The post-movie creators always had the potential to make good quality episodes. This episode is one of the better -- heck, probably best -- episodes of Season 5. The characters were not flanderized -- SpongeBob most notably -- and the humor was never over-the-top bad. SpongeBob is actually his pre-movie self, save for the voice. Squidward was his normal, moody, arrogant, work-hating dude; him hating work and constantly complaining has never been a new thing. Mr Krabs. was cheap -- or slightly stingy, not "imma sell ur soul for 62 cents lolll" -- and you better believe he was tolerable. Plankton was actually creative and NOT sulky. Compared to most of Season 5, this episode is a masterpiece. Unlike many of the episodes in the season, this one felt inspired. It was as if you could feel that they enjoyed writing this. I love the creators for all their worth -- they are why such great entertainment has been made for us -- but you can tell in episodes like Dear Vikings and Pet or Pests that they simply weren't compelled to do the episodes like they were with episodes like this one. It would be lying to say all the episodes were felt proud of by the creators -- pre-movie and post. I'm not going to say that every bad episode was a result of lack of desire and effort; To Love a Patty and One Coarse Meal as ideas were doomed from the start. However, there are so many episodes in Seasons 5-9 that had such cool concepts (Dear Vikings, come to think about it, is actually a really creative idea) that simply were never executed well. When the creators -- pre-movie and post-movie -- make a wonderful episode with classic characterization and funny humor out of a seemingly simple plot such as the temperature of a restaurant or the selling of bubbles, it makes me happy. This show proves that you do not need to go overboard with the ideas to make a good episode, partly why my favorite episodes often tend to be the [seemingly] simple ones such as Ripped Pants, Bubblestand, Jellyfish Jam, and The Paper -- yes, even Jellyfish Jam, technically, has a simple plot; the execution is off the wall -- whoah I'm digressing too much -- to put it in a tl;dr, I wish there were more episodes that had a lot more though to the execution rather than the idea as some of my favorite post-movie episodes --Have You Seen This Snail?, Pineapple Fever, Treats!, Single Cell Anniversary, etc -- are nearly always the simple ideas that just get executed SpongeBob style.
I know my review sounds like it's the perfect episode, but in reality, it's probably an 8. Absolutely no episodes reach perfection for even Squidville and Band Geeks have flaws that I refuse to ignore.