot

The character-driven toon chronicles the nautical and sometimes nonsensical adventures of SpongeBob, an incurably optimistic and earnest sea sponge, and his undersea friends. Dwelling a few fathoms beneath the tropical isle of Bikini Atoll in the sub-surface city of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob lives in a two-story pineapple. Instead of taking the logical approach to everyday challenges, SpongeBob approaches life in a wayward and unconventional way. Whether searching for the ultimate spatula to perfect his burger flipping technique at the Krusty Krab or just hanging out with his best friend Patrick (an amiable starfish), SpongeBob's good intentions and overzealous approach to life usually create chaos in his underwater world.

## Why These Seasons Rock

1. It's one of the most popular and iconic cartoons on kids' television.
2. Very talented voice actors, such as Tom Kenny. Special mention to when he does amazing impressions of characters in "Mimic Madness".
3. Great songs, such as "Sweet Victory" from *Band Geeks*.
4. Nickelodeon's animation in its purest form.
5. The characters have very distinct personalities, which give them a lot of charm.
	* SpongeBob is the happy-go-lucky protagonist.
	* Patrick is SpongeBob's dimwitted, yet good-natured friend.
	* Squidward is SpongeBob's vain and grouchy neighbor.
	* Mr. Krabs is SpongeBob's money-obsessed boss.
	* Plankton is the short-tempered villain.
	* Sandy is the smart and tough newcomer.
	* Mrs. Puff is the beleaguered boating teacher.
	* Karen is Plankton's sensible computer wife.
	* Pearl is Mr. Krabs' bratty teenage daughter.
	* Gary is SpongeBob's loyal pet snail.
	* Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are affectionate parodies of Batman and Robin.
6. There are a lot of good episodes such as "Party Pooper Pants", "I'm Your Biggest Fanatic", "Help Wanted", "Band Geeks", "Have You Seen This Snail?" and the list goes on.
7. Beside SpongeBob himself who first appeared in *Help Wanted* in season 1 and other characters like Patrick, Squidward, and Mr. Krabs, many other characters made their debuts including Sandy and Plankton in later episodes.
8. A lot of the title cards and time cards are creative. There was even a funny joke made with them in "Wet Painters", when Patrick says "Can you hurry it along? I'm out of time cards."
9. Shares some elements with "Rocko's Modern Life" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show". Which makes sense, as some of the SpongeBob crew worked on those shows before coming to work on SpongeBob.
10. Ever since the second half of Season 9 and most of the first half, the show has improved dramatically after its decline in quality and there have been a lot of unique episode plots that haven't been done before.
	* The animation has also improved a lot and matches the style of zany cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation (especially the ones that Adam Paloian worked on) such as cartoons done by Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Ward Kimball, and many others.
11. The Japanese Dub is just as good as the original English version.
12. It's very funny, which explains all the memorable quotes and internet memes it spawned.
13. The background music is Hawaiian-style ukulele, which matches the show's underwater aesthetic and is very calming to listen to, with a lot of memorable tracks such as "Grass Skirt Chase".
14. It had two Christmas specials: Christmas Who and It's A SpongeBob Christmas, which were pretty good.
15. It also had a two part Halloween special called "The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom", which is also good for it's top notch stop motion animation.

## Bad Qualities

1. Out of all the ten main characters, Mr. Krabs is debatably the least tolerable due to a perceived exaggeration of his parsimony throughout the series' run.
2. Being one of the longest running cartoons on television, while impressive on paper, isn't necessarily a great thing. It's very easy to run out of ideas to the point that elements in previous episodes end up being reused for future episodes, specials or even movies. Characters would also have to be exaggerated if you cannot think of anything else to do with them.
	* After *The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie*, the show gradually declined in quality in its fourth and fifth seasons. It then experienced an even bigger dip in quality in its sixth through eighth seasons. Whether or not the show has recovered since season nine is debatable, as many fans and critics say the show has become *too* zany even compared to the first three seasons.
	* Speaking of the first five seasons, which is often considered by fans to be the golden age era of the show, they weren’t always perfect, as they, too, debatably had a few bad and mediocre episodes like the following:
		+ "I Was a Teenage Gary"
		+ "Grandma's Kisses"
		+ "Dumped"
		+ "I'm With Stupid"
		+ "The Great Snail Race"
		+ "Krabby Land"
		+ "The Sponge Who Could Fly"
		+ “Good Neighbors”
		+ “All That Glitters”
		+ "To Love A Patty"
		+ "Atlantis SquarePantis"
		+ "Whatever Happened To SpongeBob".
	* There were also bad episodes in the Post-Season 8 era, like
		+ “Squid Baby”
		+ “Little Yellow Book”
		+ "SpongeBob You're Fired!"
		+ "House Worming"
		+ "Cuddle E. Hugs"
		+ "Ink Lemonade" (the most infamous of not just this era but the entire series).
	* The first two TV movies, “Atlantis SquarePantis” and “Truth or Square”, were not well received. In the former’s case, it’s due to the executives forcing the crew to make it a TV movie, resulting in pointless songs and six character arcs. In the latter’s case, it’s due to the blatant bait-and-switches. As a result of negative reviews that these two movies got, Nickelodeon made no more movies for the show after “Truth or Square”. However, later in 2019, “SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout” aired for the series’ twentieth anniversary in July and was a well received TV movie, with some calling it a perfect apology for “Truth or Square”.
3. The animation, while still great, isn't always perfect and has some hiccups:
	* In season one, the animation is traditionally done on cells. While it does look good, it's not as good as the animation in season two onwards, which are done in digital ink-and-paint.
	* In season two, the animation, while great, is filled with errors and some episodes have color inconsistencies (most notably the episodes with washed-out colors), similarly to season six, though this is understandable since this is the very first season to use digital ink-and-paint animation.
	* In season four, the animation looks a bit clunky in the first few episodes, but gets better as the season progresses.
	* In season six, the animation is arguably at its worst in the entire series, as it suffers from washed-out colors, unappealing character designs, disturbing facial expressions, and way too many close ups of gross-out humor.
	* In season seven, the animation, while looser, is really dull, weak, unimaginative, and unappealing.
	* In season eight, the animation, while a slight improvement over that of seasons six and seven, sometimes has framerate issues.
	* In season eleven and twelve, the animation, while good, has a lot of weird and/or messed-up looking faces. "Krabby Patty Creature Feature", in particular, while it does a decent job, uses this over the top.
	* The earlier seasons have a poor and sometimes pretty bad blend of CGI and 2D animation, especially for its time.
	* While the animation is still good in the show’s current seasons, the comedy has gotten stale due to the lack of a balance between slapstick and visual comedy and verbal comedy.
4. Some jokes in the pre-movie era are (poorly) covered-up innuendos, such as…
	* SpongeBob watching a sea anemone in the episode "Your Shoe's Untied", which is basically a metaphor for watching pornography.
	* In the episode "Gary Takes a Bath" SpongeBob warns Gary not to drop the "doubloons" (soap) and then winking making a reference to prison rape, which got that episode banned in the UK.
	* Finally, in Texas, SpongeBob said "Patrick, your genius is showing", and Patrick obviously thought he said "penis" and said "Where?!".

## Critical Reception

*SpongeBob SquarePants* has received universal critical acclaim, being praised for its appeal to different age groups, and the show has earned numerous awards and accolades throughout its run. James Poniewozik of *Time* magazine described the title character as "the anti-Bart Simpson, temperamentally and physically: his head is as squared-off and neat as Bart's is unruly, and he has a personality to match—conscientious, optimistic and blind to the faults in the world and those around him.

It currently sits at 8.1/10 on IMDb and a 8.5/10 on TV.com