SpongeBob SquarePants encapsulates everything and anything a child or depressed adult could ever dream of in an eleven-minute segment following the shenanigans of life under the sea: ADHD, recreational drug use, and a squirrel wearing a string bikini showing major tit.
One thing, however, that it has painfully lacked in its more than twenty years on air has been its failure to address life’s truth. And life’s truth is that not everything is Krabby Patties and jellyfishing. While everyone – well, nearly everyone – wants a happy ending for a titular character such as SpongeBob, life’s truth is that’s not always what happens. Sometimes you’re eaten by your boss’s whale daughter, or maybe your neighbor Squidward commits murder-suicide during the night. Who knows. In the show’s goal to capture and ensure SpongeBob’s happy-go-lucky legacy, its creators have missed out on the truth.
My advice? Kill. SpongeBob. Off.
You’d be lying if you didn’t think the series’ plotline was getting a little stale. The budding sexual tension between SpongeBob and Sandy jumped the shark ten seasons ago. Any audience would get impatient with the lack of payoff from their relationship, and for what? So they can keep pretending there’s nothing between them while they hit each other with their big gloves during karate? Killing off the main character could reinvent the show, driving a depressed Sandy right into the arms of man candy Patrick to create a romantic relationship. Or hey, even Patrick and Squidward – love is love!
With SpongeBob dead and gone and the show reinvented, the story can continue in a more authentic way.
In fact, I’m surprised the writers haven’t killed SpongeBob off already! There are a million different ways the yellow guy could kick the bucket. Plankton could finally poison him to get to the secret formula. Gary could give him rabies somehow, I’m sure. Mr. Krabs could fire him, causing him to be evicted and without means to feed himself! Death, even in Bikini Bottom, is a natural part of life, given that the leading cause of death there is being hit by SpongeBob’s erratic boat driving and screaming, “My leg!” So it’s unlikely SpongeBob would escape mortal death so many times by now.
The real life struggles SpongeBob writers could bring to light right in front of the most innocent of viewers has no limit. And it’s something to be excited about!
The beneficial impact of murdering SpongeBob wouldn’t just make the show better, it would make our nation’s youth better. We know our public education system is crumbling, so it’s the responsibility of an underwater world full of talking salmon and a crab small business owner to teach kids what’s wrong and what’s right. I’ll admit, SpongeBob does an average job of training kids for the real world. Mr. Krabs never giving up the Krabby Patty recipe? That’s brilliantly teaching kids that “snitches get stitches.” Watching Squidward being a miserable cashier? That’s just called job training. But if my child saw SpongeBob get brutally murdered in the show, he/she could have learned the lesson that if you love something, you should kill it in the first season.
Also, if you see a flamboyant sponge flipping your hamburgers in the back, go to the Wendy’s across the street and report that to the Better Business Bureau several hours later. What are you afraid to tell our children about the real world, SpongeBob writers?
This travesty shouldn’t be pinned just on SpongeBob. It’s part of a systemic issue across all children’s TV shows and the writers who slave over them. I truly believe all main characters that have the show named after them should be killed for the benefit of the plot. Scooby-Doo? Put him down. He doesn’t solve the mysteries and he has an unexplained speech impediment that’s never addressed, so let the other characters continue to do their job. Bob the Builder? Kill him in a construction accident; there are so many out-of-work construction workers right now and it would teach kids that everyone they love will eventually die.
Maybe these writers should take a lesson from their pubescent viewers and grow a pair.
So where do we go from here? Until there’s justice, SpongeBob gets to lollygag around with his net terrorizing jellyfish and the children of America who demand a good plot. Nickelodeon writers, are you prepared to kill Spongebob or am I going to have to learn how to swim and kill him myself?