Eric Clapton is one of my personal guitar heroes, and there was a time when songs from his catalog dominated my personal musical playlist (often on those archaic devices known as "Walkmans"). I had been past this period for some time when I tuned midway into a song on the radio and thought to myself, "Man, this guy sounds like he's doing a bad Eric Clapton impersonation." You can imagine my dismay when the announcer said afterwards that the artist was, in fact, Eric Clapton.
Unfortunately, I have the same feeling watching SpongeBob SquarePants: The Great Patty Caper on DVD, except that I've never actually watched SpongeBob SquarePants regularly. The sense that I'm watching someone doing a bad impersonation of himself comes mostly from the adoration that the show gets from its legions of fans and the fact that a number of its alumni have gone on to create their own shows that are often far better than even the best that this latest DVD Nickelodeon can offer.
Comparing the best episodes on this disc ("Stuck in the Wringer" and "Model Sponge") to any of the weaker ones (the other five) illuminates the two major problems I have with the show at this point in its life. "Wringer" establishes its core problem right away, as SpongeBob gets stuck in the wringer he uses to dry himself, and Patrick helpfully glues him into it permanently. The rest of the episode's running time is spent showing how being stuck in a giant wringer causes SpongeBob grief. Similarly, "Model Sponge" may start with the sitcom stand-by of misunderstanding something secretly overheard, as SpongeBob believes Mr. Krabs is going to fire him. But from there, the episode spins off into inspired madness as SpongeBob tries a variety of jobs before settling on being a sponge model for advertising, with gloriously gross results. Both of these episodes are simple and they're funnyit doesn't take long to get them started and they can happily propagate under their own steam. Sure, toilet humor and pratfalls like getting stuck in doors or thrown out of amusement park Tilt-a-Whirls have been drawing laughs from audiences for decades, but the old standbys are old standbys for a reason. It's things like that drew laughs out of me.
In contrast, the other episodes tend to waste far too much time on setups that don't really go anywhere. The title episode is emblematic in this regard, carefully crafting a scenario that doesn't really lend itself to anything funny naturally. "The Great Patty Caper" starts with Mr. Krabs deciding that he's going to send away the secret formula for Krabby Patties for safe keeping from the larcenous clutches of Plankton. Unfortunately, neither he nor SpongeBob think to read the formula before sending it away, so SpongeBob and Patrick are dispatched to get the formula back. Of course, Plankton follows, aiming to steal the formula once and for all, and mayhem ensues. It takes the episode way too long to establish all that plot, and that's all time that's not spent making us laugh very much. Once SpongeBob and Patrick are on the train, we have to sit through a bunch of really forced situations where there's a lot of flapping and activity and nonsense, but very very few laughs. The same thing happens in all the other episodes (which are also far too predominated by "Plankton tries to steal the Krabby Patty formula" formula). There are all the trappings of mayhem, but none of the effects of the genuine article. I couldn't even muster up a sympathy laugh for most of these episodes.
