With March coming to a close, my reviews of season 5 are as well. Lots to say after the summary!
Friend or Foe: 9.2/10
The Original Fry Cook: 7.9/10
Night Light: 6.7/10
Rise And Shine: 5.8/10
Waiting: 6.4/10
Fungus Among Us: 7.5/10
Spy Buddies: 9.5/10
Boat Smarts: 8.5/10
Good Ol' Whatshisname: 9.2/10
New Digs: 9.3/10
Krabs à la Mode: 9.4/10
Roller Cowards: 9.2/10
Bucket Sweet Bucket: 8.9/10
To Love a Patty: 5.4/10
Breath of Fresh Squidward: 4.8/10
Money Talks: 8.7/10
SpongeBob Vs. The Patty Gadget: 9.1/10
Slimy Dancing: 8.3/10
The Krusty Sponge: 8.4/10
Sing a Song of Patrick: 7/10
A Flea in Her Dome: 6.7/10
The Donut of Shame: 8.5/10
The Krusty Plate: 9.2/10
Goo Goo Gas: 6.6/10
Le Big Switch: 7.6/10
Atlantis SquarePantis: 7.5/10
Picture Day: 7.2/10
Pat No Pay: 8.4/10
BlackJack: 9.3/10
Blackened Sponge: 9.1/10
Mermaid Man Vs. SpongeBob: 7.6/10
The Inmates of Summer: 9.4/10
To Save a Squirrel: 9/10
The Pest of the West: 8.2/10
20,000 Patties Under the Sea: 7.8/10
The Battle of Bikini Bottom: 9/10
Whatever Happened to SpongeBob?: 4.2/10
The Two Faces of Squidward: 6.5/10
SpongeHenge: 6.6/10
Banned in Bikini Bottom: 5.9/10
Stanley S. SquarePants: 7/10
Top 5:
5. BlackJack
4. New Digs
3. The Inmates of Summer
2. Krabs à la Mode
1. Spy Buddies
Bottom 5:
5. Banned in Bikini Bottom
4. Rise and Shine
3. To Love A Patty
2. Breath of Fresh Squidward
1. Whatever Happened to SpongeBob?
Scoring:
Amazing: 13
Great: 8
Good: 9
Okay: 6
Mediocre: 3
Tolerable: 2
Bad: 0
Abysmal: 0
Additional Comments:
Ah, season 5, what can I say about you here today? It feels like there’s both so much and so little to talk about at the same time. But I’ve got a few ideas.
First, I wanna continue the conversation I started in my season 4 review about that season and especially this season being regarded as the “beginning of the end” of this show (which I’ve already debunked and given my thoughts about so I’m not even gonna start), and as a transition to the seasons 6-8 era. I’d say that season 5 feels more like season 4 than it feels like seasons 2 or 3. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, which is where I diverge from popular opinion (not of this forum, but the people out there who’ve absorbed post-movie hate into their bones). And I’ll talk more about season 5 on its own in a minute. But as a preview for that, I’ll just say that this season keeps the adventurous writings that started in season 4.
What’s really interesting to me about the public reception of season 5 is that…there isn’t much. I mean, just think of the popular conversations surrounding this show as a whole. We’ve got terms like “good” & “bad” and “classic” & “modern” thrown around, season 4 being slowly absorbed into the “classic” canon, the grouping of seasons 6-8 as the most infamous era of the show, post-second movie as a whole different beast, and season 5 isn’t really in these conversations at all. So to me it feels like season 5 is the most forgotten season, and it occupies an interesting liminal space. Maybe that’s why so many of its episodes have been forgotten by the fandom at large.
And that’s too bad, because I think this is a pretty interesting season of the show, as to me it embodies the “transition” vibes I’ve previously outlined. In fact, where I’d call seasons 4 and 5 combined the Transformation Era, I’d also call season 5 the Daring season. This season, to me, is all about taking risks and finding ways to spice up the show, ensure it doesn’t get stale, which was a necessary change because of the increasing longevity of the show. I’d say we’re in another one of these kinds of eras now, or actually we just got out of one (seasons 9b and 10) and are now reaping the benefits. But anyway, out of of the 5 seasons I’ve reviewed so far, season 5 is easily the most adventurous. And I don’t just mean the obvious picks like “SpongeHenge”, though that is definitely one of the best examples of how exploratory season 5 is. The 3 different episodes expanding on the SquarePants family, “To Save A Squirrel”, “The Inmates of Summer”, “Blackened Sponge”, every special episode, the experimental episode lengths…these are all very exploratory, adventurous things to me. And not every episode of season 5 is a successful experiment, of course not, but I appreciate that season 5 tried. I appreciate all the new and interesting ideas that were brought up in this season, even if that did mean we got episodes with out-of-character writing, for example.
Now, what of the actual quality of this season? Well, let’s start with the math. The average episode rating for this season was a 7.8. In terms of my own feelings, I enjoyed this season about as much as season 4. One worrying trend I began to see were some episodes having prolonged moments of boredom or dullness. It almost felt like a backslide into season 1 slowness, but without the rest of the vibes and material that made the slowness there work. Other than this trend, though, the episodes of this season were overall quite enjoyable and pretty funny. There are plenty of brilliant writing moments here too, which to me shows that nothing has left the show, it has just…changed. I don’t want to say evolved because of the connotations of that word, so I’ll say changed. And I think instead of the balance between interesting plot and great humor (which isn’t a dichotomy, but we’ll pretend they are right now) leaning heavy towards great humor like it did in seasons 2, 3, and somewhat 4, this season started leaning a bit towards interesting plot instead. And there’s nothing exactly wrong with that, other than not meeting expectations set by previous seasons I suppose.
Also, I think it’s hilarious to look back at the review from 2022 of this season that I barely remember making. It’s so obvious to me now that I didn’t bother to rewatch the episodes when I rated them, and just went off vibes alone. That is why this project is superior lol. But seriously, the fact that I was putting episodes in my “Bad” tier and even my “Abysmal” tier is crazy, because it’s really difficult for an episode to reach either of those tiers, and this season was definitely not the first to do it.
I was right about one thing, though. Season 5 is for sure a sleeper season. I think it’s time to wake it up!
