"Go wreck someone else's prom, will ya'?"
The Chaperone
Original air date: 3/8/2000 (produced in 1999)
After his daughter gets stood up by her prom date, Mr. Krabs has SpongeBob be Pearl's date.
"The Chaperone" contains examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: SpongeBob is upset at having a hot dog land in Judy's hair, but Pearl thought it was pretty funny.
- Bait-and-Switch: When SpongeBob takes Pearl back home, an angry Mr. Krabs threatens him to, "Keep away from me precious little flower!" He actually means the flower he planted on his front yard.
- Bathroom Stall of Angst: When SpongeBob realizes he has ruined Pearl's prom, he runs off crying and locks himself in the bathroom. The girls' bathroom. Pearl comforts him, though.
- Be the Ball: The last seen part of the Sponge involves SpongeBob becoming a basketball that Pearl promptly grabs, dribbles and shoots into the gym hoop.
- Be Yourself: Played with. SpongeBob realized that by pretending to be long, tan and handsome, he only caused a disaster. He just decided to be himself and do the Sponge, only to cause more chaos.
- Bigger on the Inside: Arguably the high school.
- Bittersweet Ending: SpongeBob ruins the prom and gets him and Pearl kicked out. Despite this, Pearl still had a good time and she and Mr. Krabs are both happy.
- Black Comedy: It's implied that several people died as a result of doing the Sponge.
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Mr. Krabs yells at SpongeBob to "keep away from his precious little flower!" Then reveals that SpongeBob almost stepped on a literal sea flower.
- Break the Cutie:
- SpongeBob runs to the bathroom breaking into tears after he realizes he messed up the prom. Ironically, he cried because he was trying to keep Pearl from crying.
- Pearl does this too, but with much less intensity and more so teenage angst at the very beginning of the episode.
- Brick Joke: SpongeBob appearing to freeze, only for him to reveal it's a realistic wax dummy of himself. The first time he uses it is midway through Pearl's meltdown, then he uses it again at the end after taking Pearl home.
- Closed Door Rapport: Pearl consoles SpongeBob through the ladies room door when he locks himself inside.
- Dance Sensation: The Sponge. It quickly goes wrong.
- Gilligan Cut:SpongeBob: Don't worry, Mr. Krabs! I am a prom expert! (bubble transition to SpongeBob sitting at home, sulking) Oh, Gary. I'm a prom failure.
- High-School Dance: The story takes place during Pearl's prom, where SpongeBob leads the students in a dance routine, to disastrous results.
- Informed Attractiveness: Pearl's ex-boyfriend, Octavius Rex AKA Mr. "Long, Tan and Handsome", is revealed to be a plain-looking geeky anchovy.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Pearl is able to understand SpongeBob through his Inelegant Blubbering.
- Mind Screw: Was it SpongeBob's dummy that took Pearl to the prom? If it did, how did it move, talk, destroy things...?
- Misplaced Retribution: While SpongeBob and Pearl were responsible for all the damage that had been done prior, they didn't destroy anything during "Doing the Sponge", with the damage being done by the other students trying and failing to do the Sponge. Despite this, it's what gets the two kicked out of the prom.
- Ninja Log: Mr. Krabs asks SpongeBob to take Pearl to her prom, but then the real SpongeBob appears and shows him the exact replica of himself he made, which is whom Krabs was talking to. In the end, it is implied that the dummy SpongeBob is the one who went with Pearl.
- Ocular Gushers: Pearl's tears flood the Krusty Krab.
- Pet the Dog: When SpongeBob begins bawling over Pearl's near-bawl, she goes to comfort him, then they dance together and get kicked out.
- Primp of Contempt: Squidward is shown filing his nails with Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes while Pearl is crying loudly about her date standing her up.
- The Prom Plot: SpongeBob ends up being a chaperone for Pearl to her prom after her boyfriend dumps her. Sponge, being who he is, causes various hijinks to ensue to the point that they are eventually kicked out of the venue.
- Running Gag:
- SpongeBob appearing to freeze, only for him to walk in on the other side and reveal the other SpongeBob is a realistic dummy of himself.
- SpongeBob messing up the prom.
- Scoring Points: Pearl shoots SpongeBob (who turned himself into a basketball) into the basket as a part of the Sponge dance, and scores 2 points for Home.
- Ship Tease: The episode is well-known for blatantly teasing that SpongeBob and Pearl apparently love each other. The two would actually have kissed had it not been for Mr. Krabs barging in.
- Shout-Out: The scene where a girl in a white dress is chased by a giant apple is a reference to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: While "Doing the Sponge" fits perfectly with SpongeBob and Pearl finally having a fun time, it's also overlaid to the prom falling apart at the seams and the students getting clinically injured.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: SpongeBob makes himself like this as Pearl's date. He tans himself in a toaster, puts on a toupee for the handsome part and wears stilts to make himself taller (which make it difficult for him to walk).
- Torches and Pitchforks: Happens to Pearl and SpongeBob at the very end of the episode due to the Sponge causing chaos.
- You Didn't See That: SpongeBob claims to have won a dancing trophy, but when the guy actually holding the trophy takes it back, SpongeBob says, "That didn't just happen."
Double the output, double the award.
Employee of the Month
Original air date: 3/8/2000 (produced in 1999)
SpongeBob and Squidward compete over who will get the Employee of the Month award at the Krusty Krab. But their competition soon begins to get out of hand. WAY out of hand.
"Employee of the Month" contains examples of:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Squidward telling SpongeBob to stop breaking his clocks causes SpongeBob to assume cocky superiority.Squidward: You're a lunatic, SpongeBob!
SpongeBob: Maybe so. But, I did win Employee of the Month 26 months in a row.
Squidward: A-Are you trying to say that you're better than me?!
SpongeBob: I've been better than you for 26 months! And it'll be 27, tomorrow. - Agitated Item Stomping: Squidward stomps on SpongeBob's hat, but SpongeBob kept a lead brick there for just such an occasion.
- Agony of the Feet: What happens once Squidward actually stomps on the hat.
- All for Nothing: From what we see in the episode, neither SpongeBob nor Squidward won the award, meaning all their attempts to sabotage each other, right to when they start working at the Krusty Krab, was only a complete waste of time.
- Ambiguous Ending: We never learn whether the winner was SpongeBob or Squidward, although it's likely that neither one of them won because they destroyed the Krusty Krab in the process (not to mention that Mr. Krabs is more concerned with losing profits from the customers thinking the Krabby Patties are free).
- Big "NO!": Mr. Krabs lets one out when an overworking SpongeBob "cleans" the dishes he just destroyed with a mop.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Squidward and SpongeBob when debating the merits of the Employee of the Month award. On one hand, SpongeBob is right that nothing is wrong with taking pride in your work and it can make the job worthwhile, especially if you are recognized for your hard work. On the other hand, Squidward has a point that many unscrupulous bosses simply use awards to keep employees happy without actually doing much if anything to treat them betternote , and that giving employees such awards is a potential way to butter them up enough to do extra work without extra compensation.
- Broken Record: "Hey, Squidward. Hey, Squidward. Hey, Squidward..."
- Captain Oblivious: Mr. Krabs has just no idea why SpongeBob and Squidward are being so competitive during the morning of the day when the Employee of the Month is judged.
- Crazy-Prepared:
- "An experienced Employee of the Month always keeps a brick of lead in his hat."
- Squidward has dozens of alarm clocks to replace the ones SpongeBob breaks.
- Create Your Own Villain: From SpongeBob's perspective. Squidward didn't care about the Employee of the Month award until SpongeBob broke into his house, tried to sabotage him, and wounded his pride by gloating that he's better than him.
- Crippling the Competition: Goes back and forth between Squidward and SpongeBob.
- Don't Be Ridiculous:SpongeBob: Do you know what day it is?
Squidward: Annoy Squidward Day?
SpongeBob: No, silly. That's on the fifteenth. - Downer Ending: The competition for Employee of the Month has no real winner since it ended up destroying the Krusty Krab and letting countless Krabby Patties be enjoyed for free by the townspeople. Mr. Krabs is going to lose a lot of business due to his stock being given away, and his employees are still at each other's throats and don't care.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: SpongeBob is outright hostile to Squidward even before the Escalating War starts, outright taunting Squidward about his awards and being better than him. It's nigh-impossible to imagine later seasons SpongeBob doing that, as most of SpongeBob's harassment of Squidward is usually oblivious.
- Employee of the Month: The focus of the episode is SpongeBob and Squidward competing with each other to earn the award at the Krusty Krab. It's also shown in that episode that SpongeBob has won the award at least 26 times.
- Escalating War: SpongeBob and Squidward trying to stop each other from getting to work first, then trying to outdo each other once they get there.
- Feud Episode: This is the first one for SpongeBob and Squidward who become competitive over who gets to win the Employee of the Month Award.
- Gone Horribly Right: Mr. Krabs, at least according to Squidward, set up the Employee of the Month award to butter up his employees into working harder for no extra cost. He keeps SpongeBob invested for a long tenure, even jokingly setting him against Squidward, though the result is both of them becoming incredibly paranoid and competitive, culminating in the two trying to manically outperform each other and wrecking the Krusty Krab in the process, the losses likely costing more than Krabs saved.
- Internal Monologue: SpongeBob and Squidward silently smile at each other while shaking on a deal to compete fairly, but we hear their thoughts reveal that they plan to stab each other in the back the first chance they get.SpongeBob: He's nothing but a lying, boneless, ink-squirting, big-nosed phony!
Squidward: Look at that bucktoothed, cornfed smile. You can't trust him as far as you can throw him!
SpongeBob: As soon as he stops shaking my hand...
Squidward: I'm gonna make a run for it! - Laser-Guided Karma: Mr. Krabs. Since it's him that gives the Employee of the Month awards, he ends up paying the price when SpongeBob and Squidward become overly eager to win it.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: SpongeBob's photos on the Employee of the Month wall tell him to stop Squidward.
- Manipulative Bastard: The "March" month General SpongeBob who convinces the real, analogous one that Squidward actually is out to get his award. Squidward at first had no interest in getting the award, but after SpongeBob tried tampering with his clock and breaking into his house and gloating on how consecutive winnings make him better than Squidward, he tries to take the award out of spite.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Well, "villain" in that SpongeBob is technically the instigator of the whole affair, but in his paranoid attempts to prevent Squidward from possibly winning Employee of the Month, Squidward goes from not caring at all aside from jokingly saying he could sneak it out from under him to deciding he'll win the award just to spite SpongeBob.
- No Ending: It is never decided who is Employee of the Month at the end, nor is the mystery of whether the customers actually were made to pay for the loosely distributed, copious Krabby Patties ever solved.
- Out-of-Character Moment: The episode is one for both SpongeBob and Squidward:
- For SpongeBob, this is one of very few episodes in which he sets out to antagonize Squidward on purpose, and quite possibly the only one in which Squidward didn't antagonize him first, although SpongeBob actually believes he did. It shows just how much his streak of Employee of the Month awards means to him, and how effective Mr. Krabs' mind games have been.
- Squidward, normally a lazy employee who claims Employee of the Month is a scam at the start of the episode, actually wants to win the award later. This is because SpongeBob breaks into his house to sabotage his sleep schedule and then insinuates he's better than Squidward for winning in the first place.
- Rain of Something Unusual: When SpongeBob and Squidward accidentally blow up the Krusty Krab as they're fighting over the award, specifically when they're making loads of Krabby Patties that it fills the restaurant full until it explodes, making Krabby Patties rain from the sky, much to the dismay of Mr. Krabs.
- Running Gag: Squidward being hit by Krabby Patty meat from the fan.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Squidward had absolutely no intentions of winning Employee of the Month, but SpongeBob, paranoid that Squidward was out to get it, causes him to actually try to get it in his efforts to stop him, purely out of spite.
- Serious Business: Winning the Employee of the Month Award! Played with in that only SpongeBob actually cares about it, while Squidward only decides to take it seriously after being driven up the wall by SpongeBob and deciding to win it to spite him.
- Shout-Out:
- The patty meat hitting Squidward is a reference to The Shining.
- SpongeBob talking to his Employee of the Month awards is a reference to Full Metal Jacket.
- Squidward's many alarm clocks is an homage to Groundhog Day.
- Skewed Priorities:
- SpongeBob and Squidward have gone completely off their rockers, and the Krusty Krab has been blown to unrecoverable pieces, but the only thing Mr. Krabs is worried about is the customers attempting to take the thousands of falling Krabby Patties without paying for them.
- While Mr. Krabs is panicking over the customers taking free Krabby Patties, SpongeBob and Squidward, who just blew up their workplace by complete accident, are still trying to get Krabs to tell them which of the two is Employee of the Month.
- Title Drop: The episode is named after the award that the Krusty Krab employees are vying for, which is said by name several times.
- Truce Trickery: SpongeBob and Squidward fiercely compete for the titular award, repeatedly trying to sabotage each other's attempts to get to the Krusty Krab before it opens. After these tricks escalate to them dragging a shipwreck and an anchor tied to their backs, the pair decide to call a truce. However, each of them know that the other is lying, and they both quickly rush to the Krusty Krab as soon as they stop shaking hands.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mr. Krabs. He sets off SpongeBob's paranoia against Squidward by joking that Squidward might win the titular award this month (despite being just as lazy as usual).
- Vandalism Backfire: SpongeBob tries his absolute hardest to turn off Squidward's clock, and even when he's caught in the act, he goes through with destroying it. This proves to be fruitless when Squidward reveals he has an entire closet of alarm clocks, and SpongeBob can't destroy them all.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: SpongeBob says he won Employee of the Month 26 times in a row, but the wall shows 43 portraits.
