"This was a setup!"
Naughty Nautical Neighbors
Original air date: 8/7/1999 (produced in 1998)
SpongeBob and Patrick send messages to each other by whispering into bubbles. Their giggling gets on the nerves of Squidward, and he decides to put a stop to it by imitating their voices and sending messages filled with insults. Squidward's interference causes SpongeBob and Patrick to fight and eventually end their friendship. Meanwhile, SpongeBob and Patrick separately perform acts for Squidward that earn his gratitude and "friendship". But what's this? The two are fighting over Squidward now?
"Naughty Nautical Neighbors" contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The novelization added in some scenes not shown in the actual episode as well as expanded on some parts:
- Squidward Singing in the Shower before making the soufflé.
- Squidward taste testing the soufflé before boasting about his achievement.
- SpongeBob saying "Sticks and stones may clog my pores, but names will never hurt me!" when he and Patrick begin to fight.
- Squidward waking up Patrick after his clarinet puts him to sleep.
- An extra verse was added to SpongeBob's song before Patrick interrupts: "I'm Squidward's very best friend. He doesn't like anyone more than me!"
- SpongeBob taking a bath and changing his clothes before the dinner party scene.
- Squidward giving out Krabby Patties during his dinner party as well as the soda.
- Alliterative Title: Naughty Nautical Neighbors. Though the title is misleading because only Squidward did something bad, SpongeBob and Patrick were attacking each other out of misinformation. Then again, both SpongeBob and Patrick are both inconsiderate towards Squidward at times, so the name arguably fits.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:SpongeBob: My best friend, and my ex-best friend, and... RUBBER BATH TOYS!
- Artistic License – Music:
- Squidward's "Solitude in E Minor" is not in E minor. The piece used, "Wishful Thinking"
by Richard Myhill, is in D minor. - When SpongeBob asks Squidward to "give him an A", he plays A♯/B♠(C for B♠clarinet players). Of course, this could be justified by the fact that Squidward is a Dreadful Musician and may genuinely have been playing the wrong notes (his A♯/B♠is audibly sharp, after all).
- The "bassinet" SpongeBob plays is actually a double bass; a bassinet is something a newborn baby is put in before changing to a crib. Additionally, when he switches to strumming it instead of bowing it, it sounds more like an out-of-tune acoustic guitar; per the name, an actual strummed double bass sounds much deeper and has a more wooden timbre.
- Squidward's "Solitude in E Minor" is not in E minor. The piece used, "Wishful Thinking"
- Bare-Handed Puppetry: After breaking up with Patrick, SpongeBob tries to think of three other friends. When he can't think of any, he draws smiley faces on the three fingers he's holding up and sadly entones "The gang's all here."
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Subverted twice. First, Patrick made friends with Squidward after performing CPR to get the fork out of his throat just until he fell asleep while Squidward was playing his clarinet in which he tries dragging him out of his house, throwing out his back on the process. This causes SpongeBob to ram his head on Squidward's back, putting him back to normal. The two are friends until SpongeBob breaks his double bass which prompts Squidward to literally kick him out of his house. Of course, this didn't stop SpongeBob and Patrick from fighting over Squidward.
- Blatant Lies: SpongeBob claims to have been playing "bassinet" for years, which is Instantly Proven Wrong as soon as he starts. The fact he uses a non-existent term for the instrument doesn't help his case any further.
- Bottle Episode: The majority of the episode is set in and around Squidward's house.
- Brick Joke: Early in the episode, Squidward sprains his back trying to drag Patrick away, which he loudly complains about. At the end of the episode, a bubble knocks over Squidward's door, crushing him. His immediate response is to complain about his back pain again in the exact same way as before.
- Close Up On Head: At first it appears that SpongeBob has impaled Squidward on the head with a double bass bow, but the camera pulls back to show that it was just a portrait of Squidward (which already had a scared expression for some reason).
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Patrick does CPR on Squidward by inflating him like a balloon and letting the air push the fork out of his mouth. He also mentions needing to wash his hands first, but then shrugs it off.
- *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Squidward sprains his back dragging Patrick out of his home. He shouts it again when his door falls on him at the end.
- Department of Redundancy Department: When SpongeBob and Patrick argue.Patrick: Well, that makes you a big dummy, you dummy!
SpongeBob: Yeah, well, that means that, uh...so are you!
Patrick: Well, you're a turkey!
SpongeBob: What's that?
Patrick: It's what you are!
SpongeBob: Yeah? Well, you're a bigger one!
Patrick: Well, you're still yellow! And you know what else is yellow?
SpongeBob: What?
Patrick: You are! - Dinner Deformation: The fork that Squidward accidentally swallows is clearly seen sticking through his neck.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: SpongeBob finding Patrick in Squidward's bathtub and his reaction are like someone finding their significant other cheating on them. To an extent, much of the episode portrays the trio as if they were a love triangle.
- Door Slam of Rage: When Squidward successfully makes SpongeBob and Patrick mad at each other, SpongeBob slams the door of his house while Patrick goes back into his rock and closes it with him on it, only to come out like an accordion. Squidward also does this at the end out of frustration when his house is completely demolished.
- Dreadful Musician: SpongeBob claims to have been playing the "bassinet" for years, but a few seconds on the double bass shows that he clearly hasn't.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Patrick catches on almost instantaneously that Squidward's dinner party is some sort of scheme, only to then forget his revelation.SpongeBob: Say, what gives?! I'm not sitting near that maniac!
Patrick: Me neither! This was a setup! - Early-Installment Weirdness: SpongeBob claims to have no friends outside of Patrick. This was before his circle of friends was expanded and he could easily name three friends besides Patrick.
- Enemy Eats Your Lunch: How SpongeBob manages to spite Patrick at the dinner party.Patrick: How about some for your best friend?
(SpongeBob catches Patrick's soda squirt with his glass)
SpongeBob: (to Squidward) Thanks! Best friend! (chugs drink) - Evil Is Petty: Squidward wrecks SpongeBob and Patrick's friendship because he was annoyed by the duo's antics behind his house, even though they otherwise weren't bothering Squidward at the time.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- SpongeBob and Patrick can't seem to tell each other's voices apart from Squidward's in the bubblegram scene, as they're both unaware that Squidward caused them to fight and dislike each other. Granted, this IS SpongeBob and Patrick we're talking about here, but still...
- In the same scene, both Sponge and Pat fail to realize Squidward's soufflé bubbles are not theirs, given that they use normal bubbles while Squidward's are pink and choppy.
- Feud Episode: The very first one of many between SpongeBob and Patrick. They later make up after they start hiccupping small bubbles that makes a burping sound upon popping, which amuses them both. Their immense laughter which follows releases bubbles, reverts them to their normal weight, and to become friends again.
- Garbage Hideout: Squidward hides in his own trashcan to escape from SpongeBob and Patrick fighting over their friendship with him from his house.
- Hidden Depths: For as much as a dumbass as Patrick is, he knows how to effectively perform mouth-to-mouth CPR.
- High-Pressure Emotion: After SpongeBob smashes the double bass due to Patrick interrupting his song, Squidward literally steams with anger before kicking SpongeBob out of his house.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: After ending SpongeBob and Patrick's relationship with malicious insults, Squidward swallows his own fork and passes out. At the end, Squidward gets crushed by his own door re-igniting his back pain.
- If I Had a Nickel...:Squidward: (while pretending to sound like Patrick) If I had a dollar for every brain you don't have, I'd have one dollar!
- Impeded Communication: SpongeBob and Patrick are communicating with bubbles that contain their voices. Squidward, whose house is between theirs, gets annoyed and secretly sabotages their messages by using his own bubbles to insult them. This causes Bob & Pat to hate each other for the episode.
- "Kiss the Cook" Apron: Squidward wears one that says "Kiss the Squid".
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Squidward's attempt to ruin SpongeBob and Patrick's day ends up with the two bugging him and fighting over him. As a result, they destroy his bass, his art paintings and ultimately his entire house.
- Early on in the episode, after Squidward uses his own Impeded Communication which causes Sponge and Pat to hate each other, he ends up choking on his own soufflé fork while laughing; it's implied that this would've been a Karmic Death had Patrick not intervened.
- Long Song, Short Scene: "Solitude in E Minor" is an actual stock song by Richard Myhill called "Wishful Thinking"; the entire track goes on for a minute, compared to the literal two notes heard in the scene where it plays.
- Manipulative Bastard: Squidward. He quickly pays for it, though.
- Minimalist Cast: SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidward are the only characters present.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Squidward's look on his face is quite noticeable when hiding from SpongeBob and Patrick, due to them fighting over him, causing him to find a way to fix their relationship.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: Squidward's clarinet playing puts Patrick to sleep after one note.
- No, You: Most of SpongeBob and Patrick's arguments revolve around this.
- Pass the Popcorn: Squidward watches SpongeBob and Patrick argue while sitting in a lounge chair and eating a soufflé.
- Pet the Dog: Prior to SpongeBob and Patrick reconciling for real, when Patrick laments that he hasn't gotten any soda yet after SpongeBob gets his umpteenth cup, SpongeBob gives Patrick his without a second thought.
- Rebound Best Friend: SpongeBob and Patrick break up and each try to replace the other with Squidward (who broke them up in the first place).
- Scare Chord: One plays after Squidward finds Patrick in his bathtub.
- Stab the Picture: An accidental variant occurs when SpongeBob tries to play the violin, but accidentally sends the bow flying and appears to hit Squidward right in the forehead. The camera then pulls back to show that the bow has actually stabbed a painting of Squidward, depicted screaming in pain.
- Stealth Insult: SpongeBob keeps robbing Patrick of soda squirts from Squidward, and when Patrick points out that he still hasn't gotten any, SpongeBob seemingly Pets the Dog by pouring what's in his glass into Patrick's glass, only to go back to demanding more soda squirts from Squidward. Such a gesture pisses Patrick off.
- Temporary Bulk Change: SpongeBob and Patrick get bloated from drinking too much soda. They are back to normal once they burp it all out.
- This Is Gonna Suck: As soon as Squidward hears SpongeBob and Patrick's burp bubbles explode, he already expects the worst to have happened to his house.Squidward: I should just walk away, right now.
- Unwanted Assistance: At the end, SpongeBob and Patrick demolish Squidward's house from burping up so much carbon dioxide from binging on soda. SpongeBob offers to help him clean up, but Squidward angrily kicks them out.
- Voice Changeling: Squidward can do a rather bad, yet convincing, imitation of both SpongeBob and Patrick's voices.
- Wingding Eyes: Squidward's eyes display the text "K-O" just before he faints.
"Mrs. Puff? ...I think I cheated."
Boating School
Original air date: 8/7/1999 (produced in 1998)
Another day at Boating School means another day with SpongeBob for Mrs. Puff, his Boating School teacher. Unfortunately, SpongeBob might just be her eternal burden, because as it stands, he's never going to pass his driver's test.
"Boating School" contains examples of:
- Acting Unnatural: For SpongeBob, acting natural apparently means acting like a cow.
- Artistic License – Cars: When SpongeBob crashes the boat the first time, he did not put the boat in drive; therefore, the boat would've just stayed in the same spot when he floored it.
- Then again, considering how dreadful of a driving student SpongeBob would later be shown in the series, having him accelerate while in park makes the Epic Fail of the situation even funnier.
- Apple for Teacher: SpongeBob gives Mrs. Puff an apple before they start the test.
- Big "NO!": As Mrs. Puff is being put on an ambulance, SpongeBob assures her that he'll try harder next year. She yells "NO!" as the ambulance drives away.
- Big "WHAT?!": Patrick's reaction upon realizing his method of helping SpongeBob was cheating.
- Big "WHY?!": Mrs. Puff each time SpongeBob fails the test.
- Bittersweet Ending: SpongeBob fails his driving test and Mrs. Puff gets sent to the hospital. Gary then finds SpongeBob’s unicycle that was thrown in the dumpster and SpongeBob decides to go to the hospital to cheer up Mrs. Puff.
- Bookend: The episode begins with SpongeBob riding his unicycle to boating school. The episode ends with him riding that same unicycle away.
- Butt-Monkey: Mrs. Puff.
- Clothing Switch: Patrick tries on SpongeBob's clothes.Patrick: What's pink and square at the same time? Patrick SquarePants!
- Contrived Coincidence: When Mrs. Puff wonders what Spongebob’s secret to success in riding a boat was, she maps out PRECISELY what it is, between there being an antenna under his hat and someone, miles a way, giving him all the answers before casually declaring that would be cheating, leading the sponge to finally realise he’s doing wrong.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "I am confident in my abilities to successfully succeed."
- Do Wrong, Right: When SpongeBob realizes that he's cheating and starts flipping out, Mrs. Puff begs him to at least cheat his way to the end of the course instead of crashing again, but he ignores her and keeps crying.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- This is the most competent Patrick has been in any episode. He even had to talk SpongeBob out of being dumb.
- Mrs. Puff speaks in a deep voice whenever she's inflated. Later episodes starting with "No Free Rides" have her always speak in her normal voice when inflated.
- Mrs. Puff is much more tolerant and friendlier towards SpongeBob in this episode. Later episodes would establish that she still carries this attitude with SpongeBob when they're in a classroom setting; it's only when he gets behind the wheel that Mrs. Puff's neuroticism and dread of the yellow sponge comes out.
- SpongeBob is shown to be quite competent regarding theoretical knowledge of boats, and only struggles once he's behind the wheel. While this trait would reappear in "Pizza Delivery", in later seasons, he'd be established as terrible at literally every aspect of boating school.
- SpongeBob's alarm clock makes a different noise than it normally does.
- SpongeBob rides a unicycle in this episode, which he rarely uses past this episode.
- Earpiece Conversation: Patrick coaches SpongeBob through his boating test by a walkie-talkie hidden under a cowboy hat. Mrs. Puff compliments SpongeBob on his improvement, joking that it's as if someone were telling him all the answers. But when she mentions that that would be cheating, SpongeBob freaks out and confesses... and crashes the boat, failing the test once again.
- Establishing Character Moment: Just from the first line Mrs. Puff ever says: "I'm not ready...", you can already tell what she is going to have to put up with whenever SpongeBob is around.
- Genius Ditz: SpongeBob knows all the answers to the verbal test, he just gets nervous and floors it when he's behind the wheel. Meanwhile, Patrick knows all the directions to follow in order to pass the behind-the-wheel driving test, giving SpongeBob all the answers.
- Hallucinations: After SpongeBob gets in the boat and starts to freak out, he hallucinates the track before him getting progressively longer and longer.
- Heel Realization: For SpongeBob, "...I'm cheating!"
- Helping Granny Cross the Street: SpongeBob during his 39th boating test attempt.
- Honor Before Reason: Rather than continue to the finish line, even with Mrs. Puff giving him the greenlight to do so, SpongeBob sobs sorrowfully and apologetically and messes up his test YET AGAIN.
- It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: SpongeBob having Patrick help him out with an Earpiece Conversation to pass his boating exam seemed like a clever idea...until Mrs. Puff mentioned that situation would be cheating.
- Larynx Dissonance: Mrs. Puff's voice deepens significantly when she inflates, though this trait disappears after this episode.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The 1/2 Shell audience fish only appear to give this reaction.
- Mood Whiplash: The episode starts with SpongeBob excited to take his boating exam. But then it all changes once he gets in the boat.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- When SpongeBob realizes that what Patrick is telling him is cheating, he breaks down crying, remorsefully apologizing to Mrs. Puff. He gets so caught up in it that he crashes the boat and fails his driving test. Again.
- Patrick also has this reaction when he's also told it's cheating: he gives a Big "WHAT?!", cries, and runs back to his rock.
- Oh, Crap!: SpongeBob gets a pretty epic one when he realizes he's cheating.
- Overly Long Gag: Patrick going "Testing" over and over into his walkie-talkie, waiting for SpongeBob to respond, eventually starting to scream it.
- Ow, My Body Part!: This marks the debut of the Running Gag of someone shouting "My leg!" (heard right after Mrs. Puff says "Oh, SpongeBob, why?" the first time).
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Patrick discovers his method to help SpongeBob on his test is cheating, he promptly runs back to his rock crying, and doesn’t appear again for the rest of the episode.
- Staggered Zoom: When SpongeBob realizes he's cheating.
- Subverted Catchphrase: Mrs. Puff subverts SpongeBob's catchphrase in her Establishing Character Moment.SpongeBob: I'm ready! Here I come, Mrs. Puff! I'm ready! I'm ready! I'm ready!
(Mrs. Puff looks out the window despondently)
Mrs. Puff: (sigh) I'm not ready... - Vertigo Effect: The driving course track receding into infinity to show how intimidating SpongeBob finds driving.
- Wham Line: "But that would be cheating!"
