The Prestige TV Podcast - The Lovable Legacy of Spongebob

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

With the emergence of 'Spongebob Squarepants' on Paramount+, Danny Heifetz and Craig Horlbeck discuss the monumental impact the children's show has had and rank their three favorite episodes. Hosts: Danny Heifetz and Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, since you're here, Squidward, we'll give you the new member initiation. Are you ready, Patrick? Ready! Welcome to our club! Welcome to our club! Welcome to our club! Welcome Squidward! Welcome Squidward! Welcome Squidward! Welcome Squidward! Welcome Squidward! Shut your half-wit! Piehalls! Hello and welcome to TV concierge, a podcast on The Ringer that helps you navigate the vast streaming landscape. My name is Danny Heifitz, host of the Ringer Fantasy Football Show, and I am joined by my co-host, my producer, and my friend, Craig Worldbeck. Wow.

Because I called you your friend? Is that with the WA? That was a nice. That was a nice trio. I thought you were going to call me the barnacle boy to your mermaid man or something like that. No, I'm not that mean. I was going to do the intro of just like, are you ready, Craig? But I was like, I don't know if you were going to go along with the bit.

I don't know if I would have got along with it, but I respect it. Good for you. You do the voice pretty well. I can hear you. Okay, no. We're going to talk about SpongeBob because Paramount Plus is out. We probably have it because you needed to watch Megan Markle talk to Oprah. But now it's like, what do you do?

this service. It was also on cable, the Megan Markle interview. Who has, what is cable? That's true. Didn't that die with the dinosaurs? That's why TV concierge exists because you don't have cable. Yeah, exactly. That's why this whole thing is going on. So anyway, Paramount Plus is going on. Fun fact for you. The most distributed

show by Viacom CBS, the company, is SpongeBob SquarePants. And so you could argue that the most anticipated property on Paramount Plus is in fact SpongeBob SquarePants. So we kind of wanted to do this episode as a guide for people who love it, an intro for people who don't know it, like many of our bosses,

which we're going to get to. Yeah. But first, Craig, what was your relationship with SpongeBob as a kid? Was it the number one show in your rotation? Yes. It was the number one show in my rotation. I was born in 1994. SpongeBob started in 1999.

So do you think that's, I was a little too young? Or do you think that was perfect? I'm so, all right, let's just start here. I think I was way too young for this. My mom hated that I watched this show. She thought it made me dumber. And after I started rewatching it, I think she was right. I don't know if I would show kids this show.

I think it did make me more stupid. Get out of here. How did SpongeBob make you? SpongeBob is incredibly intelligent. It's smart, stupid. It is smart stupid. It is, yeah, it's smart stupid. But it's still stupid, but it's amazing stupid.

So I watch other shows like Rugrats, Rocket Power, Wild Thornberry's. Hey Arnold. My mom would prefer me have watched Hey Arnold. over SpongeBob 100 times out of 100. But all those shows started in kind of the mid to early 90s. So you were getting bored of them. They were kind of at their tail end when SpongeBob started. And SpongeBob was kind of completely different.

Even the animation seemed different. So Spongebob was like my go-to after-school special, you know? Yeah, SpongeBob's crazy because, like, visually, they splice in all these explosions and they cut to, like, actual, like, F1 crashes. And they have this crazy style that in some ways, I mean, one of the reasons SpongeBob is still kind of prevalent on the internet is you watch these episodes from like literally 2001 and 2002 and you're like, that could be a viral

video on the internet today unedited. They have this very different style to it. Well, if you did the rewatchables category, what's age the best? It's like the production design of SpongeBob. There'll be scenes where they kind of punch in and the frame is no longer this colorful animated. It's like

more hand drawn or more you know what I mean? It's like it's more detailed. They really like cut in and out of kind of different artistic frameworks really well and almost in like a not a childish way, a very artistic way. I think the way the show's directed is as good as it is written. I don't know if it's ever

been so clear that people making a children's show were on drugs the whole time. Like I don't know if it was mushrooms or acid or what, but like the, there was like a real drug vibe to like the whole series. Well, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Like the physics don't make sense. Does it matter? It'll break the fourth wall all the time. Doesn't matter.

I kind of think it's like a really watered down, PG, PG-PG family guy at times. No, you're not wrong about that. So you mentioned the lineup. So like the Nickelodeon lineup, you know what? I don't know. I'm going to be a little prejudiced here.

I'm not going down the Cartoon Network lineup right here. I do want to hit the Nickelodeon ones you mentioned. So it's like SpongeBob, Rocket Power. Hey Arnold, Rugrats. Jimmy Neutron, shout out. The Wild Thornberry's fairly odd appearance. Why didn't none of those shows have the internet resonance that SpongeBob do? because you don't see fairly odd parents memes,

even though I kind of like fairly out parents better than SpongeBob at the time. You know, I don't know. I think that SpongeBob is extremely relatable. It's very human situations. I think the essence of the show is kind of ignorance as bliss, and I think we're all Squidward,

and I think we all want to be SpongeBob. And SpongeBob always wins. That's really true. The shittiest part is, like, as I get older, I'm like, damn, I get why Squidward wanted them to keep it down all of the things. time. Right. You know, they're in the box of imagination and you hear all these incredible sounds on the outside and you go in and they're not doing anything and it's like a perfect example of like,

hey, never grow up because inside the box is more fun than outside the box and we're all outside the box. I have to, my favorite line in the entire series is when Patrick's like, you don't know what I'm thinking. The intermachinations of my mind are enigma. And then it's like a milk carton spilling over and I'm like, damn, I miss like abstract thoughts. It's so stupid smart. I really, there's times when the family guy thing, You know how a family guy really relies on, like, repetition. They'll do the same thing over and over until it's funny. Or they're, like, have these awkward pauses. Here, like the knee when it's like, ah, like a hundred times in a row.

SpongeBob's weirdly good at that. Like, you know the Frankenoodle episode when the pencil falls right at the beginning. And they start running around like crazy and screaming. For a brief second, Patrick just stops and stays out of it. And then keeps running again. Like, that type of stuff is what I think separates the show because it was kind of meta. Like, Hey, Arnold didn't do this stuff. No, meta is the word.

Meta's the word. They play with format and genre in a way that no other cartoon kids show did. And in a way, that's kind of letting kids in on the joke, like treating your audience kind of smarter. I mean, audience of six-year-olds. And it's becoming a bit contrived to say this, but it really does work for adults and kids. I mean, I know that they say that about a lot of cartoon kids shows, but it really does stay just as good, if not better, when you're 26. But on that note, so I think there's a weird thing about SpongeBob. We do the Ringer Fantasy Football Show together with Danny Kelly. So you were born in 96.

I was born in 95. I was born in 94. Oh, yeah, whatever. Danny Kelly, math. I don't know. Danny Kelly, who we do it with, was born in, I don't know, 1960? Yeah, I think around World War II, 45.

So technically, we're all millennials, 25 and 37. But you and I have a very strong theory that SpongeBob is like the demarcating line. It's like half time between the millennials. Like the millennials who don't remember SpongeBob are kind of really have, nothing to do with us. And then there's a sweet spot of like 22 year olds to like really somewhere

around 28, 29, it peters out. And that's the SpongeBob generation. And those are the people who get the internet still and memes online. And then all of our bosses, or some of the people ask us to do this podcast are above that and have no idea what SpongeBob is, thinks it's bizarre and I don't know, ruined our generation. I don't know what people older think of SpongeBob. Yeah, you know, if the hottest take we're still around, I would say that. I think we need to redo the generations, because millennials too wide. It's too wide.

It's ridiculous. And it needs to be a sponge. I'm okay with being called the SpongeBob generation, whatever you want to call it, the bikini bottoms. Bikini bottoms. But yeah,

there was this, you know, my brother's 30 years old. And he, if I said, like, what's your favorite SpongeBob episode? I guarantee you he couldn't pick one.

Couldn't pick a single episode. Meanwhile, I can recite this shit like it's an encyclopedia. Should we get to reciting it like it's an encyclopedia? Well, let me ask you this.

So how many episodes? did you watch in preparation of this recording? Well, are we counting, is it like, because you know how every episode's like vestigial, like they're, they have two episodes. So are you counting with that as one or two? So I think, I actually like went back and rewatched shows last year for like another reason to me and my friend were bored. We went back and watched SpongeBob.

When I was a kid, I don't think I understood that two episodes were in one 22 minute time slot. No, I didn't either. Like remembering it, I thought each episode was 22 minutes, but it's not. Each episode is 11. And it's kind of incredible because what I think SpongeBob does so well is every memory you have of the episode is kind of just that is every part of the episode. There's no fluff.

Like they get right into it. It is a joke. It is a plot moving point. It is another joke. It is a plot moving point. Like, SpongeBob does not fuck around. It is a tight 11 minutes. They get in, they get out. And it's your full memory. There's no like, you know, exposition. It's kind of

like family guy will have these long, meandering A-block's and then the end of like this seven or eight-minute thing sets up the rest of the episode. SpongeBob, just the A-block, the eight minutes is the show. The Fry-Cook games are announced like episode like second 10 and they're competing like one minute 30 seconds into the episode and you like understand all of it it's amazing well i think that's like the good part of cartoons like the good cartoons like the good cartoons are like that like rick and morty i this is not a rick

and morty podcast but the amazing thing about that show is they'll just get they'll just establish okay best imagination world was real and rick left her best friend there when they were five they have to go back and get him because he's still in this world and that's like 45 seconds into the episode spongewops kind of like it's a master class and kind of like storytelling but i before It is. Yeah, totally. Before we, they have a high PER. Before we get into the ranking, though, I wanted to tell you one, like, small anecdote. So my friend Chris and I love Spongebob. We talk about it all the time. We always have had this theory that season four is when SpongeBob died. After season, after season four was terrible. We never knew why, but we were like, something changed. And it was really specifically marked by the April 20th episode of season four titled The Best Day Ever. It was this huge marketing campaign around it. The episode came out. It was not good. And it kind of, was the nail in the coffin. That season four is not unlike the first three seasons. So as I was kind of researching Spongewobb,

it was created by this guy, Stephen Hillenberg, who was also a part of Rocco's Modern Life, by the way. There are some similar animation styles if you look at it. So I found out that they made season three. They wrote season three, in my opinion, the last good season. And then Stephen Hillenberg goes, all right, we're going to stop. We're going to go on a hiatus because we're going to write the movie.

And so SpongeBob takes like a break for a while. The movie comes out, and then he goes to Nickelode, and he's like, I'm done. Spongewob should end. It's perfect. It's peaked. I don't want to do it anymore. And they go, of course,

Nickelodeon, making tons of money off. It goes, absolutely not. We need to keep it going. Stephen Hillenberg steps down as showrunner and never returns. He stays on as like an advisor, executive producer, whatever, but he never returns. And now it makes so much sense why season four

was the beginning of the end for SpongeBob, but now it's just a different show. And the first three seasons are unbelievable. I didn't know he left that early. So he actually passed away a couple years ago, and there was like a lot of fanfare around it. People obviously, very thankful for everything. But that makes sense because I didn't know if we just like season,

the first three seasons, because that's when we were like six to ten years old and we, that's what you enjoy as a kid or if we, if they'd actually got worse. But it makes sense. Like as I did the rewatch, I was kind of thinking, the earlier ones really are best. They are. They really are better. And I actually don't like when the animation gets too skilled. Do you know what I mean? I think now it's almost too vibrant and too, um, kind of lurid. I don't enjoy it. I like the kind of subtle animation of the first three seasons. How do you feel about Patch as the Pirate? I think he's great. I'm a huge fan.

You know what? That's a huge part of my life that I really forgot about. That's Tom Kenny. That's the voice of SpongeBob. Is that the same guy? Yeah, he's patchy. That makes, wow, I kind of wish I didn't know that. Okay. You want to get to, so we just ranked our top three favorite SpongeBob episodes. Yeah. To be clear, you can't really pick three.

It's SpongeBob, the value is in the entire catalog. But if you were, but we forced ourselves to pick three each year. Really difficult task. I went back and I kind of watched like my favorite nine and I picked three out of that from memory. And I rewatched them all. Okay. You want to go first or do you want me to go first there?

I'll go first. I'll go first. Okay. So my first one I'm going to say is band geeks. Oh, that was fun. Yeah. It's season two episode 15, which is the one people to know Squidward forms of marching band to kind of stick it to his arch rival.

Squilliam. Fancy son. Great name. Great character. Squilliam. I think Squidward's commitment to being like a classy, worldly guy, even though he's completely talentless

and he's like, has this desire to be like an aristocrat and he's super not. Is just, I think, one of the funniest parts of the show. It's so adult. People don't get it. It's also relatable. I think, so first of all, this episode, I almost didn't list it because it's,

I mean, mainstream to be like, I feel like Squidward right now, it's like a little too mainstream to be like, this is the best episode. This is universally regarded as the best episode. You know what?

It is. This episode is hilarious. And Patrick is my favorite character and this has maybe the best Patrick star line, which is what he's like, is mayonnaise is an instrument. It's indelible. As mayonnaise is an instrument.

And then he raises his hand again, and he goes, horseradish is not an instrument either. And with the owner of the white sedan, you left your lights on, when he's got the tuba around his neck, whatever, the trombone. It's so good.

And I think what kind of makes this episode, unlike the rest, is one thing SpongeBob does really well is music. Yes, it's stunning. I made a quick list. Let me run through it. You'll hear people listening if you're a SpongeBob fan. You'll hear the name of this every song and immediately it'll pop into your head.

They've done Sweet Victory, which is from Band Geeks, which is incredible. That was the funny part of the episode was it was incredible. I'd listen to it today. Goofy Goober Rock from the movie. Unbelievable. The Jellyfish Jam. The Campfire song. Fun? Loop-y-loop. I want to

talk about fun. Okay. The lyrics to fun. It's like they talk about like friends and the power of friendship and then F is for friends that do things together. You is for you and me. Plankton comes in with you is for your radium bombs and is for no

survivors. I was six years old watching this and in retrospect I can't believe I was allowed to watch this as I don't would you let your kids like six years old watch like you was for your radium bombs. 100 I would let my kid watch this. Are you kidding me? Do you know what's out there now? We're going to give our kids' iPads when they're four. They can find a lot worse. I hope they're watching SpongeBob. But just to cap it off, the Sandy's Texas song, ripped pants and the best time to wear a striped sweater. Every time Spongeb does music, it's fantastic. They even remade the tiny Tim song in like episode.

I got it about that. That's a really good one. I also had band geeks and I can't really say enough about it. I think that's overall the best episode. But my favorite moment, comes from a different episode. So what do you have next? Well, you just go again. Okay. Season 2 episode 11, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy 3. The third one, okay.

So that's the one where they accident, so Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy go on vacation and they're old, you know, and SpongeBob and Patrick watched the layer for them, and they accidentally defrost Man Ray. And they have to teach him to be good, and there's the laughing belt. And it's all about Man Ray learning to be good.

And, you know, SpongeBob and Patrick, you know, fall. ass backwards into like actually curing him. But the funniest moment, perhaps in SpongeBob history for me, is the wallet scene. When they're teaching him to be good and they go, all right, Man Ray, what do you do when somebody drops their wallet? And he goes, Pat, drop your wallet. Pat drops the wallet.

And he's like, Man Ray's like pretending. And he's like, oh, I saw you drop this wallet. Here you go. And Pat's like, that's not my wallet. He's like, what are you talking about? I just saw you drop. And he's like, it's not my wallet. And then he pulls out the license and goes, are you Patrick Starr?

And he goes, yep. And he goes, and this is your ID. And he goes, yep. He's like, I found this ID in this wallet. So that would mean that this is your wallet. He goes, that makes sense to me. He's like, then take it. And he goes, it's not my wallet.

And then he just beats the shit at Patrick. And then the next scene is Patrick carrying a heavy package and he keeps dropping it on Manoray's foot. And he goes, what's in that box? And he goes, my wallets. And it's just, that's where like the family guy aspect comes in. Sorry, I know that was a long tangent, but I love that scene. No, it's fine.

I think so Patrick. Patrick's getting a spinoff for parents. Paramount Plus. They're doing the Patrick Star Show. I think that this is the most home run idea I've ever heard. I can't think of a character two sides more. Oh, you're skeptical of the Patrick Star Show? Yeah, I'm a purist. I don't like spinoffs. They never work. You're happy about it? Like, what do you like? So the Pat, let me, so this is some deadline. The Patrick Star show follows a younger Patrick Star, living at home with his family, where he hosts his own show for the neighborhood from his television turned to bedroom. His little sister Squidina works behind the scenes to make sure Patrick's show is always running smoothly while his parents, Bunny and Cecil, and his grandpa, grandpat. each support Patrick in their own hilarious absurd ways. So Patrick's a YouTube star as an angsty teenager. I think that is a home run. I mean, it's a good idea, but, you know, it's not going to be as good. It's not going to be close.

Oh, shit, you're 26. Patrick can't carry the show. The best part about him is that he's, he's an accessory, you know? He's less is more with Patrick. So you're saying, who's the NBA equivalent? You're saying he's like Nick Batum or something? You know, like if Clay Thompson had to play point guard, it wouldn't work out. He's a catch-and-shoot guy.

He's better when he has 60 points off 12 dribbles. I feel like Clay Thompson loves Patrick Star. Well, there's a, yeah, haven't you seen the Clay Thompson Patrick Star? I think it was my Slack. Yeah, that's a whole meme. It's like life becomes art. What's your second? I'm obsessed with the Flying Dutchman.

I don't know why. I love Shanghai, the first Flying Dutchman episode. It's just, I don't know why. It's the one where Patrick is, they're like, Roar. And he's like, Lidoo, Leetle, Leetle, it's just. The Lidol, Liddle, and the Liddle, and the Flying Desmond keeps breathing in to roar. And he, Lidlele, yeah. And I think I also forgot how, again, I'm serious about, like, I think that they were doing a lot of acid while making this show because there's a point where the flying Dutchman's mad at Squidward and he just unzips like the fabric of reality and throws him into like they call it the, was it the zipper of despair?

And he's flying through what looks like your subconscious. It's like a Salvador or Dolly and like severed heads and all this shit for like all eternity unzip it. He's like anyone else want to go in and Squidward spends like 10 minutes of like real life time in there. I think that that's the moments that I never appreciated as a kid and those are all the ones that are really funny now. Well, yeah, because a little kid

like is not, you're right, he's not going to understand that. Like in the mermaid and barnacle boy, yeah, once they cure man, right, Patrick whispers, I guess he's reconstituted and then SpongeBob goes rehabilitated and then Patrick says gazintite. Like, just, it's on another level.

It's on another level. Or like, also, the other one on my list is like this civil, your shoes untied, which is just SpongeBob tries to teach. Patrick how to tie his shoes

and the process realizes he doesn't know how to tie his shoes. But the funniest part is literally the first five seconds. He's sitting in the chair and he's watching,

like, again, they meld the cartoons with like real life and he's watching a, his TV has a real life video of like a sponge in the ocean gyrating. And SpongeBob's like really excited

and then Gary comes over his cat and he's like, oh, sorry, I was, I was watching football. And which like, no one would understand. And it's aged like fine wine.

So that's your third episode? That's your third one? That's my third one. It's great. Mine is Survival of the Idiots where they get locked in the tree dome while Sandy's hibernating. Yeah, that's a really...

Honestly, it's better than mine. That's a legendary episode. Subtle joke when Sandy is sleep talking and she goes, I'm going to catch you and throw you in jail at taxpayer's expense. Like, what are you kidding me?

That one is a legendary episode. All of these are from the first three seasons, though. Oh, every single one. Are we sure it's because the creator changed and not that just that was the sweet spot of our childhood and everyone feels that when you were a certain age that's the best thing that there ever was? Well, no, because like what, 2004 or five

when season four aired, I was eight or no, sorry, I was nine or ten. Like, I'm not sure you've outgrown SpongeBob with that age. I actively remember being disinterested. I remember the best day ever episode coming out and being like, this is not good anymore. It's unbelievable. All my other episodes, I have nine that I rewatched,

and those are all honorable mentions, which my top one is Frankenoodle, which is incredible. They're all in season one, two, and three. I like that you were just ahead of the curve and just being apathetic and you're just like nine-year-old Craig and you're just like, you know,

this really was better with the under the previous creator. It's true, you know? Larry David left Seinfeld the show dipped a little bit. Armando I Anucci left VEP. It happens. I have one question for you.

Okay. I want to talk about quickly this episode, Frankenoodle. Do you know the one I'm talking about? The most met of all. It's where they find a pencil and then they write

and all the drawings come to life. So there's a moment and this is also perhaps It's one of the funniest moments in SpongeBob, in my opinion. When Frang and Doodle draws a hole in the ground and they fall to the bottom of it, and then a wrench drops on Patrick's head, and he says, where's the leak, ma'am? He's concussed. But the second time, they pop up to the top of the ditch, and Doodle Bob throws a bowling ball at him,

and Patrick's head turns into a pin, and it hits him, and then he falls through the bottom of the ditch, and the ball follows into the ditch and falls and hits him in the head. And SpongeBob yells like, Pat, are you okay? and Patrick yells Finland, the country. He goes, Finland! To this day, I have never understood why he said that. If it's a meta-joke, I don't understand. Why did he yell Finland?

Because what's going to yell Norway? It's not as funny. I don't know. I never got it in. I think it's really obvious. You don't get it? Acid? Exactly.

It's psilocybin, actually. That's the technical term. That's probably. Okay, well, let's fall into our own hole before we just, you know, go on. I don't know. Yeah, you know, the SpongeBob memes will live on forever, High Fitz. And I'm so happy that this is the show. We got so lucky with when we were born because we understand these SpongeBob memes more than anybody.

And I want to recommend there is a Twitter account out there called SpongeBob screenshots or SpongeBob screencaps, I think. And it's literally screenshots from every scene, from every episode in order. And they are just a blank canvas for a meme. Grab them. Turn them into memes, people. And then we will officially be old and washed up when they're, there's like a Phineas and Ferb TV concierge episode. Yeah, we will be.

That's a show I never really dipped my toe in. Wow. I've been begging the ringer to let me do a SpongeBob binge show. Binge Bob Sponge Mode, whatever we want to call it. Binge Bob Sponge mode. Okay, well, there you go. This was like the prologue to that. So there you go.

Paramount Plus, check it out. Paramount Plus. Yeah, thank you to everyone. Thank you, K. Oh, I think he's not here. I'm just muscle memory. Thank you, SpongeBob. Check out the Ringer Fantasy Football show.

Check out Paramount Plus and SpongeBob. Thank you.