Why do season 2-present have strange airing orders?

Amphitrite

Amphitrite

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The title speaks for itself. Season 1 of SpongeBob is the only season in which all episodes air in the order of production code. However, every season since season 2 has episodes that either air far away from the others, in tandem with another season, or aired in the middle or end of the season when it was produced before the others.

Examples:

Season 2 mostly aired from 2000-2001, but the episodes, Welcome to the Chum Bucket/Frankendoodle and Graveyard Shift/Krusty Love aired in 2002, and an individual episode, Gary Takes a Bath, aired in 2003.

Season 3 mostly aired in 2002, but the episode Just One Bite/The Bully aired in 2001, and the later episodes of this season aired in 2003-2004 with huge gaps throughout.

Season 4 didn't have that much of a strange airing order, but Best Day Ever premiered in 2006, and its sister, The Gift of Gum, premiere in 2007. Also, the last episode to premiere in this season was Squid Wood, which aired with a season 5 episode.

Season 5 had most of its run in 2007, but two specials aired in huge gaps in 2008 (when season 6 already started), and Goo Goo Gas premiered all the way in 2009 during The Ultimate SpongeBob SpongeBash, when season 6 was almost over and season 7 started.

Season 6 mostly ran from 2008-2009, but The Clash of Triton premiered in 2010 in the middle of season 7.

Season 7 had some episodes that were produced before others, but premiered in a different order. Also, The Curse of the Hex aired when season 8 had already began.

Season 8's later episodes simply aired during season 9.

Finally, season 9, which began in 2012, only premiered 8 episodes that year, 2013 had 9 (though Little Yellow Book was supposed to air the year before), and in 2014, only two episodes premiered at the beginning of the year. Plus, it took exactly a full year to air a new episode that was made since 2013.

Does anyone have a good explanation on this? Also, what are your thoughts?
 
Why is Something Smells the first season 2 episode in Ireland but Your Shoe's Untied is in USA? We need to know!
 
I think it's Nickelodeon's fault.... You know how they are, screwing everything up since 1977! :wetpaint:
 
I never noticed the strange airing order until a fee years ago. And I demand to know WHY Nickelodeon is so inconsistent with Spongebob. Shows like Family Guy have no problems with airing order at all. In fact, the premieres and finales start or end at around the same exact time (September and May)
 
I actually like that. Spacing out the show gives the show a longer running time.


Demolition Doofus aired with Extweeeeme Spaaaaats.


Also, does anyone remember when only TWO SpongeBob episodes were aired in 2014?

WTF

And Tom Kenny the Cat and Yeti Krabs aired EXACTLY a whole year away from eachother!
So here's the real question. Are there ANY other sister episodes that aired a year (or more) from each other?
 
#1. None of the seasons air in "production" order. If you look at pictures of SpongeBob production cels and read the production codes on them, segments are made in a (presumably) random order and then paired together later by the crew.

Example, and you can find proof for yourself, "Reef Blower" was definitely made after "Tea at the Treedome", because that was the first segment made after "Help Wanted." Similarly, "Ripped Pants" was made several segments after "Bubblestand," yet placed right after it.

As far as I know, no one outside of the production crew knows the actual production codes of the episodes, let alone all of them. While I know that "SB-129" is SB-129 and "Tea at the Treedome" is SB-101, an official list is unavailable.

The order of episodes on the DVDs is just the order chosen by the crew, who probably don't really know the airing order chosen by Nick, besides which segments were paired.

#2. Nick likes to space out new airings so they can order fewer episodes. That doesn't mean that they still don't order decently sized seasons, but they can stretch them out longer.
 
Are there ANY other sister episodes that aired a year (or more) from each other?

There's Goo Goo Gas and Le Big Switch

As for the topic, i say basically the same as everyone else.
 
*Puts on tin foil hat*

NICK KNOWS WHAT EPISODES ARE GOOD AND BAD I TELLS YA! They try to bury the bad between good episodes and put off airing them because they know people will hate them!

*Tin foil hat off*

Seriously though there are actually a number of reasons for doing this, and because of the whole no continuity thing it really doesn't matter all that much.

1. Grouping up episodes that fit well together thematically is an easy way to drum up hype for a marathon of new episodes. Which sounds better? "we're airing 5 new episodes" or "Come celebrate our Patrick for President campaign with 5 new Patrick themed episodes"?

2. Holidays. This one's obvious. Air your snow themed stuff near Xmas and your spooky stuff in Halloween.

3. Specials are typically spaced far apart. Specials are another tool used by Nick to drum up the hype. I'd be willing to bet they plan on airing them when not much else is going on.

4. Honestly I think it is entirely possible that there are some episodes the execs think are better (or at least more marketable than others) so they plan on airing the best ones during the slow months and spacing them apart. This last point is purely speculation though.
 
Gary Takes a Bath was paired with Shanghaied, was it not? And Shanghaied aired first in 2001 as the You Wish special. I honestly have to think they almost forgot about it for two years and somebody discovered it just lying on a shelf one day and said, "Hey, we've had a new episode for two years we've never aired."
 
I think one of the biggest things is that early on, production codes were the key to when the episodes aired, but that led to a Rugrats halloween episode being aired in January which was obviously confusing. That was probably the trigger to varying it up. Alongside that, I think that they believe kid's would prefer to have variety and surprise on what'd come on, especially since comedy surrounds itself on surprise and variation. They my have flat-out decided to pull existing episodes out of hats and rotate the schedule every month to meet that goal. Of course, with the randomness of randomness, a couple of episodes managed to sneak far in to other seasons, except specials, which probably were intentional. They just don't seem to think ahead of time to know how to spread stuff out somewhat evenly which leads to ten episodes at once to 6-month long hiatuses. But yeah, even if this was true, practices like not airing The Sponge Who Could Fly last and putting sister episodes a year apart with nothing in between are baffling at best.
 
youraccent said:
#1. None of the seasons air in "production" order. If you look at pictures of SpongeBob production cels and read the production codes on them, segments are made in a (presumably) random order and then paired together later by the crew.

Example, and you can find proof for yourself, "Reef Blower" was definitely made after "Tea at the Treedome", because that was the first segment made after "Help Wanted." Similarly, "Ripped Pants" was made several segments after "Bubblestand," yet placed right after it.

As far as I know, no one outside of the production crew knows the actual production codes of the episodes, let alone all of them. While I know that "SB-129" is SB-129 and "Tea at the Treedome" is SB-101, an official list is unavailable.

The order of episodes on the DVDs is just the order chosen by the crew, who probably don't really know the airing order chosen by Nick, besides which segments were paired.

#2. Nick likes to space out new airings so they can order fewer episodes. That doesn't mean that they still don't order decently sized seasons, but they can stretch them out longer.
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oh my god we have to find out more about these production codes
it's study time

ok so I found out that TATT is indeed SB101 and Reef Blower is SB126
Working on a list right now

Sqeaky Boots is SB102- Ripped Pants was produced at the end of the season but got pushed ahead
Originally, Plankton wasn't going to appear in the series until much later- Plankton!'s production code is SB114
 
baba_944 said:
What episode paired with "Shanghaied" unless it went unpaired for two+ years.
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it had no pair, it had 7 more minutes worth of scenes about calling Nickelodeon and choosing the ending
 
There is no proof either way whether Gary Takes a Bath aired in 2003. In fact, given the proof Wikipedia cites, it aired in the same year as Shanghaied.
 
baba_944 said:
What episode paired with "Shanghaied" unless it went unpaired for two+ years.
Click to expand...
From what I remember, they just didn't rerun the thing at all until Gary Takes A Bath aired.
ataeaf said:
There is no proof either way whether Gary Takes a Bath aired in 2003. In fact, given the proof Wikipedia cites, it aired in the same year as Shanghaied.
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I remember the night it aired in 2003, does that count?
 
Flats said:
From what I remember, they just didn't rerun the thing at all until Gary Takes A Bath aired.
I remember the night it aired in 2003, does that count?
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We'd need something like a newspaper TV schedule to prove that it aired on that date.
 
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