My Top Ten SpongeBob SquarePants Episodes

As I have written earlier, my favorite ongoing cartoon series is SpongeBob SquarePants. Set in a town called Bikini Bottom on the ocean floor, the main characters are SpongeBob SquarePants (a sponge), Patrick (a starfish), Squidward (an octopus), Mr. Krabs (a crab), and Sandy (a genius squirrel). The series is full of absurdities, as the episode descriptions below hint at.

#10: Bubblestand
---SpongeBob sets up a bubblestand: for a quarter each, you can blow a bubble, and for another quarter, you can take bubble-blowing lessons. Squidward, SpongeBob's vain next-door neighbor, gets "taken for a ride" by this scheme in one of the very first episodes of this series.

#9: Bubble Buddy
---It's Leif Ericson Day, and there's nobody around to help SpongeBob celebrate it. So he does the next best thing: he invents an imaginary friend, a creation blown from his own bubble jar that he names "Bubble Buddy". SpongeBob's new-found friend then proceeds to wreak havoc throughout Bikini Bottom.

#8: Mermaidman & Barnacleboy 3
---The above-mentioned aging superheroes are going away on vacation, and they leave SpongeBob and Patrick to watch their lair for them. Not a very wise choice! The two then proceed to accidentally free the arch-villain Man-Ray, whom the vacationing superheroes had put into a tartar-sauce-deep-freeze in one of their earlier episodes. Then, SpongeBob must think fast to rehabilitate Man-Ray back into a useful citizen before it's too late. Patrick shines in this episode.

#7: Chocolate With Nuts
---SpongeBob and Patrick want to live the good life, but how? Neighbor Squidward tells them they have to be entrepreneurs and then they'd have all the money they wanted. So Sponge and Patrick go out to try and sell chocolate bars. And along the way, they learn quite a few things about human (whoops, I mean fish) nature.

#6: New Student Starfish
---Patrick's sad because his best friend SpongeBob is going to be gone all day at boating school (at the bottom of the ocean? Don't even ask!). So SpongeBob invites him to join him as a fellow student. Big mistake, as the two can't help but disrupt class and get into trouble. This was a great spoof of classes and school in general.

#5: Hall Monitor
---Another boating school spoof, SpongeBob is reluctantly picked by Mrs. Puff, his boating school instructor, to be hall monitor (nobody else wanted the job). But before he gets to begin his duties in the hall, the dismissal bell rings. Mrs. Puff feels sorry for SpongeBob and lets him keep the hall monitor uniform overnight. Wearing it, though, SpongeBob gets the idea that the uniform gives him carte blanche authority throughout Bikini Bottom to enforce the law (however it suits him)! Uh-oh!

#4: Survival of the Idiots
---SpongeBob and Patrick visit their friend Sandy (a squirrel who lives in a tree under a large plastic dome on the ocean bottom). But Sandy has begun to hibernate, and on a video tape has told visitors (especially SpongeBob) to stay away. But the two heedlessly enter Sandy's dome anyway and experience the joys of snow, along with the extreme peril coming to anyone awakening a hibernating mammal. This episode is full of classic "Patrick" lines!

#3: Mid-Life Crustacean
---Mr. Krab, SpongeBob's boss at the Krusty Krab restaurant, wakes up one morning to suddenly discover that he is growing old, with everything around him cruelly confirming this fact. At the Krusty Krab, he overhears SpongeBob and Patrick discussing their plans for their upcoming "crazy night" out. Pushing himself on them, Mr. Krab gets the two to let him join in on the "debauchery". To his regret, for he soon discovers that SpongeBob and Patrick have an altogether different conception of what a wild night out is!

#2: Pizza Delivery
---When a customer calls in a pizza order (for delivery) just after Krusty Krab closing time, Squidward reasonably reminds Mr. Krab that the Krusty Krab doesn't sell pizza! That doesn't stop his boss, who deftly instantly transforms a Krabby Patty into a pizza and orders Squidward to deliver it. Squidward's protestations aggravate the situation when Mr. Krab sends SpongeBob to accompany him. The two then embark on an absurd odyssey of endurance to deliver their product. This is the only episode I know in which Squidward actually stands up for SpongeBob. It almost makes me want to cry (if I weren't laughing so hard)!

#1: Just One Bite
---At work in the Krusty Krab, Squidward is badmouthing their showcase product, the Krabby Patty, to SpongeBob. And then he reveals that he has never even eaten one. SpongeBob then pesters Squidward to just try one. Finally, Squidward relents, takes one bite, and falls obsessively in love with Krabby Patties. But his pride won't allow himself to admit this to SpongeBob, and he spends the rest of the episode furtively trying to get hold of another Krabby Patty. This episode contains simply the funniest ending in the entire funny series!