The Fly of Despair
As promised, this week is mostly dedicated to SpongeBob, the best cartoon ever made. RIP Steven Hillenburg. I do have to clear the air about Dua Lipa being in FIFA though.
I’ve ragged on Dua Lipa a bit on here, an artist I do overall adore with some annoying marketing tactics, but this is just so sick. Most of the whole EA Sports collection saps the video games part of sports video games out and presents this faux-reality with highly specific player design and ratings, but this is actually incredibly inspired. Some gay boy at FIFA was like what if Dula Peep was also good at soccer and programmed her in for “marketing” purposes. Everyone’s gonna be happy. Who could be mad at Mrs. Peep in a soccer uniform. I’m gonna switch my “I work at the CIA” bit to “I work for EA Sports” and pretend I made this decision because this has me written all over it. I bought FIFA ‘21 because of this. This and the Dew Garita are the two highlights of the year.
More Like Sponge Boob
I didn’t know who David Hasselhoff was when I was eight years old, but I still laughed when he showed up in the SpongeBob movie. SpongeBob and Patrick had just escaped the clutches of an evil gift shop which had threatened to dry them out completely as they sought out King Neptune’s crown, which had been stolen, which thrust their home into chaos because Neptune was self-conscious about his bald-spot. What else could’ve happened in the cinematic debut of everyone’s favorite sea creature?
Naturally, the two buds cried on their deathbed which shorted out a nearby wire and caused the sprinklers to go off. All the animals within burst to life and SpongeBob and Patrick were free to escape with the crown. On the beach, they needed transportation, and Hasselhoff showed up out of nowhere to swim them back home.
Why is this funny? Well, Hasselhoff was, famously, the life-guard hunk from Baywatch, so to see him appear on the beach is funny for those in the know (my parents). But I was eight. So why was it funny TO ME? Probably because it didn’t make any goddamn sense. Like everything else on SpongeBob it was something utterly ridiculous presented as eternal truth. Where does a Sponge live? A Pineapple of course! Who is his neighbor? A disgruntled Squid! What does he do for fun? Catch JellyFish as if they’re butterflies so he can eat their jam! How do we return Neptune his crown? David fucking Hasselhoff will swim us there and launch us out of his chest.
SpongeBob is so integral to my generation’s humor it’s impossible to overstate its influence. If memes are any sort of metric, SpongeBob is at the level of Drake. Travis Scott referenced the “bubble bowl” episode at the actual super bowl. ThIS whOLE ThING WheN SOMeONe sayS something dumb online, is from a SpongeBob meme. Any weird plot point is constant fodder for internet discussion. That episode where SpongeBob goes on strike? Every 20 year old leftist on twitter tweets it out every day.
My explanation is mostly, there’s not really anything like it. In some ways it’s Seinfeld for kids. There’s few lessons you learn from it, which was Larry David’s whole thing “no growth, no lessons learned.” In a way Spongebob is a complete asshole and somehow Squidward always gets punished for being a little grumpy, and like, not wanting his neighbors to be outside yelling all the time. When there is a moral, it’s based in something insane. Squidward learns in one episode that you should put real thought and effort into gifts instead of just buying a “homemade pie.” How is this executed you ask? Well naturally, the Pie he buys isn’t actually homemade, in fact, it’s actually a bomb? What?
Even if we want to think about other cartoons, there’s almost always a family dynamic. Homer Simpson is supposed to be this universal father figure for the universal town of Springfield. King of the Hill gives this a specifically southern spin. The Proud Family was geared towards black viewers. But, what’s the dynamic for SpongeBob? An aging fry cook who loves his terrible job? I guess that’s not completely unique--the Looney Tunes universe is mostly random animals that do random things--but SpongeBob is more elaborate.
The most quotable episode is probably the one where SpongeBob goes on a date with Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel. How does a squirrel get to an underwater fish colony you ask? Well, obviously she’s a Texan scientist who’s traveled to the bottom of the ocean to live in a dome and study the ocean (or something). SpongeBob doesn’t really understand this so he goes into the dome and can’t breathe. Not wanting to ruin the date he continually repeats “I don’t need it” (water) in increasingly dire tones. The saga of road runner outrunning a Coyote simply cannot compare.
The way the show executes the jokes for kids/jokes for adults dynamic is also unlike anything else. Usually kids shows will have some sex jokes that fly over kids heads, but SpongeBob doesn’t really need to do that, there’s just a whole spectrum of sarcasm that you don’t always pick up on. When you’re six you react mostly to the funny voices and nonsense, but then when you’re 10 you realize, wait a minute is this episode some sort of vague reference to steroid use in baseball?
Or what about the episode where Squidward discovers that he actually likes Krabby Patties and starts extreme binge eating them. SpongeBob warns him that he should be careful and not get addicted to them. Why, he asks? Cause I’ll blow up or something? NO WORSE, it’ll go straight to your thighs! And then you’ll blow up. The joke is Squidward go boom, but they also squeeze in a joke about concern of body image over concern of actual health in there for when you turn 15.
I think that’s why it’s so re-watchable. Mind you, SpongeBob was just kind of on a loop in my house growing up, so it's hard for me to take real critiques to it, but also I still think about “the fly of despair” on a daily basis. This phrase comes from the episode Shanghaied. In this episode Squidward, SpongeBob, and Patrick are enlisted to serve the ghost of the Flying Dutchman. Squidward has a smarmy comeback to the Dutchman asking, “will we be getting business cards?” (That joke hit different once I turned 11). Not taking kindly to the sarcasm, the Flying Dutchman then conjures a zipper out of nowhere, unzips the sky and throws Squidward into it. Then he asks if anyone else would like to join him in the fly of despair. What an incredible phrase. Now whenever we have a bad hook-up we can say: “unfortunately, I joined them in the fly of despair.”
I do kind of wonder if SpongeBob is one of those critical hall of mirrors, where it's impossible to really define when it is good versus when it is bad. What are you gonna say? It’s stupid? Of course it’s stupid. That’s why it’s awesome. At the same time, I have watched the occasional new-ish episode on the Treadmill at the gym (y’know when that was possible) and let me tell you things have gotten weird.
One that stuck with me shows Squidward on his way to the doctor’s office to get a nose job and SpongeBob decides to come with. Once there, SpongeBob enlists in the candy stripers and eats the candy stripes off the uniform, so he gets mistaken for a doctor and starts making rounds. The rest of the episode verges on body horror. SpongeBob sees a marathon runner with all broken limbs so he lifts him up and pours his bones out, then grabs a nearby model skeleton and stuffs it in his mouth--the runner runs off. He also gets involved in Squidward’s surgery somehow and ends up inside of his nose? It’s just a bloodbath.
Then there’s the musical. This thing is so nuts. I haven’t seen it, admittedly, but I’ve read the description and heard most of the songs. It’s wild because it starts out with your usual “Disney on ice” fair where characters kids know about are on stage and they, like, sing about being those characters so kids can think “wow you’re so right, SpongeBob does have a pet snail! I saw it on TV!” But this is immediately followed by a David Bowie and Brian Eno penned tune that sounds like Bowie’s Trent Reznor collaboration. Oh and when Plankton is devising his evil plan? It’s a rap written by T.I.
Classic era or weird new product that’s trying too hard, one thing SpongeBob will always be able to do is unite us. I thought about SpongeBob because some 18 year old rapper trying to get a billion YouTube views made a beat out of the theme song and a friend sent it to me. It sounds kinda bad, but you bet I clicked on the rapper’s YouTube page, saw another video on there with a bunch of Madden references, and said “ahh yes, my people.”
-Donovan Burtan
Mrs. Puff will always go down as my favorite character. Her boating lessons are my favorite episodes too!!