Original Airdate: May 20, 2005
Two episodes, both alike in dignity… Shakespeare was a big SpongeBob guy, right? I have it on good authority that Macbeth was based on “Band Geeks.” But yes, this week we’ve got two episodes that both have the same general concept: Squidward, almost unequivocally, cannot catch a break and will forever be destined for failure. The bad news is that one of those episodes does not work; the good news, though, is that the other one really does!
I’ll just get it out of the way right: I love “Skill Crane.” I always have, and always will. The premise is simple: Mr. Krabs installs a new claw machine as a means of making some spare change at the Krusty Krab, and in a matter of moments, it sends Squidward into the deepest throes of addiction and mania as he fails, over and over, to be anything more than the loser that the machine declares him. There is some cosmic brand of cruelty baked into the premise which these years can struggle to justify, admittedly—Squidward can’t catch a break, while SpongeBob proceeds to reap its riches with minimal effort—but what makes it work here, more than so many other episodes that simply exist to spite him, is that Squidward is his own undoing. Sure, SpongeBob’s repeated success are like knives in his back, but SpongeBob’s happiness is entirely independent; he’s just living his life, enjoying all of his prizes from the skill crane, while Squidward sacrifices everything he owns (including the deed to his house) out of the desperation for even a single win.
All of that is absolutely golden, but what makes “Skill Crane” stand out to me the most, amidst all of its joys, is that it’s an episode that succeeds while welcoming in new notions of how the show should operate and construct itself in these post-watershed years. It’s not trying to be a gags-based episode that’s charging forward at a mile a minute; its success rests on a carefully-constructed, linear narrative that manages all the right twists and turns while mining at the depths of Squidward’s character in a unique, gratifying way. It’s definitive proof, in this fairly rocky season, that the show can be genuinely successful without feeling like a facsimile of what preceded it, and while it’ll take some time before we manage another true home run, at least we can point to “Skill Crane” and know that it’s possible.
Unfortunately, it’s followed swiftly by an episode that does basically the complete opposite of everything that “Skill Crane” did right. “Good Neighbors” is the first episode this season that feels truly disposable because it does nothing new, nor is it able to create anything fleetingly interesting in pulling from the bag of old tricks. Part of my goal here, in analyzing every episode, is to be able to find moments of curiosity and hold them up, as if to say that even if an episode doesn’t work as a whole, there’s something to it that could have been something, and that offers some unique insight into the mentality of the writer’s room or the general atmosphere surrounding the show. “Good Neighbors” simply doesn’t have that, though—instead, it feels exemplary of the fatiguing feeling that S4, at its most difficult, struggles to overcome.
A large part of that is how it falls into that classic trap with Squidward, where the show has this overarching assumption that we, as viewers, hate him, and that he is intrinsically deserving of every bad thing that happens. It’s true that he is destined to be the show’s heel, but a large part of that balancing act is ensuring that the punishments he endures are morally justified; he tries to maintain the upper hand out of spite, fails, and faces the consequences. In “Good Neighbors,” though, all Squidward wants is to enjoy a peaceful Sunday, only for SpongeBob to immediately teleport into his bedroom and begin annoying him. One would think that SpongeBob, in a perfect world, would hear Squidward’s very simple assertion that “A good neighbor doesn’t bother [him] on Sunday,” and proceed to go about his day and offer the guy the privacy he’s entitled to. But this is not a perfect world, because remember: we hate Squidward! He should suffer because he doesn’t deserve to enjoy his life, even when he’s not doing anything wrong! Maybe he’d be better off dead, even! And so the episode unfolds in a predictably cruel pattern, where everything Squidward looks forward to is upended by SpongeBob and Patrick being annoying, and boy howdy, are they! Whether or not they’re well-intentioned, which is what “Good Neighbors” attempts to use as a justification for their behavior, the way he's treated is so needlessly unfair that it's hard to overlook.
To some extent I wonder if the writers are trying to employ a sort of “golden age of animation” vibe about these character dynamics; in the same way as, say, a Tom and Jerry short, it seems to operate under a very direct angle of good vs. bad which absolves any moral quandaries. Tom is bad, and Jerry is good, so anything Jerry does to Tom is immediately justified without a need for interrogation. The issue with applying those principles to SpongeBob, though, is that this is a show which has offered a greater sense of context to its characters, meaningful narratives, and personalities that we invest in, subconsciously or not. Squidward is not a complex character per se, but he’s also not just “bad”; he’s flawed, but amusingly so, in a way that leaves room for empathy, and as such, this show can’t function by those same broad strokes without striking a nerve.
If there's something that works, at least at a memorable visual level, it’s the episode’s final act, where Squidward installs an elaborate security system which, naturally, does not work as intended. The sight of his house sprouting robotic arms and legs and throwing him out as the purported “intruder” before trashing Bikini Bottom is somewhat interesting, though once again, it feels like the sort of idea that happens way too late into the game of “Good Neighbors” for it to make that much of a difference. I don’t want to write all these reviews with a stopwatch, but at a certain point it does feel like this season has ideas of scenes that are interesting, and wants to frame an entire episode around simply making those scenes occur. That would be fine, I suppose, if it didn’t take nine minutes of the show going through the motions for that to happen, and that’s really all I can say about this one: it does its thing so it can do a thing, and none of those things work.
But hey, we got “Skill Crane” this week, so eh, let’s just call it even.
Favorite jokes:
From “Skill Crane”: While Squidward
destroying the Krusty Krab is a great ending in its own right, I absolutely
love the button at the very end as SpongeBob tries to save him with the crane,
only to discover that he can only pick up toys.
From
“Good Neighbors”: Not a lot really stands out here, though I did like
the little glimpses at Squidward’s self-healing rituals: laying out a fresh
flower, killing it with a fragrance aerosol spray, and of course, bonbons.
Stray Observations:
— I have no idea if I’m one of the only people
for whom “Skill Crane” is a true classic, but I will say that me and my
brother continue to utter “beee the craaane” to each other whenever it’s even
vaguely applicable to a scenario, which is shockingly often.
— “Iiiiii’m
a winner!” “That’s funny. Last I checked you were a cashier.”
— I went
long this week on “Good Neighbor,” so I don’t really have any extra
observations on it, but you know, it happened! It was overcome! Oh yeah, and
SpongeBob didn’t cry at all this week! Happy for him.
Season Episode Ranking:
1. Skill Crane (A-)
2. Krabs vs. Plankton (B)
3. The Lost Mattress (B-)
4. Fear of a Krabby Patty (B-)
5. Have You
Seen This Snail? (C+)
6. Shell of a Man (C+)
7. Good Neighbors (C-)
Next week: The Krusty Krab loses its identity, and SpongeBob loses his laugh.
Follow me on Twitter (@urweeklysponge) or Bluesky (@yourweeklysponge.bsky.social) for notifications every time a new post drops and whatever miscellany I stumble into along the way!
No comments:
Post a Comment