Home > Television > Nickelodeon > SpongeBob SquarePants > My Favorite SpongeBob SquarePants Episode
That would most likely be the well-known season 3 episode Krusty Krab Training Video
.
Somewhat oddly, although I have always found SpongeBob SquarePants greatly entertaining and an excellent cartoon, as a kid I rarely ever laughed out loud when I watched episodes of the show. It was only later on (from the late 2000s onwards), when I had grown a bit older and hence more able to appreciate the subtler comedy of the series, that I found myself frequently laughing during episodes, particularly when I re-watched the season 2 and 3 episodes. The Krusty Krab Training Video
episode, however, was a big exception: I clearly remember that the first time I watched it (which must have been sometime during the second half of 2002), I couldn't stop laughing nearly the whole time, which had never before occurred for me for any other episode.
The episode's format is quite different from that of a typical SpongeBob SquarePants episode, which, in my opinion, permitted the writers more creative freedom for the comedy. My favorite jokes from the episode, which now have become classics of the entire series, are the narrator being interrupted by the fish yelling HOOPLA
, who is then knocked unconscious by the brick thrown at his head (which starts at the 1:39 mark of the video); the introduction of the very clever code POOP
(at the 3:33 mark); Patrick getting scared by the narrator's voice, which he refers to as the talking ceiling
(at the 7:01 mark); and the narrator imitating an orchestra—and hilariously running out of breath halfway through—as the Krabby Patty is slowly presented to the viewer (at the 9:58 mark). (Also clever is the ending, which once again teases the viewer of the secret formula.)
I should be careful, though, about selecting this one as my favorite episode; SpongeBob SquarePants is a very long-running series with hundreds of episodes, and I have not (yet!) systematically considered every single one in order that I might properly determine my favorite. However, I still label it here as my favorite because after I first saw it, at least, if at any subsequent point during the 2000s you had put the question before me, I would definitely have replied that this was my favorite episode.