“ALL MY MONEY WAS IN THAT MATTRESS!” “WHAT?? HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF A BANK??” “NOOOO!!”
Original Airdate: May 13, 2005
While I understand why “Fear of a Krabby Patty” and “Shell of a Man” were chosen to lead off this season, a part of me wonders if that pairing would be better served if “The Lost Mattress” served as a chaser: it’s not an amazing episode, but it’s got a nice, easygoing feel while spotlighting more of the cast we’ve come to love. It’s been a bizarrely Krabs-centric start to the season—which even continues to the fourth episode that we’ll get onto momentarily—but in the case of “The Lost Mattress,” he’s merely a catalyst for a little slapstick nonsense with SpongeBob, Patrick (welcome to S4, buddy!), and Squidward. Is there a sense that the character dynamics here are a little warmed-over? For sure. We’ve seen this rapport between the trio dozens of times, and there’s dozens more instances of it to come. But the cozy familiarity, with some nice snap to the writing, makes this feel like the first episode of the season so far that’s been able to sustain itself, and go about at a fun pace without any awkward or halting moments.
The plot is simple enough: SpongeBob notices that Mr. Krabs is unhappy with his mattress and decides to surprise him by purchasing a new mattress, with Patrick as his accomplice. Squidward, the bastard that he is, decides to steal the credit for SpongeBob’s act of goodwill, but upon the revelation that Mr. Krabs hid all of his money in the old mattress—which they’ve since discarded—Squidward’s incriminated himself and made himself liable in its retrieval, so the three descend to the dump to make things right. I’ll almost always enjoy these plots that forcefully band Squidward together with SpongeBob (and Patrick, here and there), even if the dynamic here trends towards the usual: Squidward is resentful of their cheeriness, and finds himself getting repeatedly shafted in cosmic ways every time he attempts to exploit them. (In this case, he dictates the two carelessly in ways that put them in danger of a guard-worm who’s made a new home out of the mattress, but every time, it backfires horribly and gets him injured while they waltz on through without so much as a scratch.) The issue with the repetition of that dynamic is that, if there’s not a lot of new ideas at play, it can increasingly feel passé, but we’re still early enough in the show’s long run that it’s not too boring. And granted, while “The Lost Mattress” doesn’t have the cleverness of other episodes that have gone about a similar construction (see: “Club SpongeBob,” “The Camping Episode”), it’s got a decent formula that keeps things moving and escalating, and encourages the show’s very spitfire approach to joke-telling, gliding smoothly from one absurd situation to the next until we find a nice way to close out.
This is also a very rare episode of the show, from any period, to have a runner throughout, showing Mr. Krabs’ distressing hospital stay where his body is repeatedly moved to worse and worse spots until his unconscious, stretcher-bound body is eventually kicked out of the building entirely. While the joke is cruel, the comedy of it all feels particularly strong in a way that SpongeBob is at its best: a little wordy, very absurd, and with tinges of melodrama and subversiveness. I hesitate to call it “commentary,” since this show rarely delves too deeply into explicit satire, but there’s something to the callousness—between the soap opera performances of the doctors and the very, very reckless things they’re doing all because Krabs doesn't have insurance—that keeps the darkness of it all very well-balanced without becoming too much to bear. Plus, the fact that we actually tie that runner into the episode’s ending is pretty fun!
“I wasn’t always the tortured shell of a protozoa that writhes in pain before you today. I was a vibrant, carefree, happy-go-lucky single cell…”
Adding a repetitious feel to this season, only four episodes in, is that beyond a lot of Mr. Krabs, we also have yet another Plankton episode, with a similarly abstract scheme: at a loss for any better ideas, he decides to feign an injury in the Krusty Krab and try to sue the secret formula out of Krabs’ claws. However much I don’t need these episodes as close together as they are, I’d be remiss not to say that “Krabs vs. Plankton” works a fair amount better than “Fear of a Krabby Patty,” in no small part due to the fact that in spite of its looseness it feels like a more cogent narrative. If “Fear of a Krabby Patty” shuffled awkwardly between what feels like multiple different stories, “Krabs vs. Plankton” is quick to its setup and spends most of its runtime going from courtroom scenario to scenario: opening appeals, cross-examinations, and testimonies. In a way, it feels kind of reminiscent of classic-era episodes, in that we introduce a conceit and then we just play around with as many gags as we can before finding a swift exit—though the tendency towards longer sequences (each scene is truly a scene) are a bit more symptomatic of where we’re at. Consider it a delicate convergence of the two conflicting approaches.
What I like about the episode the most, though, is that through it all, the characters are all very well-written and play off of each other well. There is a bit of a flaw, though: I do find it especially odd that the case is so centered around proving that Krabs isn’t a penny-pinching cheapskate, since that’s arguably his defining attribute and the idea that anyone in the show might think otherwise is ridiculous. But Krabs, in his sense of pride and general lack of awareness about himself, is very much embodying his usual self whether or not the narrative logic makes sense, and Plankton, as expected, is a particularly glorious foil in this episode as he plays the plaintiff with his histrionics. I said it last week and I’ll say it again: Mr. Lawrence as Plankton is such a delightful concoction that even in the worst of episodes, it’s impossible for me not to derive at least a little enjoyment out of it. And casting him somewhat against type here—the quote-unquote “victim” instead of the perpetrator—is a welcome change of pace.
Another minor complaint about this episode is that while I do enjoy SpongeBob here, his role in the narrative feels very, very passive. He approaches the lawsuit with a sense of composure and cleverness that I think is quite charming (later seasons would just cast him as a self-sabotaging goon with kelp for brains), but he realistically doesn’t have that much control over the episode’s outcome and instead spends much of the episode attempting to pry open the briefcase he was given by Krab’s original lawyer that allegedly has “everything [they] need to win.” It’s a classic—ugh, forgive me for the nauseating literary term—deus ex machina, though that in and of itself is something of a rarity for SpongeBob, and the sense of it being a ticking time bomb is somewhat fun, even if I don’t think the show does a particularly good job at building up a sense of tension.
Still, all things considered, this is a pretty fun episode, and a piece of a decent pair. If none of these episodes represent any sort of “heights” for S4, they are good markers of where I want to see the show aiming: at simple conceits that employ the interplay between the cast in enjoyable, amusing ways.
Stray Observations:
— While SpongeBob hasn’t quite reached
the level of unhinged emotionality that grates on me (I think that starts to
appear more around Season 5, with episodes like “Waiting”), we do get some
flashes of his volatility in “The Lost Mattress,” namely in the opening scene
where he cycles through every conceivable emotion every single time the status
quo changes in the slightest of ways. (Krusty Krab doors locked? He’s
crestfallen. Krabs appears? Elated. Krabs is cranky? He literally starts
crying.) It’s true that SpongeBob loves his job and is incredibly empathetic,
sure, but it just doesn’t ring true to me that he would be so temperamental
for such trivial reasons. He might be an invertebrate, but his character
should have a backbone.
— In light of that, I might institute a SpongeBob
crying count, because it feels like he cries a lot in these years. He
cried in "Shell of a Man" last week when he had to part ways with an order, as
well as these past two episodes (for Krabs' back and Plankton's gram-gram
story), so we're already 3/4! Scared of what that total will be!
— “I’ve
never seen so many mattresses! How many do you think there are?” “...Ten.”
“Cool.”
— Krabs calling his new mattress “queer” certainly hits a bit
different now, in 2025, versus how (somewhat) innocuous it was two decades
ago. Rather queer indeed.
— “Doctor?” “Yes, doctor.” “Regarding
your patient, doctor.”
— Even though it’s not really essential to the
episode’s plot, I like how “Krabs vs. Plankton” opens with Plankton, at a loss
for ideas, simply deciding to go into the Krusty Krab without a plan and see
what happens.
— Fun fact: all fictitious cartoon lawyers are Southern
dandies.
— Not terribly much to say this time about the episodes
complementing each other in a particularly novel way. Let’s say the connective
tissue between the two is the exploration of Krabs’ relationship with his
employees. That sounds smart!
FINAL GRADES: B-/B.
1. “Krabs vs. Plankton” (B)
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