ONE
Nighttime in the neighborhood. (Why is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker playing over the credits?)
Spongebob sleeps. A bubble forms above his head and we see his dream. It rains Krabby Patties. He runs around with his mouth open, happily eating.
TWO
When he wakes he’s chewing on his pillow. He needs a quick midnight snack. Gary, on a newspaper next to the bed, sleeps. Quietly, Spongebob goes into the kitchen and makes a sea-nut butter sandwich. He takes one bite and crashes onto the counter, asleep. The open refrigerator door starts to waft a cold, ghostly vibe.
THREE
Still nighttime outside the pineapple house. Dissolve to day, and now the house is iced and frozen. Ah, here comes the Nutcracker music again.
FOUR
Lol, the television announcer shivers. Everything is captured in blocks of ice. The foghorn alarm explodes all the cubes in the bedroom. In the kitchen Spongebob sleeps (still crashed on the counter) in a block of ice, shivering. He wakes up, shattering his cube, and slips his way to the fridge. Closing the door, he sits and shivers, then suddenly slides everywhere. Up the stairs, around the outside of the house, back through the window, and into bed. His blanket is like a pane of glass.
Gary, wearing ear muffs, meows at him. Spongebob says, I don’t get sick. I get the suds. As he describes the symptoms of the suds, they happen to him: pink bubbles pop out of his spongey body. However, he insists on going to work.
At the cookstove Spongebob sneezes into his hat. He looks terrible, and Krabs notices. From offstage Gary comes in and meows, then exits back off. Krabs says, “The suds!” Still trying to work, a pale Spongebob offers Mr. Krabs a Krabby Patty, then sneezes it across the room, pink bubbles everywhere. Krabs sends him home.
SWITCH
He looks terrible. It’s painful to watch! His eye rolls down his face, for crying out loud. Time to call Sandy. She’ll be right over to escort him to the doctor.
FIVE
Instead, it’s Patrick at the door. He tries to convince Spongebob that the doctor’s office is a horrible place and he shouldn’t go. He terrifies Spongebob with tales of the icy cold stethoscope, lol. Patrick voices our deepest fears of the doctor while using language that doesn’t scare children. It’s so layered!
It works. “Would you like to be my doctor, Patrick?” Oh, boy, haha! Bubble-wipe to Patrick in a doctor’s head mirror. Spongebob sneezes bubbles and Patrick uses corks to plug all his holes. As he sneezes, Spongebob grows larger but he doesn’t blow out the corks. He tries to call Sandy but his finger is too big for the buttons. Doctor Patrick, can you call? He does, discouraging her, but Sandy’s coming anyway. We have to make you better before she gets here!
Patrick spreads sea-nut butter on Spongebob’s foot and makes it into a sandwich. He pulls one of Spongebob’s teeth. (These are his remedies.) On it goes until we see the three-palm island and hear Sandy arrive.
Lol, wut? I think Patrick’s tied Spongebob to a sacrificial bier! Anyway, the knocking causes Patrick to roll an inflated Spongebob out the back.
SIX
Sandy chases after. Patrick now has two rock houses. One of them has feet. When it sneezes, the brown rocky covering blows away, revealing an enlarged Spongebob.
SEVEN
After arguing, Patrick and Sandy fight over the giant ball of Spongebob, rolling it this way and that. In their fight, they lose control.
Like a destructive snowball, Spongebob rolls toward town. Krabs tries to stop him from crashing into the KK, and it actually works. Then Spongebob sneezes, bursts out the corks, and covers the screen in a wash of pink bubbles. The KK is demolished by it.
EIGHT
At the hospital. The official doctor says, “You get the sponge treatment.” A hand — real, cutout — enters and take Spongebob away. Live footage of the hand at a sink, squirting dish soap on a yellow sponge. It rinses and squeezes while Spongebob’s voice, over, giggles. Cut to someone in the shower as the sponge washes their real back. (Yikes, TMI!) Feet, dishes, (a car bumper, the floor) — the washing continues while Spongebob cheers, over. A final squeeze-out at the sink, and the hand cutout delivers our Spongebob back to the hospital room. He’s cured! I love the doctor! The hand delivers an oversized lollipop.
NINE
A lollipop? Patrick is now suddenly sick, too. He blows a bubble through a wand. The hand cutout takes him away. The same live sink treatment, only this time to a plastic starfish. Oh! Yikes! He’s wiped over a cactus! Aargh! Plunged into the toilet! Patrick, over: “This doesn’t seem right!” End.
Lol, what happened to the Nutcracker motif? I’m going to count this episode as having all its Enneagram beats (the Three/Six is the Abnormal House theme), but holy cow. An open refrigerator door (Trouble) leads to Spongebob soaped up in a real sink? It’s a tenuous leap. I’m quite suspicious that this is an author’s message story: Kids, going to the doctor and washing in a bubbly tub are fun! You don’t want to be like that ignorant Patrick who ends up in the potty!