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231b. Ink Lemonade


Jinjo

Episode Rating  

45 members have voted

  1. 1. How would you rate this episode?

    • 5/5 Lemonades: We love the source!
      6
    • 4/5 Lemonades: I'll just have to scare the ink out of him!
      4
    • 3/5 Lemonades: I can't tell what's real anymore...
      1
    • 2/5 Lemonades: I will not!
      6
    • 1/5 Lemonades: Yuck.
      28


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Um...what

I happened to watch this episode because some "benefactor", bless their souls, pounced upon me with a URL. This episode is not available anywhere on the Internet, and it's the only episode from season 11 I have seen since the premiere. And, oh dear. How this episode drops the ball in characterization is unprecedented. There were episodes where Patrick was, uhm, less than a pleasant guy. But the reasons for his wickedness were always internally consistent. In the episode "Smooth Jazz of Bikini Bottom", he has the brain of a maladjusted chimpanzee who never dithers in his capacity for harm. In "Yours Mine and Mine", he treats Spongebob like a bloodied napkin, out of little provocation. What this episode does is merge those two dimensions of his character, and the result is disconcerting. He doesn't know what lemonade was at the beginning of the episode, but somehow, he's shrewd enough to concoct this scheme of torturing Squidward. What's the implication here, exactly? That Patrick is feigning his stupidity, and that MrEnter was right all along?

No, that's asinine. Nothing here to blame but horrendous writing.

Something I abominated about season 10 was the exaggeration, which seems to have been some initiative to shed some of the dust it's accumulating from its perpetual seniority, but instead, like Newton's third law, an action incurs equal reaction. There's so much screaming, so little breathing space that none of the jokes are allowed to sink in, as there's always an absurd amount of visual stimulation and hyperactivity. It's the season 4 problem magnified by a thousand. This episode, like a lot of the episodes after the second movie (for better or worse), are categorically style over substance, which is fine sometimes, but only if the episode is funny. It really isn't. The microphone gag is just an example of them inserting something wacky and random, but shoving it in there with no sense of timing, which dulls everything. In fact, this entire problem stems from the fact that the shock humor ceases to be shocking when that's the entire basis of your comedy, and if you've got no legs to stand on, tough luck. Meme faces are not amusement lucrative.

There's a few visual gags I chortled at, like Patrick's entrails talking was a much-appreciate bit of dark humor, however the way Patrick wavers between acting deliberate and acting like a complete moron, and how he's portrayed as the protagonist and Squidward as the antagonist (which seriously guys? as with way too many episodes, he does nothing wrong, aside from being reality's sex slave), is unforgivable. It just fails on sooo many levels. The spider eggs at the end is salt on the wound. Kaz, everyone, the guy who gave you "Chocolate with Nuts" 16 years ago. He really needs to retire.

Edited by PatBack
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A long time ago, I made a name for myself on this site by writing really long reviews on particular SpongeBob episodes. Why I did this, I'm not entirely sure. I think something about how this show's worst episodes misunderstood Hillenburg's original concept so badly interested me in a trainwreck sort of way. It was cathartic to write reviews about how episodes like Clash of Triton failed to carve a new path forward for the show, or why Fungus Among Us fails because it expects us to think gross shit is funny, or why One Coarse Meal and it's absence of humor doesn't work for obvious reasons. In the past 3 years, this show has taken an upturn on a few key levels - Hillenburg's return in 9B changed the show for the better, where every episode seemed to have a better understanding of the show and the characters within. The worst offenders of this season only suffered because they were simply boring, like Fish Bowl. For a fleeting moment, quality rose to a consistent level, and the show rivaled Season 4 at the very least, with some episodes feeling like classic era material at times. It was a fun time, and one where I actually ended up becoming far less interested in the show because there was so little to actually discuss beyond "wow, this thing is finally good again."

And then came everything after.

I'm not a huge Ren and Stimpy guy. At it's best, it was a brilliant show, just never been for me - the John K seasons have a lot of wonderful content, but occasionally pushed too far into gross or disturbing territory for me, and the Games seasons suffered from being terminally boring. SpongeBob has always found it's best stuff when it felt like a fusion of the best elements of Rocko's Modern Life and R&S. And the show gets near it's worst when it threatens to teeter into the pen of going fully Ren and Stimpy, which is the madcap, overly exaggerated cartoony bullshit that I've roasted on this site time and time again. I haven't kept up with Season 11 as much, and that catch all title I coined might seem harsh, but when this season is at it's worst, that's exactly what it is. So we've got that post-movie era, and then we've got the post-9B era, both faltering in different ways. 

And then there's this.

Ink Lemonade is so interesting because even though it's written by Kaz, the brilliant mind behind "Chocolate with Nuts",  "Nasty Patty", "Wet Painters", and some of Phineas and Ferb and Camp Lazlo's best outings, it is bafflingly bad. But that's not even the most interesting part. This show has had different problems at different parts in it's history. This most recent era, at it's worst, takes overly cartoony actions and tries to pass them off as humor instead of actually crafting jokes half of the time. The era from around 2007-2013 failed because it misunderstood the characters and the show on a baseline level, with episodes featuring borderline unrecognizable caricatures of these characters with occasionally braindead plots, gross-out gags, and strange inclinations toward sadism, particularly towards Squidward. And even the late Season 3 period can be looked at as a hyperactive blueprint for every bad episode that followed the movie. But Kaz, bless his soul, did something special. He managed to find a way to take every single problem the show has ever had and coalesce it into one supple, bit-size package. In just 11 minutes, we are treated to:

-Patrick being dumb as shit for no reason! Your favorite trait from the post-movie era! Why is he selling lemonade? Who cares! 

-Squidward getting consistently abused for no reason than the fact that he's there! Your other favorite trope from the post-movie era! And in addition to that bit of wonderful writing, you may be wondering why SpongeBob's here. I don't know! There's no reason for him to be! But who cares?

-that weird bottle episode feel that permeates episodes focused on fucking with Squidward where the characters never leave the front yard like Good Neighbors and parts of That Sinking Feeling 

-Grossout gags! Ever wanted to see Patrick's eye get infected and swell up after Squidward throws trash at it? Or Patrick rip off a bandaid from under his armpit and put it in some water? And then see someone drink it? Squidward shave his nosehair? Or slip on some random fish's vomit? Patrick literally rip open his entire front to reveal his organs? Or better yet, watch as entire colony of spiders bursts forth from Squidward's mouth to cap off the episode! The entire concept of people enjoying black shit that squirts out of Squidward's nose is already weird and gross enough, but this episode goes back to Season 6 levels of nasty in order to dredge up a complaint I haven't had about this show in YEARS. 

-Your favorite trait from the post-9B seasons: super loud cartoony shit! If you've ever wanted to hear Bill Fagerbakke and Tom Kenny at their most annoying through a MEGAPHONE, today's your lucky day. You can finally hear that. And it isn't annoying. At all.

This isn't entirely devoid of good things. The section where Patrick tries to scare Squidward with a homemade house of horrors works surprisingly well. And the way Patrick and SpongeBob look at each other and say "yeah" at the end is hilarious. And... the animation, while too excited, is still fluid and good.

...Yeah, that's all I got.

I just dunno, man. I want to say Kaz swung and missed, but there was just no way this episode ever could've worked. The one saving grace for this is that it wasn't done in Season 6 (imagining Aaron Springer or Casey and Zeus boarding this, or Robertryan Cory doing the designs for something like the spider are absolutely terrifying things to picture). Otherwise, here we have a brilliant man stringing together the most decidedly un-brilliant traits of a show into a quintessential blueprint for what doesn't work about this show. This episode isn't quite up to the standards of those truly awful entries, and it definitely doesn't outdo something like Fungus Among Us, or Good Neighbors, or One Coarse Meal. But that's because its so busy literally handpicking which elements from those episodes to use that it can't focus on them all at once - instead giving us a kaleidoscope of terrible elements that coalesce into one, subpar 11 minutes that reach into the depths of the bottom of the barrel to pull out something entirely new, but all at once familiar. 

Take all of that and lump it together, and you've got the worst entry this show has seen since 2013. Truly.

#kazspringer

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1 hour ago, Young Nug said:

This episode isn't quite up to the standards of those truly awful entries, and it definitely doesn't outdo something like Good Neighbors

At least Good Neighbors doesn't have the s10/11 hyperactivity issue and wasn't  as blatant as OCM was in having someone be scared for the entire episode, really don't see how this is better.

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It's the same thing for The Simpsons with me, but there's very few writers that are just flat out terrible writers on Spongebob. I haven't seen this episode yet, but my intrigue is raised with how much people seem to dislike it. There's tons of examples of what I'm talking about; Aaron Springer wrote Band Geeks but also wrote Boating Buddies (I don't feel the need to talk about how the fandom views both episodes; I'm positive we're all familiar with it.), like how with The Simpsons, John Swartzwelder wrote Rosebud but also wrote Kill The Alligator And Run. Both are writers acclaimed by the show's fanbases, so I kind of think it's a matter of running out of ideas. It's something to note when talking about this. There's bad writers for both shows, but for the most part, all writers have their good episodes and their bad episodes. 

 

I want to check this out if I have the chance this weekend. If so, expect a review.

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43 minutes ago, Something the So and So said:

At least Good Neighbors doesn't have the s10/11 hyperactivity issue and wasn't  as blatant as OCM was in having someone be scared for the entire episode, really don't see how this is better.

good neighbors pushes the portrayal of spongebob’s optimism to a point where he becomes so oblivious that he genuinely doesn’t understand how his actions effect other people, but the characterizations aren’t so far removed from Season 3 that they fee unrecognizable. Squidward’s disturbingly realistic shouting breakdown as he explains how terrible SpongeBob and Patrick are creates a strange, sad way to view the series that, from the moment I watched it, sat with me in a very uncomfortable way - ink lemonade is so cartoony and ridiculous that there’s no room for anything like that, and makes it better in that way for me I guess 

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5 minutes ago, CyanideFishbone said:

It's the same thing for The Simpsons with me, but there's very few writers that are just flat out terrible writers on Spongebob. I haven't seen this episode yet, but my intrigue is raised with how much people seem to dislike it. There's tons of examples of what I'm talking about; Aaron Springer wrote Band Geeks but also wrote Boating Buddies (I don't feel the need to talk about how the fandom views both episodes; I'm positive we're all familiar with it.), like how with The Simpsons, John Swartzwelder wrote Rosebud but also wrote Kill The Alligator And Run. Both are writers acclaimed by the show's fanbases, so I kind of think it's a matter of running out of ideas. It's something to note when talking about this. There's bad writers for both shows, but for the most part, all writers have their good episodes and their bad episodes. 

 

I want to check this out if I have the chance this weekend. If so, expect a review.

This is also interesting. I think it’s important to note that since the end of Lazlo, Kaz never really stopped writing, and may just be burnt out at this point

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1 hour ago, CyanideFishbone said:

It's the same thing for The Simpsons with me, but there's very few writers that are just flat out terrible writers on Spongebob. I haven't seen this episode yet, but my intrigue is raised with how much people seem to dislike it. There's tons of examples of what I'm talking about; Aaron Springer wrote Band Geeks but also wrote Boating Buddies (I don't feel the need to talk about how the fandom views both episodes; I'm positive we're all familiar with it.), like how with The Simpsons, John Swartzwelder wrote Rosebud but also wrote Kill The Alligator And Run. Both are writers acclaimed by the show's fanbases, so I kind of think it's a matter of running out of ideas. It's something to note when talking about this. There's bad writers for both shows, but for the most part, all writers have their good episodes and their bad episodes. 

 

I want to check this out if I have the chance this weekend. If so, expect a review.

Definitely true for this series, just looking at Gruber and Goodman's episodes have me confused on how there's a variety of good, mediocre, and bad. The lack of consistent quality is baffling ever since season 10 began, especially with 9B being such a notable upgrade outside of Fish Bowl and Food Con. Even after this disaster I can't give up yet.

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While we're still on the topic of Lazlo, what's also another interesting example to note is that J.G. Quintel, the man behind the much praised Regular Show, wrote some of the worst episodes of that particular show. "Everyone makes mistakes" is a point that's very basic, but it's a point that still needs to be made in the case of television writers and creators. In fact, I can name more examples than just that.

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Well you all kept pushing me to watch this. And how could I say no?  Like I can’t stress enough how much it already feels like I watched this episode through all of your comments and analyses.  And thanks to @Hayden for the link, I finally sat through those exhausting eleven minutes.

Guys, I didn’t think it was as bad as the hype made it out to be.  I mean it was definitely a pretty bad episode, but I don’t think it’s the fourth worst episode of all time bad.  Let me explain.  Not Nuggets levels of eloquently describing what I thought, but still very thorough.

I definitely got those Ren & Stimpy vibes I was expecting entering in.  From the overexaggerated characertistics of our main characters to the fluent animation.  Which sometimes that worked for me and sometimes it didn’t for R&S, but here, yeah it was incredibly annoying.  I hate how hard they were passing off the animated overexaggeration of pretty much everything as comedy here.  It got old super fast with SpongeBob and Patrick yelling in the microphones to everybody’s reactions to drinking the black lemonade for the first time to pretty much all of Squidward inking all over the place, especially that last one with the spiders that I can’t unsee now.

But let’s get down to what made this go from annoying to just flat out bad.  And it’s the root of pretty much a lot of what makes up those semi-annual worst lists:

-Squidward gets tortured for unfair reasons

-Patrick is an annoying prick and doesn’t get any repercussions

-Overdose of grossout jokes

All admittedly bad tropes that have a tendency to get on my nerves just as much as it does everyone else.  Now this episode is special because it’s all these tropes combined into one giant ball of suck.

But here’s the thing.  While I was sitting there watching this from the first minute.  Trying to sound out the posts upon posts I’ve seen on this site hating on it because I do my best to enter these things with a completely opened mind.  I realized something.  There was no way this episode was ever destined to surprise me.  From the very first interactions of Patrick being an obnoxious dumbass to Squidward insulting him and throwing rotten lemons at him.  I immediately thought to myself, I can pinpoint every single thing that is going to happen next.  And outside of a few instances, like I didn’t expect the spiders to reappear or Squidward to get inked out by a marionette older version of himself, there were no instances that outright pissed me off.

And I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed the animation.  Not in terms of using it as comedy because as I stated, that got old and annoying really fast.  But it’s a well animated episode.  Like when Squidward went through Patrick’s House of Horrors, that was a well crafted scene.  Yes it’s easy to point out the bad character instances in regards for the psychological horror Squidward is going through and that Patrick has gone too far.  But in comparison to say One Coarse Meal doing the exact same sequence, it was actually creatively built and designed.

 I mean I get why a lot of you guys hate it so passionately.  I thought it sucked too.  It definitely reminded me a lot of so many of these bad episodes from around Seasons 6 and 7.  It’s a nostalgic bad episode is the best way to put it.  And maybe I would better understand all of the post sequel episode disappointment better if I kept in touch with this series as often as practically everyone on this site does.

But to me, I’ve seen episodes of this show that have made me react via being sick to my stomach (Fungus Among Us), psychologically creeped out (Squid’s Visit), and feeling actual pain for the so-called “main antagonist” (One Coarse Meal).  What I got from this was “well that was cartoonishly bad”.  I didn’t really get offended by any of this.  I just thought it was just incredibly stupid and obnoxious.  

Yeah I didn’t like seeing Squidward get shat on for eleven minutes and in terms of instances in this series, yeah I guess it’s probably one of the worst instances of this happening.  Yeah I thought Patrick should have gotten some sort of comeuppance for his selfish behavior and in terms of instances in this series, yeah I guess it’s probably one of the worst instances of this happening.  And I’m not even sure where this would rank in terms of episodes with gross-out.  Yeah it’s an annoying episode that does indeed suck, I just wasn’t as bothered by it because it was all too familiar to me.  If it means anything, this is the worst new episode I’ve seen since I saw Little Yellow Book when that premiered.  So take that for what it’s worth.

Sucks to hear that this was written by Kaz though.  Just goes to show how out of touch I am with this show because I didn’t even know he was back lmao.

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So I'm probably going to end up repeating what everyone has been saying here but, I decided to watch the episode because I kept seeing all the harshness towards it... and my curiosity kicked in and here I am.

....and its the first episode of s11 (I think) that I watched so far... and I probably shouldn't have because that's a weird start but  well...

Boy did this episode made me kinda speechless. It was just weird for me because I was expecting a spongebob episode but the way how it presented it self with it's animation and entire atmosphere and even the background music  felt like a cartoon like you all said like Ren and Stimpy.

and while that wasn't bad by itself and I actually like the animation too.  It just made the whole thing more jarring that funny really. I really kept asking myself "what cartoon am I watching again?"

And from the start to finish I didn't like Patrick at any given moment. The likability points went down the drain today folks as not only was he incredibly dumb acting but also a deceiving horrible person!!  

I always didn't like the meaner characterization of Patrick and I probably never will, and this episode was just down right Patrick knowing EXACTLY what he was doing and I really just baffled me on Patrick actually using what he knew (and what I thought Patrick would never actually know or bring up) about Squidward's fears? The whole idea of Patrick setting all of that up, knowing exactly what scares him and everything sounds... really ridiculous. I'm probably looking into things way too much but this whole epsiode didn't feel real to me.

Uh what else...

Spongebob felt like he was just there to be there. He was pretty much there to run the shop and give the excuse to allow Patrick to run back and start torturing Squidward and doesn't offer anything else really besides the megaphone screaming. 

The joke of the fish throwing up in Squidward's house wasn't funny to me at all, just adds more salt to the already bad wound that is is Squidward abuse.

The whole thing was sort of predictable to me in terms of the whole plot of "Spongebob and Patrick do a dumb thing that gives them success in something and when Squidward finally caves from the insanity he tries it and ultimately gets punished for it instead of the yellow and pink idiots who did it in the first place." Works in some episodes, wasn't very good here.

The ending was....ok? It was predictable, gross out humor the entire episode had.

This....wasn't absolutely horrible. It was watchable, and I could watch it again for sure.... but it wasn't a "good bad" kind of thing either. 

 

It was just weird in tone and in plot. This was probably one of the worst episodes to start on the latest season. 

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4 hours ago, Clappy said:

Sucks to hear that this was written by Kaz though.  Just goes to show how out of touch I am with this show because I didn’t even know he was back lmao.

He's been back for a while and even though it's not to Andrew Goodman levels, he's very hit or miss.

As for the predictability, I kept expecting Squidward to have something go his way because I thought we were past s6/7 in those regards so this legit surprised me, including that spider ending which legitimately made me uncomfortable and confused enough to piss me off just as much as the box contrivance from Sportz, and I already ranted on how much I hated that for my commentary so know I'm not exaggerating with my comparison, I'm 100% serious when saying I find it the worst ending of the series.

The animation was nice, and some visual gags were decent, but like people have said this is reminiscent of all the bad post movie eps plus the post-sequel issues as well, so the writing was bad enough to be my second worst as I've never hated visuals or animation, so those don't make up for the rest of it for me.

Hell, the only post movie issue it was missing was greedy Krabs and he would've made more sense doing this which is why I didn't mind Out of the Picture, so replacing him with a completely unmotivated Patrick was even worse than having another Krabs wants money exploitation plot ala Cent of Money, because at least that'd be in character with post movie, this isn't in character for Patrick at all!

Also we'd have it be the third worst if it didn't premiere the day of the deadline and would have it be above One Coarse Meal so it isn't fourth worst of all time bad :P

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On 6/1/2018 at 11:00 PM, Young Nug said:

good neighbors pushes the portrayal of spongebob’s optimism to a point where he becomes so oblivious that he genuinely doesn’t understand how his actions effect other people, but the characterizations aren’t so far removed from Season 3 that they fee unrecognizable. Squidward’s disturbingly realistic shouting breakdown as he explains how terrible SpongeBob and Patrick are creates a strange, sad way to view the series that, from the moment I watched it, sat with me in a very uncomfortable way - ink lemonade is so cartoony and ridiculous that there’s no room for anything like that, and makes it better in that way for me I guess 

buttttttt SpongeBob did realize his actions were wrong in Good Neighbours. Him and Patrick went to Squidward's house to apologize to him.

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2 minutes ago, Master WhoBruh said:

buttttttt SpongeBob did realize his actions were wrong in Good Neighbours. Him and Patrick went to Squidward's house to apologize to him.

GN's an instance of SB & Pat annoying him but Squid taking it too far, and I always laughed at the head breaking through the door just so he could yell and stomp on the fezzes, that was cartoony enough for me to not be disturbed and like the scene rather than be sad like in Ink where the cartooniness is part of why I'm pissed beyond belief.

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10 minutes ago, Something the So and So said:

GN's an instance of SB & Pat annoying him but Squid taking it too far, and I always laughed at the head breaking through the door just so he could yell and stomp on the fezzes, that was cartoony enough for me to not be disturbed and like the scene rather than be sad like in Ink where the cartooniness is part of why I'm pissed beyond belief.

honestly, I even remember liking the episode as a kid, aside from maybe the end. I have to agree that the comedy in GN was actually over the top hilarity, whereas here it was nothing but cruel and gross out gags. Perhaps the post-movie episode that I wasn't too fond of SpongeBob for the first time was Waiting, he was just a jerk in that one and I couldn't recognize him for a second.

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1 hour ago, Master WhoBruh said:

I have to agree that the comedy in GN was actually over the top hilarity, whereas here it was nothing but cruel and gross out gags.

Even the face from Whatever Happened was a joke with a proper setup as SpongeBob wondered if he was doing wrong, Ink doesn't even have anything like that while they just yell into megaphones, hell that is all that SB even does and it's a forced way to make Squid ink the first time! If I can say that face is better than all jokes in an episode like Ink which was supposed to be a wacky and hyperactive episode, there's a huge issue with the comedy!

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3 hours ago, Something the So and So said:

As for the predictability, I kept expecting Squidward to have something go his way because I thought we were past s6/7 in those regards so this legit surprised me, including that spider ending which legitimately made me uncomfortable and confused enough to piss me off just as much as the box contrivance from Sportz, and I already ranted on how much I hated that for my commentary so know I'm not exaggerating with my comparison, I'm 100% serious when saying I find it the worst ending of the series.

The animation was nice, and some visual gags were decent, but like people have said this is reminiscent of all the bad post movie eps plus the post-sequel issues as well, so the writing was bad enough to be my second worst as I've never hated visuals or animation, so those don't make up for the rest of it for me.

Hell, the only post movie issue it was missing was greedy Krabs and he would've made more sense doing this which is why I didn't mind Out of the Picture, so replacing him with a completely unmotivated Patrick was even worse than having another Krabs wants money exploitation plot ala Cent of Money, because at least that'd be in character with post movie, this isn't in character for Patrick at all!

Also we'd have it be the third worst if it didn't premiere the day of the deadline and would have it be above One Coarse Meal so it isn't fourth worst of all time bad :P

Like I said, I didn’t expect that ending with the spiders again and I really wish I could unsee that image because that was the only part in the entire episode that gave me any sort of discomfort.

Also I wouldn’t call Patrick unmotivated.  His actions in this episode were very motivated.  Granted his reason for opening the lemonade stand in the first place was never established upon, but he kept stating how he needed more ink.  So yeah, as much as I agree that this was another Patrick is a prick who deserves some sort of punishment for his actions here, I wouldn’t say his reasons for scaring Squidward weren’t motivated.  

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47 minutes ago, Clappy said:

Also I wouldn’t call Patrick unmotivated.  His actions in this episode were very motivated.  Granted his reason for opening the lemonade stand in the first place was never established upon, but he kept stating how he needed more ink.  So yeah, as much as I agree that this was another Patrick is a prick who deserves some sort of punishment for his actions here, I wouldn’t say his reasons for scaring Squidward weren’t motivated.  

The lack of establishment is lazy writing and doesn't set up him willingly going that far without any doubts. There's nothing gained either as money is never brought up once, and then in the end he just decides to make cookies with spider eggs instead. If that can count as motivation, it's easily among the absolute worst that the show has to offer. Hell, they only found out about the ink because SB randomly yelled into a megaphone that had nothing to do with the plot! Was it because Patrick yelled into one after Squid asked about if he even had a license to sell anything?  Hell, speaking of the word anything, that's what SpongeBob doesn't do in the episode besides that! Why have him at all, because he's forced to be in every episode?

It's not even like there wasn't time to do have a proper setup, we really could've lived without some scenes like the spiders. I'm trying to look at this from a writing perspective and the episode is completely broken from the beginning. I thought Sportz was the absolute dumbest with the whole box shenanigans, I don't need to go over that again, but I really can't state just how much it annoys me here.

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6 hours ago, Master WhoBruh said:

buttttttt SpongeBob did realize his actions were wrong in Good Neighbours. Him and Patrick went to Squidward's house to apologize to him.

he did, but like I said, it took Squidward yelling at them in a very straightforward way for them to get it. The best episodes of this show aren’t where SpongeBob is, or threatens to be, the antagonist and Squidward is the protagonist. Squidward is supposed to be a smug semi-jerk and have that naturally clash with SpongeBob’s optimism, with the universe sometimes letting Squidward have a barrage of crazy shit happen to him. But when this show is good, bad things only happen to Squidward because his disposition makes him deserve it. If Squidward had let his ego go and not climbed up SpongeBob and Patrick’s treeehouse in Club SpongeBob, that whole episode never would’ve happened. If Squidward didn’t intervene in Naughty Nautical Neighbors, his house wouldn’t have blown up. 

In Good Neighbors, all Squidward wants to do is relax and SpongeBob and Patrick, while good-intentioned, won’t leave him the fuck alone. He doesn’t do anything wrong. We as an audience are supposed to like Squidward, but we aren’t supposed to feel bad for him, not like this. Squidward is this show’s Sokka - all of his pain is supposed to be self-inflicted, even if it’s as minor as making a snide comment and then falling off his bike and exploding as commupeance. Turning Squidward into this sympathetic character where you start to dislike Sponge and Pat because of how they treat him is one of post-movie’s critical misunderstandings of how this show is supposed to work. Good Neighbors is the first to display that, and it plays it the straightest the show ever has, and while the screaming scene is exaggerated, nothing Squidward says in his speech is wrong. And that’s my issue. You’ve never been like “wow, Squidward is right” before, and youre not supposed to feel that way. Other episodes like Boating Buddies just feature SpongeBob being annoying as shit, but here, the characters still have a sense of that pre-movie depth to them, and Sponge and Pat’s good intentions only make the whole thing sadder. 

At least with cartoony bullshit there’s nothing to analyze character-wise. There are several character portrayals that misunderstand those characters on a basic level, but they’re flat ones we’ve seen before. Good Neighbors, besides being the first time we had seen anything like this, has a lot to chew on when you think about it hard enough, and it’s always made me uncomfortable when I did. Just not a fan. 

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1 hour ago, Young Nug said:

he did, but like I said, it took Squidward yelling at them in a very straightforward way for them to get it. The best episodes of this show aren’t where SpongeBob is, or threatens to be, the antagonist and Squidward is the protagonist. Squidward is supposed to be a smug semi-jerk and have that naturally clash with SpongeBob’s optimism, with the universe sometimes letting Squidward have a barrage of crazy shit happen to him. But when this show is good, bad things only happen to Squidward because his disposition makes him deserve it. If Squidward had let his ego go and not climbed up SpongeBob and Patrick’s treeehouse in Club SpongeBob, that whole episode never would’ve happened. If Squidward didn’t intervene in Naughty Nautical Neighbors, his house wouldn’t have blown up. 

In Good Neighbors, all Squidward wants to do is relax and SpongeBob and Patrick, while good-intentioned, won’t leave him the fuck alone. He doesn’t do anything wrong. We as an audience are supposed to like Squidward, but we aren’t supposed to feel bad for him, not like this. Squidward is this show’s Sokka - all of his pain is supposed to be self-inflicted, even if it’s as minor as making a snide comment and then falling off his bike and exploding as commupeance. Turning Squidward into this sympathetic character where you start to dislike Sponge and Pat because of how they treat him is one of post-movie’s critical misunderstandings of how this show is supposed to work. Good Neighbors is the first to display that, and it plays it the straightest the show ever has, and while the screaming scene is exaggerated, nothing Squidward says in his speech is wrong. And that’s my issue. You’ve never been like “wow, Squidward is right” before, and you’re not supposed to feel that way. Other episodes like Boating Buddies just feature SpongeBob being annoying as shit, but here, the characters still have a sense of that pre-movie depth to them, and Sponge and Pat’s good intentions only make the whole thing sadder. 

At least with cartoony bullshit there’s nothing to analyze character-wise. There are several character portrayals that misunderstand those characters on a basic level, but they’re flat ones we’ve seen before. Good Neighbors, besides being the first time we had seen anything like this, has a lot to chew on when you think about it hard enough, and it’s always made me uncomfortable when I did. Just not a fan. 

yea, I don't think I can say much after this post. I think you have a point in there. But I'll say unlike most of infamous squidward abuse episodes, they did admit they were wrong about Squidward, so I forgave them after all of this and I admit i enjoyed the episode overall but It's alright if you didn't like how it was handled. Also I'm pro (half serious) "Squidward is right" now, so all of these I've said come off as ironic lol. 

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