A Mrs. Puff episode? Really? For me? Oh I’m so happy. Y’all already know how I feel about the severe lack of episodes for certain characters of the series (*
cough cough* misogyny analysis that I still haven't created *
cough*). So y’all know that I’m happy whenever the show seems to address this problem, in any capacity. Of course, I don’t think the issue will ever be resolved, not in the show’s lifetime. But still. It’s nice.
I always like when an episode begins with some chaos. And SpongeBob crashing into a house, and a baby saving their parents, is definitely some chaos. At this point, I have to wonder how we even got to this position LMAO. After SpongeBob crashes into Mrs. Puff’s house and leaves, I really love the continuation of the joke of Mrs. Puff having the inception painting. And I love how it was made a joke on top of that (with the painting being tilted and then falling). Mrs. Puff almost falls into despair that SpongeBob is unteachable, but before we can go down the road of “Mrs. Puff You’re Fired”, she decides to consult a guru fish. Yeah sure, why not. It’s so random but in the best way.
Mrs. Puff tries to figure out a way to follow the guru fish’s advice to “be with SpongeBob without being with SpongeBob”. And it seems her best idea is to sneak aboard the French Narrator’s submarine lol. I really like how the show has incorporated these running gags and characters into just parts of the show’s general background. Like we’ve of course got Fred now, and we’ve also got the French Narrator becoming an actual character. And the previous episode showed us that Patchy has basically become this as well.
This episode is all about the random, because Mrs. Puff decides that her best idea is to steal a potato from the French Narrator and dress it up like herself to trick SpongeBob. Hence the title of the episode, which is quite the apt descriptor now that I understand what this episode is about. You know, in a way, this episode is kind of like the spiritual inverse of “Boating School”. Kind of. Mrs. Puff quickly loses sight of what she’s supposed to be doing, because she starts watching TV and trying new wigs instead of actually watching SpongeBob. This happens a bit too quickly in my opinion. But I’ll trust the process, maybe there’s a reason this pacing is a little fast.
SpongeBob ends up driving on a real road, causing a little less chaos than expected. And Mrs. Puff seems to remember the existence of SpongeBob at least a little bit, but for some reason she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to look out the window…maybe it’s just me, but this feels out of character. It’s not her own safety that she’s always worried about when SpongeBob’s driving; it’s the safety of other people too. I mean…”No Free Rides”, anyone? But whatever, it’s of course not that serious. With Mrs. Puff’s un-informed instructions, SpongeBob drives somewhat decently but also with a whole lot of traffic violations and breaking into things. And he ends up causing the radio signal to switch to the police’s radio rather than Mrs. Puff, so now he takes it upon himself to be a traffic cop. You know what, this is very entertaining, especially as it leads to a multi-car chase. I’m reminded of “Hall Monitor”.
I like the return of the baby from earlier, and the dynamite factory. Wasn’t expecting to get a callback. And of course we get SpongeBob driving away from the crash like a bad***. And finally Mrs. Puff realizes just what’s going on outside. So now she’s gotta pursue SpongeBob. I love how she’s got a whole bunch of wigs for different situations. Mrs. Puff is such a fun character, and this episode shows why. So why can’t we get more???? Anyway, Mrs. Puff goes on hot pursuit, which ends up with her poor potato double becoming mashed potatoes, and SpongeBob thinking that the real Mrs. Puff is dead. Well this is hilariously dark. And of course, this wouldn’t be a Boating School episode without Mrs. Puff going to jail…though I think it’s been a while since that happened. And also, can I just point out this last track of the episode?? Like I love the harmonica overlay on top of
Aloha, it sounds quite nice.
“Potato Puff” was a good episode. The main problem I had here was with the pacing. Everything else was pretty good. I think that Mrs. Puff went too quickly to not paying attention about SpongeBob, which then lengthened the middle section to be a little too long. It also didn’t make very much sense with her character, even as presented in this episode. So if that bit was fixed, this episode would’ve for sure been Amazing tier. As it is, I gotta bump it down.
Episode Tier: Great
Episode Score: 8.4/10
