SpongeBob Is 10 and So Am I

Like the girl you see across the classroom in 4th grade, I knew there’d be something special about SpongeBob Squarepants when I first saw promos for the show in 1999. I just couldn’t have imagined how great that relationship would be ten years later. I put a high pedigree on retaining a degree of youthfulness. Not at the behest of responsibility, not at the denial of growing up in ways, not even at the detriment of maturity, I hope, but to the hope, joy, optimisim…ya know, just fun of being a kid. The imagination. In 20 or some odd years, I’d much rather be like Pixar’s John Lasseter, who’s built an empire on cartoons, than someone like Donald Trump who might be classy but who’d never imagine jumping on his gold plated bed.

For anyone with these values, any episode of Bob L’Eponge (as the French call him — okay, so I did try to class it up a bit) is like a supplement. It’s a vitamin blast of young, innocent fun. Okay, I’m about to do as large a stretch as anyone has ever done, so I hope you’ve got your yoga mats out. Jesus Christ said it is those with the faith of a child that would enter heaven.  I can only suspect heaven is a lot like Bikini Bottom then. Allow me to back down before hate-mail.

What former marine biologist Stephen Hillenberg created in SpongeBob is a sincere, irony-free wonderland that is liberated of the subversiveness of Ren & Stimpy, the crassness of South Park, the pop culture reliance of The Fairly Odd Parents or the Shrek films. He created a classic, and all of those are to be respected and enjoyed for their own right. In fact, I’m a big fan of most of em’. But in SpongeBob Squarepants, Hillenberg has created something transcendent, as 10 years would evidence, as worldwide fan-dom would support, as millions and millions of dollars of merchandising would cash in.

A decade later, SpongeBob is not a fad — he’s an icon and so barrier-resistent of one because of the show’s and character’s resistance to anything but goofy, silly, funny stuff. SpongeBob is a rube. Patrick is a dunce. Krabs is a penny-pincher. Squidward is all the self-serious pretentious ho-hums of the world. He is the antithesis of what the show represents, and therefore it’s foil. But many other entertainers, people and flash-in-the-pan obsessions have been foiled by SpongeBob.

While it’s popular to use SpongeBob as kind of stand-in for dumb in jokes, and it was popular to depict George W. Bush’s favorite show as SpongeBob on late-night TV, SpongeBob has, in fact, outlasted our former President in time and popularity, and is actually a favorite of our current, toutedly more astute Commander in Chief.

As the recent documentary that celebrated Bob‘s 10th anniversary, Square Roots, showed, SpongeBob has also got fans in everyone from LeBron James to higher brow comedy crowd golden boy Ricky Gervais. Alec Baldwin called working with him the most exciting moment of his career. But Baldwin isn’t alone either. David Bowie and Johnny Depp have lent their voice-work. Bands from Pantera to Ween their music.

I always get a kick out of it when friends of mine who are too old or too whatever for Mr. Squarepants are left aghast when I let them know their favorite bands, actors, athletes or politicians are fans.

But the show has survived on not just its core premise and supporters but on its core cast. Tom Kenney will be imitated for years after his death as SpongeBob. And Tom Fagergakke, once known for being the idiot on Coach, will now have pop immortality for being Patrick the Starfish. Immortality? Oh yes. I’m almost certain SpongeBob Squarepants is our Looney Toons. They might not make new ones forever, but our kids will be watching these 15-minute installments just as some of us do, and I’m just happy to have been there from the beginning.

Besides Square Roots, Nickelodeon is also celebrating the anniversary and coup of culture with a new TV feature called Truth or Square this month that will be paired up with a video game version across multiple consoles. And SpongeBob: The First 100 Episodes is now available on glorious 14-disc DVD. Yes, that’s ten years of SpongeBob in one handy, travel-ready set just to ensure, when you do get stranded on an island, it can be with your favorite show, as the hypothetical has always threatened.

DVDs and video games. Yup. There’s also a new line of Legos and toys out. Not to mention every bed sheet, T-Shirt, toothbrush, folder, Burger King bag, purse, keychain, children’s laptop, Beanie Baby and anything else you can think of that’s been released in 10 years with SpongeBob emblazoned on it. SpongeBob has a presence more ubiquitous than…no, no, no John Lenning’ing here — not Christ — but just about anyone else on the planet.

In an age where so much divides, SpongeBob Squarepants unites. I bet Barack Obama and George Bush could watch it together. Three-year-olds and 30-year-olds and that 30-year-old’s Dad or Mom, or maybe even dog could all watch it together and laugh at the very same things. SpongeBob has survived some ups and downs. After the movie, released in 2004, didn’t hit quite as big as some at Nickelodeon and Paramount had hoped, the show took a hiatus, Hillenberg left, and hopes were not high. But the best inventions can always survive without their inventors, and SpongeBob has already doubled its tenure since that moment of doubt. While episodes have ranged from the sillier to the simpler to the more irreverent to the broad, from undersea monkeys in rockets to campfire song episodes, it is still funny, it is still vibrant, it is still comfortable in its own universe. It’s little slice of heaven.

If you’re a newbie, pick up a DVD or watch an episode — it’s almost always on. YouTube the “FUN” song. That episode exemplifies what SpongeBob is really all about to me. In it, SpongeBob tries to teach the show’s arch nemesis — the plotting but diminutive plankton — how to relax with all the world-conquering ambitions and have fun. A song accompanies. SpongeBob sings, “F is for friends who do stuff together/U is for you and me/N is for anywhere and anytime at all, down here in the deep blue sea.” Plankton responds with “F is for fire that burns down the whole town/U is for uranium…bombs!/N is for no survivors!…”  Hilarious. Voice-work and writing like that paired with the simple but colorful animation and art direction that adds quite a bit to the humor make SpongeBob the poster-boy for positivity that no one expected. Here’s to another 10 years, I hope, to all that stuff you do so well, SpongeBob — the fun world you remind me of when I get all adult, of…oh, what do the French call it again? Oh yes, “joi de vivre.”