It's about time we got another fry cook competition episode! Sure, it's not exactly "The Fry Cook Games II", but it's FAR closer to it than anything else we've had in a LONG time! When a big restaurant promoter discovers just how GOOD Spongebob's cooking skills are, he decides to recruit Spongebob (paying Mr. Krabs a BUNCH of money in order to buy out his contract) as one of the top four finalists to compete in becoming THE cook for a culinary restaurant, fashioned out of an old baseball stadium; where cooking is a sport, and the wealthy elite get to eat the Chef's creations! Spongebob's competition are an eel, a turtle who seems to be DIRECTLY inspired by Bluto from "Popeye", and a shrimp. Not wanting to be RELEGATED to having to sell food from a hot dog cart vendor, the turtle SABOTAGES the lady eel by adding NAILS to her stew, and takes all of Spongebob's cooking ingredients! The only reason the shrimp escapes from that round unscathed, is that he was "Crazy Prepared", and had a bunch of store bought ingredients as a back-up! Thankfully, Spongebob survives the round by using the kitchen ingredients LEFT on his own tie, and it wins the round! In the second round, the shrimp cook decides to give the turtle a taste of his OWN medicine, by adding nails into HIS pizza! But while the turtle doesn't catch the shrimp cook doing that, he DOES think the Shrimp is TRYING to steal his cheese! Ironically, when the turtle gives Spongebob a bunch of ingredients that SHOULDN'T have tasted good together, it actually WINS Spongebob the round, and the turtle is eliminated; while the shrimp is disqualified for having survived being PUT into the bunch of ingredients that the turtle gave Spongebob! Though thankfully, the shrimp doesn't have to do hot dot cart vendor duties like the others. Spongebob gets to go into the big leagues, and show EVERYONE his great cooking skills! However, it turns out that being a Fry Cook is ONE thing, being an athletic cook is another. While Spongebob is perfectly CAPABLE of cooking all the food he is asked to cook, it ends up being EXHAUSTING and draining of his creative spirit! Not to mention, the turtle has planted a stick of dynamite to BLOW Spongebob up to Kingdom Come! Thankfully, Mr. Krabs unknowingly saves Spongebob's life by asking Spongebob to cook up a bunch of Krabby Patties! Discovering that Krabby Patty cooking is his REAL passion, Spongebob decides to resign from being a Big League Fry Cook, and go back to working at the Krusty Krab.
All in all, I guess I'd have to give this episode a 9.5 out of 10, and I hope we get to see at least the Shrimp Cook sometime again. Enough said, true believers!