Episode I have nothing to say about, go! Yeah, I don’t remember very much of “Stormy Weather” in general. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the basics of the plot, and maybe a couple jokes, but that’s it. This is not an episode I’ve seen more than twice at most. So time to see how it fares in these reviews!
I gotta say, from the beginning of this episode, I’ve already got a bad feeling about this. I kinda don’t usually care for episodes where we’re following a random new character, especially not an…anthropomorphized cloud. I had this problem in “Don’t Feed The Clowns”. I feel like this kind of plot is something that’s been invented by newer episodes, and I can understand why, to keep things fresh, but like…we already have so many characters in this show that have only just begun to be used interestingly (thinking of the secondary and tertiary characters), not to mention a good chunk of the main cast doesn’t have enough episodes focusing on them. We don’t need to add new characters to keep things fresh. Though, at least this show isn’t
Fairly Odd Parents, because these new characters are only in an episode. In that show, they were adding new members to the main cast. That’s a whole other beast.
Speaking of new characters, I don’t really understand why we have this random meteorologist and not, you know, Perch Perkins?? Yes, I know in real life, meteorologists and the newscasters are different people, but this is a cartoon, we can take some artistic liberties.
Okay, let me get to the real plot of the episode. Which…isn’t the best. The plot of this episode is kind of very similar to “Don’t Feed The Clowns” in a few ways. We’ve got a new character that acts like a child/animal left behind, and SpongeBob befriends them. And no this isn’t me about to endorse the rip-off label, cuz I don’t believe in that, but this is a clear similarity. Once SpongeBob befriends the cloud, which he names Drizzle, we see them hanging out for a bit, doing a variety of activities like cloud watching or taking walks. Their day of fun ends and SpongeBob has to tie Drizzle up outside, because apparently its not housebroken LMAO. Gary looked so over it.
Drizzle ends up running away, and getting brutalized. And we see the random meteorologist again. Because this episode is about two random characters and SpongeBob. Can you tell that I’m not enthused? I just don’t really care about the plight of these random characters, sorry. SpongeBob SquarePants is just not the kind of show where following random characters is an interesting plot. The show’s recurring characters are far more interesting. And that’s how I’ve always felt. Again, there are many times where one-off characters are great, like in “License to Milkshake” or “The Inmates of Summer”. But the difference is the episode is not
about those characters, they just appear (typically the episodes involve main characters being in a new location, so that helps things along too).
I say all of this to say that when SpongeBob and the meteorologist end up fighting over Drizzle, I don’t care. If it was Perch Perkins, I would’ve cared a lot more, I can tell you that much. I really don’t know why he’s not in this episode. And then when SpongeBob ends up randomly crying over Drizzle, I kinda start feeling annoyed. Then the meteorologist gets beat up pretty handily by Drizzle, and it’s interesting enough I guess? Not really. I’m just tired of saying the same thing over and over lol. Then Drizzle’s parents show up, kinda out of nowhere, but whatever. At least we get some gorgeous background
art out of this.
Okay yeah, I wasn’t quite feeling “Stormy Weather”. And maybe it’s because I was tired while watching this thing, but I don’t think that’s it, or not entirely. I just think that episodes that are about characters we have no investment in are always going to be like this. And I don’t like making this generalization because again, there are times where episodes have had random characters in them and they’ve worked fine. But I think the big difference is that episodes with one-off characters are good are usually because those characters, while they play a major role, we’re not following them in the sense that we’re rooting for them? We more just see them as good foils for the main characters we know (usually SpongeBob) and comedic influences for the episode as a whole. I’d say in teh end, Drizzle ends up being most similar to Junior from “Rock-A-Bye Bivalve”, but again Junior works in that episode because he is hardly the focus, at least as a present character. He’s a plot device meant to create the rift between SpongeBob and Patrick, characters we’re actually invested in.
That was a lot of words, and I hope they made sense cuz again I’m tired and idk if I can articulate my point well. The fact is I wasn’t feeling “Stormy Weather”, and I didn’t really like it very much because I was bored and I didn’t care about what I was seeing. It’s always hard to score episodes like this because even though I didn’t really like the episode at all, it doesn’t feel right to put it in Bad or Abysmal, because it’s a pretty harmless episode and it didn’t really upset me, I just flat-out did not care for it. So I think Mediocre is probably the best fit.
Episode Tier: Mediocre
Episode Score: 5/10
