287b. Mandatory Music

[Jjs Goodman]

Premieres: Monday, June 26th at 1pm ET/PT

Plot: Squidward's lack of talent lands him in a court-ordered music class.

Clip:

 

[4EverGreen]

It never ceases to amaze me how schizophrenic the writers seem to be, when it comes to how they treat Squidward. In far too many instances, they seem to like to make his life miserable for no good reason. And there seem to be far TOO few instances where they at least JUSTIFY the way he is treated, and at least let him work TOWARDS getting a happy ending! Thankfully, this is one of the latter instances. While Squidward's clarinet playing has ALWAYS been terrible, this episode seems to take it up to ELEVEN; as not only does NOBODY like it, even the BUILDINGS themselves fall over to the awful sound! In fact, it gets SO bad, LITERAL Music Police (wonder why it took them 13 seasons to finally make an appearance), appear to confiscate Squidward's clarinet, and force him to go to music school! Already bad enough for Squidward to have to go through that, but just to rub salt in the wound; Spongebob winds up there to! (I'm AMAZED the writers got away with Squidward saying: "Kill me now"). As it turns out, Squidward can't play the harmonica, the pan pipes, the kazoo, OR even play a broom; while Spongebob is able to play his own nose like a flute EFFORTLESSLY, and even inspires the other students to play great! Unable and/or unwilling to ask for any help, Squidward ANGRILY removes the cork from his clarinet, and plays it SO badly, he LITERALLY summons a music tornado! To prevent Squidward from doing any more damage, the Music Police summon a computer robot called Maestro (wonder if he's related to Karen somehow), and they use it to bring Squidward down, and SHOVE his clarinet down a shredder to prevent him from ever playing it again! Thankfully, unlike other episodes, it doesn't end there, as not only does Spongebob actually TRY to console Squidward; Squidward inevitably FINDS something he actually CAN play very well, he can ALSO play his own nose like a clarinet or a flute, even if carrying an umbrella to avoid the ink stains might be necessary! Although, it remains to be seen whether this actually becomes a MOMENT that is considered canon, or whether it will be discarded and treated like nothing. I'd give this episode a 9.9 out of 10, except for the fact that the end of the episode was shown cutting OFF Squidward's nose (breaking the fourth wall), which lowered the episode score to a 9.5 out of 10. Enough said, true believers!

[Old Man Jenkins]

I thought this was a fun lil diddy. Would’ve been funnier if SpongeBob was revealed to be the music teacher, like some inversion of Artist Unknown, but what we got here was still good. Always interesting for me to see whenever more layers get added on to the Bikini Bottom law enforcement scene.  Idk, writing stuff like S(lums)BU and Crime Wave way back when does that to a guy. And the ending was honestly pretty freakin’ sweet seeing Squidward getting recognized for some sorta talent. Curious to see if they go all in on him being a nose player from here on out or just go back to the status quo of him sucking on the clarinet since the clarinet has been so synonymous with him for over two decades. But I feel with the team the show has now, they’ll probably follow through on the nose, which I wouldn’t mind and I’d find it to be a pretty nice way to put Clary to rest.

I give this episode 4 court orders out of 5