Keep Bikini Bottom Beautiful is a super-infamous episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. In this episode, Squidward is caught littering and gets sentenced to community service.
AIR DATE FOR THIS EPISODE: JANUARY 2, 2010
Why It Keeps Bikini Bottom From Being Beautiful[]
- Much like "The Splinter" from Season 6, this episode is yet another one that has the slow pacing and a plenty of unfunny gross-out moments.
- The episode has a very unnecessarily repetitive and annoying gag, which is Officer John, one of the Bikini Bottom policemen, giving Squidward tickets for no reason. Even though the first time is excusable (Squidward throws the gum that he accidentally steps on), it's still annoying and repetitive to see that cop does the same thing in the rest of the episode.
- To make it even more annoying, they played the same music in the background every single time he shows up.
- The cop gag in this episode is repetitive enough, and by the way, the episode in general is very boring as well. Mostly is just Squidward dealing with the garbage he picked up, and not a lot of other interesting stuff going on.
- It's another clichéd Squidward torture episode because of, first one, that annoying cop's role, and the other one, Squilliam's appearance.
- Also, unlike most of the bad Squidward torture episodes, this is one of those episodes that Squidward suffers for little to clearly no reason.
- Speaking of which, what the heck does Squilliam's role have to do with this episode? Nothing! Pretty much nothing interesting or meaningful at all! He's one of the antagonists of the episode for absolutely no reason at all, and only has two scenes which are used as a plot device to torture Squidward even more. Squilliam mocking Squidward is the thing that we've already seen quite a few times before, like in "Band Geeks," "Squilliam Returns," and "House Fancy." It's like the writers knew that it's a Squidward-centred episode, so they're able to make Squilliam anything that's crucial to the plot?
- There is also one part where Squidward is unlikeable by tripping up a little kid and stealing his cart to store trash. However, this still does not affect the extreme stupidity of Officer John in this episode.
- SpongeBob places Squidward’s trash literally underneath Squidward’s house, making the trash form a replica, causing Officer John to accuse Squidward of littering and give him more tickets over and over again. SpongeBob’s only explanation is that the dump is closed, making the climax of the episode feel very contrived.
- This episode has excessive amounts of cringe-inducing and disgusting scenes, including:
- Squidward bathing, eating, and drinking garbage, all at the aforementioned replica without noticing a thing until it was convenient on the writers’ part.
- SpongeBob absorbs the garbage onto his body whilst talking with his mouth full of garbage, the garbage coming out of his mouth.
- Plothole: As mentioned above in the previous point, how does Squidward not realize that his house is made of garbage until he gets into bed?
- Semi-bad ending: Officer John gives both Squidward and SpongeBob tickets, even though he should have only given SpongeBob tickets for reasons mentioned earlier. Yes, Squidward was with SpongeBob, but that doesn't help the fact that Officer John just sucks at his job and is still biased, extremely idiotic and annoying.
- In fact, Officer John never gets any repercussions for his actions, making him a Karma Houdini.
- Due to all the reasons listed above, this episode, along with A Pal for Gary, most likely started the 2010's in a horrible way.
- The opening is a exact copy of Boating Buddies, with Squidward getting a ticket and being forced to do community service, except in Boating Buddies, he's forced to go to boating school.
Redeeming Qualities[]
- Despite having a super repetitive story, this episode was trying to teach viewers about recycling.
- Good beginning: This episode starts with a good note, where Squidward happily walks down the street while "Cha Cha Del Sol" is playing in the background.
- Speaking of which, this production track is amazingly and distinctively catchy as well.
- Also, Squidward singing "Ignoring, ignoring..." (which is a reference to the song "Good Morning" in "Babes in Arms," the 1939 film, but it was also known for being sung in an episode of "Family Guy") when he passes SpongeBob's house is funny.
- The design of Squilliam's statue is decently nice and good looking.
- There are some borderline funny lines, for instance:
- "Is it trash day? I thought it was Tuesday!", said by a female citizen.
- "Of all the garbage that comes out of your mouth, this is the least annoying!", said by Squidward.
- It's nice to see SpongeBob trying to help Squidward deal with the garbage, which makes him relatively likeable here, the same can't be said about its sister episode that much, though.
- Speaking of which, its sister episode is one of the most widely despised episodes of the series.
- Depending on your view, Squidward's trash house and trash statue have the funny looking.
- Despite being really irritating in the most of the episode, at least that cop gives Squilliam a ticket for his rotten statue, and Squilliam eventually gets his comeuppance for that statue and being a jerk to Squidward.
Trivia[]
- It was the first episode to air in the 2010s decade.
- In 2018, a better version of this episode called Sanitation Insanity was created.
- Its paired up with the SCUMBOB!-infamous episode A Pal for Gary.