S04E01: “Fear of a Krabby Patty / Shell of a Man”

Our journey through uncertain times for SpongeBob finds us at a fairly inauspicious start. But hey, you gotta start somewhere!

My memories of Season 4 are an amalgamation of two different things: my childhood memories of watching the show, and the memories of doing a full watch-through of the show that began in 2020 with one of my long-time friends, with whom I watch an episode a week. (It’s very much ongoing—we’re currently in Season 11.) Largely indebted to the latter, my feelings about Season 4 tend to run fairly cold. To me, it feels like a season of uncertainty. While the impact of Stephen Hillenburg on a day-to-day basis across the first three seasons is largely left to be implied, it feels like there’s something of a vacuum in his absence, despite the fact that there’s plenty of carry-over from Season 3. All the major figures in the show’s production returned besides Hillenburg himself and creative director/supervising producer Derek Drymon. Their position as tastemakers, tasked with approving writers’ outlines and ideas, was passed to Paul Tibbitt, one of Hillenburg’s favorite members of the crew, who was a writer, director, and storyboard artist from the show’s inception.

(I mention these names not to demonize or antagonize any of them as far too many self-appointed “critics” have done in the past; rather, I think the historical context surrounding the show and its production is important, as a way to measure its evolution. The flaws of a show can rarely be blamed on specific individuals.)

Nonetheless, perhaps without Drymon and Hillenburg being as involved with curating episode pitches, it does feel to me like Season 4 struggles to feel confident about its ideas. Both “Fear of a Krabby Patty” and “Shell of a Man” have that vibe about themselves—they’re not bad, and they have their moments, but there’s a cumbersome feel.

One of the more noticeable shifts to me is that the show is starting to take more interest in using a very obvious story structure. That’s not to say that the show never had, like, three-act episodes (most stories have this intrinsically), but it feels like we’re increasingly focused on narratives that develop, and that have a very straightforward path rather than being specifically designed as an opportunity for delivering gag after gag in the way that a lot of episodes from the glory days like, say, “Artist Unknown” or “Your Shoe’s Untied” are. In those episodes, we get introduced to the premise, mess around for most of the runtime, and then have a clean out; in an episode like “Fear of a Krabby Patty,” there’s more linearity, with everything building off of what precedes it. That can work very well when the show has a clear vision, but when not everything lines up, there’s a bit of a domino effect of things happening for the sake of allowing other things to happen. 

“I want to live… I WANT TO LIVE!”

“Fear of a Krabby Patty” has the construction of a card tower: it’s precise and elaborate, but also… kinda wobbly? There’s a lot of setup to get to where it needs to be for its premise. Basically, through an elaborate con that forces the Krusty Krab to stay open 24/7, SpongeBob’s brain completely snaps and he develops an irrational trauma response to Krabby Patties, at which point Plankton steps in, pretending to be a therapist in hopes of mining the secret formula out of him through reverse psychology. What I will say, in the episode’s favor, is that I will always enjoy when Plankton’s evil plots are more psychological or abstract in nature than building robotic doohickeys. (We get another fun instance of that in the next episode pair, actually—foreshadowing!) Plankton, generally speaking, is perhaps the one character across the entirety of the show who never falters and manages to make me laugh in even the worst material, and this episode is no exception. Everything that works here works because of him, and because his therapist-patient dynamic with SpongeBob is pretty damn amusing. That’s a fun game to be playing! But it’s a game that requires a lot of setup (seven and a half minutes’ worth), and there’s not a ton to really write home about up to that point aside from a few iconic meme images (Krabs and his cowbell, most notably) and the visuals of SpongeBob’s patty-centric hallucinations. The ending also feels rather abrupt, and a bit too “lol so random,” with SpongeBob envisioning a Krabby Patty being kind to him during a session of hypnosis that makes him realize they aren’t worth fearing. It feels too convenient, and the episode just kinda tapers off after that, treating Plankton’s involvement as a mere interlude when it should’ve been more central.

“Let me spin you a manly yarn. So there I was, in Jellyfish Fields… me supply of bubble soap was dangerously low…”

To some extent, “Shell of a Man” has more whiffs of that fun, carefree vibe that makes the first three seasons so intoxicating, though that vibe is similarly weighed down by some uneventful plotting. This is also where my nostalgia-tinted memories get some weird, modern-day revisions because yes, I did have strong memories of this episode, but most of those were driven by the sheer weirdness of its visuals: the sight of a pink, fleshy, shell-less Mr. Krabs at the age of four will never leave you. And by and large, that feels like how a lot of Season 4 operates. I’ll get flashes of intense memory from certain unforgettable aspects, but there’s a lack of strong substance exceeding those memories that, upon revisiting, makes me go, “Oh, so that was kind of all they had.”

Now to be fair, there are a few specific things I like here. First of all, I always enjoy the rare moments when SpongeBob pulls from the marine biology that Hillenburg based his visions of the show off of; doing an episode where Mr. Krabs molts, as crabs do, and finding an angle for his character that taps into that biological reality in a vaguely clever way—rendering him insecure about his perceived masculinity the night he’s supposed to meet his old navy buddies—is cool! I also am always a fan of hearing voice actors do impressions of each other’s characters, especially while in-character, as Tom Kenny does here, and I’ll take this moment to say that even in the worst of times, this show’s voice actors are always absolutely crushing it. The issue is more so that “Shell of a Man” is little more than a glorified excuse to have Kenny do his vocal gymnastics, and as fun as they are, it isn’t enough to override the very staid format of the episode once it settles into its main game: Mr. Krabs clutching his face in his paws as he watches SpongeBob miraculously skirt by undetected while pretending to be him despite committing faux-pas after faux-pas, until eventually, he falters. And again, I don’t want to be some sort of “stopwatch critic,” but once more it takes a bit too long to actually get to that setup, during which the episode is simply biding time. 

As our first forays into a new season, I wouldn't consider either episode to be particularly promising, or the best foot to put forward, though at the same time, SpongeBob has rarely been a show to place strong considerations towards its season premieres (or finales, for that matter). We'll just have to see how the season progresses as we amble along!

Favorite jokes: 
— From “Fear of a Krabby Patty”: Old Man Walker floating across the screen during the floating image sequence; the recurring piano gags.
— From “Shell of a Man”: SpongeBob spitting up his entire skeleton after a punch from Iron Eye.

Stray Observations:
— The sentient Krabby Patty in SpongeBob’s dream having an E.T. finger for no reason gave me a smirk. Always enjoy when the storyboarders throw in some random detail like that which exists solely to entertain themselves.
— Granted, it’s Plankton at the end of his scheme declaring that therapy doesn’t work once SpongeBob is able to resolve his own trauma, but there are moments of that throughout the early years of the show, and indeed, the culture of the 2000s that felt bizarrely anti-therapy? It feels like a prickly thing to joke about now in a show for seven year-olds, and I will say, it definitely distorted my idea of what therapy was at the time in a negative way. But I’m in therapy now and everything’s better, so hooray!
— The lack of Patrick to kick off our new season is disconcerting. I have it on good authority he’ll be coming back soon, though.
   — While episode pairings can be a byproduct of random assignment, I do take a lot of interest in how two episodes can mirror each other, or cover different ground in a way that makes them compelling as a two-piece. In this case… not so much. They’re not the most repetitive, but being that they both spend half of their runtime in the Krusty Krab, and more damningly, that both of them end with SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs laughing, feels a bit callous.
— It’s an odd thing to single out specifically, but there is also a noticeable difference between the quality of the storyboarding across both episodes to me; “Fear of a Krabby Patty” is very expressive and full of screenshot-worthy frames—perhaps a byproduct of C.H. Greenblatt’s writing style, even if he himself didn’t storyboard it—but “Shell of a Man,” while competent, is decidedly un-photogenic. I do wonder how much of that comes down to script. As a sidenote, this is also the last episode he'd work on for the show, though he did come in to punch up Sponge On the Run. His departure will also be quite felt as the season progresses, I'm sure.

FINAL GRADES: B-/C+.

Season Episode Ranking:
As we progress through more episodes, this is where you’ll see how I’ve organized them from best to worst across their respective seasons. Right now it’s very disinteresting, but hey, you gotta start somewhere!

    1. Fear of a Krabby Patty (B-)
    2. Shell of a Man (C+)

Next week: Krabs gets a new mattress, and a court summons.

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