Uh oh...I think I have an unpopular opinion! Well, that's never stopped me before. I don’t want to call “Patnocchio” forgettable, I don’t, but…I think I’m gonna call it forgettable LMAO. Now, part of this is because I haven’t seen this episode very much. But maybe the better word is that it’s unremarkable, because I do remember the episode decently well, and that’s before rewatching it. I just don’t care very much about it. And it doesn’t stand out to me, even though you’d think with the whole fairy-tale premise, it would do more of that.
I think part of the reason I don’t exactly care for this episode is because I don’t really care for the fairytale aspect lol. It just doesn’t really fit in this show, in my opinion. Also, I don’t much care for fairytales, but that’s a story for another day. We begin with an opening sequence that reminds me of “The Legends of Bikini Bottom” anthology. Which reminds me…let’s bring back anthologies! Now, would this fairytale thing have been similar to “The Legends” had it been an anthology? Yes. But I might’ve liked the concept more if it was spread across 5 episodes than just kept in the single one. Anywho, after the opening sequence, we’re greeted with Karen who is a fairy now. Sure. But also she’s still a computer haha. I at least like that the episode utilized Karen for this, as she’s very underutilized in general, so I’ll take what I can get.
Patrick’s little outfit in this episode is kinda cute I suppose. Plankton tries and fails to steal a patty from Patrick because he pulls a Goldilocks and can’t decide which one is perfect. Then, after a series of events consisting of Patrick being dumb, Patrick starts thinking that Plankton, who he can’t see, is his conscience talking. And so Plankton takes this as an opportunity. At this point I’m wondering why this episode is even based on Pinocchio at all. It could’ve very easily just been an episode on its own without any of the fairy-tale influence, but okay. I’ll still give it a chance.
Plankton tries to get Patrick to buy some more patties that he can abscond with, but Patrick is dead-set on running some errands first. And the first errand is high-fiving everyone. I’m gonna call this a reference to “Something Smells”. Or “Dying for Pie”. Also, what was with the random electric guitar thing Patrick did here? I’m all for random humor, but that was just odd. Next, Patrick goes to Goofy Goobers, which yay movie reference! And he does the rockstar thing again. Please don’t tell me this running gag lasts more than these two times. Or if it does, give it some actual payoff because it’s simply not working in the current iteration. While we’re in this ice cream scene, we get another reference to the Pinocchio story, with Plankton’s nose growing when he lies. I don’t really care that the episode isn’t a one-for-one recreation of the story of Pinocchio, I more care that again, these elements serve zero purpose for me. This ice cream scene does give me the first joke of the episode that I laughed at though, which is when Plankton and Patrick cause a mess with their nose fighting, and the worker has flames in his eyes.
Well, the episode does give us a kind of payoff to the rockstar gag. Kind of. It’s more that Plankton joins in the third time, which was nice. Doesn’t make me forgive the unnecessariness of the first two, though. Anywho, with this third iteration of the gag, we have Plankton finally convincing Patrick to go get another patty. But of course, things aren’t so easy for Plankton. Patrick tries and fails to get the patty into the mailslot, making it land in the car with Pearl and her friends, which is on the way to Goo Lagoon. I’ma be honest, I start getting frustrated like Plankton here because it means we’re stuck dealing with this dynamic that I don’t care for for another 5 or so minutes.
And yes, I guess I haven’t touched on this yet, but this episode is about Plankton and Patrick, a dynamic that I don’t believe we’ve seen very much of. I wasn’t particularly excited about this duo, though I do appreciate the episode trying something a little different. And it seems I was a little right in not being excited, because I don’t really care about these two together? I think where the Plankton-SpongeBob dynamic works while the Plankton-Patrick one doesn’t is that 1) Patrick is just too dumb to see the scheme, while SpongeBob is more naive and wants to see the best in Plankton, and 2) Patrick has no dog in the fight. He’s not as personally invested in the Plankton-Krabs conflict as SpongeBob and even Squidward are, so it works a little less for me. Though now this is making me wish we had an episode with Plankton and Pearl. Closest we’ve gotten this far (in my reviews) are “One Coarse Meal” and “Married To Money”, and for similar and different reasons, neither of those episodes quite work in establishing a dynamic between the two characters.
This scene at the beach is where the episode starts taking a very…weird turn for me. So after a series of unfortunate events, the patty ends up in Pearl’s stomach (she’s sleeping, so it’s incidental). And Patrick decides that he’s “going in”. As in…literally goes inside Pearl’s mouth to get to her stomach. And after a line that I’m choosing to see as a reference to “One Coarse Meal” (even though it’s more a reference to whales eating plankton in general), Plankton goes in too. Yeah I don’t like this???? I’m going to now leave this point alone because I don’t want to think about it anymore. Patrick and Plankton find Geppetto and “Pinocchio” in Pearl’s stomach, because yeah remember how this episode is supposed to be influenced by Pinocchio? Yeah, I forgot too. And they all start fighting. Which is giving Pearl a stomach ache. And then we get a very random commercial type gag. Yeah a lot of the writing decisions in this episode have got me questioning because what happened to cohesiveness?
Anyway, once everyone is freed from Pearl’s stomach, Plankton tries to get away with the patty, but that’s when Patrick’s real conscience shows up. Well, he’s got a lot of explaining to do, not doing his job. He tells Patrick that Plankton’s a bug, so there goes Plankton’s plan. And the episode ends.
Yeah I wasn’t vibing with “Patnocchio”. The writing in this one’s just really weak. The Pinocchio influence was wholly unnecessary and not utilized well enough to make it necessary, the comedy was not really there, and there was the entire weird segment with Pearl. And the character dynamics just weren’t doing it. So I didn’t really like this one.
Episode Tier: Mediocre
Episode Score: 5.3/10