Now, “Library Cards” is an episode that I have not seen very much at all. I’ve watched it at least twice, but I can’t remember a lot of it, aside from the basics of the plot, as per usual in situations like this. From what I can remember, this episode most closely reminds me of “Patrick SmartPants”. Let’s rewatch to see if this comparison still applies.
We start off with some mindless entertainment, and it makes sense that it’s so mindless because Patrick’s the one watching it. Though it is fun. Such a simple gag, yet it entertains me so. Patrick’s ready to watch some cartoons with SpongeBob, but he accosts the Bob (after a funny moment where he calls him “SpongeRobert”, literally that was out of nowhere and hilarious) as he is leaving a secret room. Or, it’s not a secret room, it’s actually SpongeBob’s library! I feel like we haven’t seen it in a while, and even then, the room rarely plays a central role in an episode like this.
We get a wonderful Gary appearance here, being the educated little snail that he is. But he is sadly bothered by Patrick’s mistreatment of the library. I love SpongeBob’s smug attitude here, it’s hilarious to me. He teaches Patrick that a library is a place to read books, something that Patrick knows nothing about. So, SpongeBob teaches Patrick the magic of books. Patrick’s stupidity here, while extreme, is quite endearing, so I have no problem with him apparently having no idea what books are. And his thirst for knowledge is something we rarely see nurtured in the star, so it makes the plot more interesting, at least on the outset.
Reading stimulates Patrick’s brain in a way it’s never been stimulated, and he starts to actually get smarter. He absorbs the words so fast that his head grows to insane proportions. And he starts talking all pretentious-like. So, so far, this episode is starting to become very similar to “Patrick SmartPants”. What remains to be seen is how annoying smart Patrick will become. Because in that episode, Patrick was endearing. Let’s see what this episode does. Well, Patrick certainly acts a bit more pretentious imo. But it’s not too bad. He gets his head stuck in the door when SpongeBob tries to take him out for ice cream, and instead of actually being useful he just spouts off a bunch of ridiculous technobabble in his proposal for getting his head out the door. See, truly smart people know how to convey ideas in a useful manner lol.
SpongeBob attempts to follow Patrick’s instructions, but he ends up accidentally splitting Gary up into a ton of tiny versions of himself. Way to give me a heart attack, episode. But, Gary’s presence does give SpongeBob an idea…use slime to get Patrick out of the door! After this fails, SpongeBob manages to find a book called “Head Shrinking For Beginners”…how convenient! And then we proceed to get a segment that was completely unexpected and earned some startled laughter outta me. And again, this fails. So, Patrick comes up with a new idea—he’s gotta get dumb in order to get free. And so we’ve got the return of a little mindless cartoon, and it works! Nothing much else for me to say after that.
“Library Cards” does remind me of “Patrick SmartPants”, and the episodes for sure have got some similarities. But we’re definitely not at the level of rip-off. I’ll just say that I liked this episode…less than that one. It stopped being interesting about 4 or 5 minutes in. And after that, the direction the episode was going to go in was quite predictable. I don’t mind predictability, but I do mind it when the easy-to-see path is dull.
Episode Tier: Okay
Episode Score: 6.8/10
