Now why did I think this was a season 9 episode? I know someone made a thread about this episode the other day, and I didn’t reply because at that point I hadn’t seen this episode in at least 5 years. Most definitely longer than that. I mean, I could still remember the whole plot, but that’s because this episode has a very simple plot, I think.
This episode sees the return of something I love to see—SpongeBob and co. hanging out at the Krusty Krab. Like I’ve said before, this kind of set-up gives such a sitcom-like feeling, I love it. I wish my friends would visit me during my lunch break LMAO. The episode immediately gets into things with SpongeBob and Patrick doing funny faces at each other. I gotta admire the creativity here with these faces, they’re definitely cool and interesting to look at. This episode is kinda like a precursor to season 9B+ in that way, isn’t it? Except whereas the expressions in future seasons serve an emotional purpose (to convey a specific emotion), the ones here are just done in a kind of shock factor kind of way. So it makes them feel less needed. But I’m still fine with the ones here, let’s not get it twisted.
We then learn the story of “Face Freeze!”, who ended up getting his face stuck in a funny face. And Mr. Krabs being the one to set the two straight is a very…familiar plot thread, I think. I mean…”Sailor Mouth”, “Life of Crime”, “Hooky”…there’s a number of episodes that do this sort of thing. And I like it, though it usually signals leaning on the child side of the child-adult line. SpongeBob and Patrick being unable to help themselves reminds me of “Karate Choppers” in the best way. SpongeBob and Patrick assume that Mr. Krabs is wrong after very little evidence, and as you can imagine, they soon find out that Mr. Krabs was right after all. The sequence of them making a ton of funny faces is fine, I suppose, but it’s not really funny, and gets repetitive after the first couple. So that’s my main gripe with this episode, really, that it relies too heavily on these faces instead of finding comedy elsewhere.
Also, the faces that SpongeBob and Patrick decide to keep for much of the episode are…not that appealing. I would’ve preferred almost the entirety of the faces they showcased before, but perhaps those would’ve been harder to animate, with them walking around and stuff? Ugh, whatever. SpongeBob and Patrick go to Sandy’s to try and fix their faces, which is where we get the one joke that actually made me laugh in the episode, the “licensed” part. That was great. Sandy ends up making things debatably worse, again with uglier faces than any of the ones showcased before. After a whole lot of nothing in terms of SpongeBob trying to get Mr. Krabs not to see his messed up face, Mr. Krabs does, in fact, see his face, and ends up making an angry face of his own, which gets stuck. Then Squidward gets stuck in a laughing face. And everyone lived ugly ever after.
"Face Freeze!" was a boring episode, once you take out the shock factor of the faces. It's very similar to "The Splinter" in that way, though I did find this episode to be mildly more entertaining. But only mildly. Like I said, this episode relies too much on the faces, and it simply doesn't work. Even if the faces actually were intrinsically funny, putting all your eggs into one basket like this very rarely works.
Episode Tier: Okay
Episode Score: 6/10
