Mr Krabs Funny Ways to Get Blocked

As the entertainment world continues to reckon with how to handle problematic works from the past, it's inevitable that some cases might be mishandled and some genuinely great pieces of entertainment might be affected. Such is the case with the recently pulled SpongeBob SquarePants Season 3 episode "Mid-Life Crustacean." Nickelodeon's reasoning for the episode's removal from distribution makes sense, but it still feels weird to prevent fans from accessing this episode.

Viewers watchingSpongeBob SquarePants on Paramount+ noticed "Mid-Life Crustacean" was missing from the streaming service since its launch. On March 27, Nickelodeon representatives told IGN, "'Mid-Life Crustacean' has been out of rotation since 2018 following a standards review in which we determined some story elements were not kid-appropriate." However, the episode was still streaming on Amazon Prime and wasn't pulled until after the IGN article's publication.

Currently, the only place "Mid-Life Crustacean" can still be purchased digitally is as part of the iTunes SpongeBob collection "From the Beginning, Part 2." It was also included in a 2020 reissue of the DVD collection SpongeBob: The First 100 Episodes.

The plot of "Mid-Life Crustacean" centers around Mr. Krabs' concern that he's getting too old and behind the times. Desperate to feel young and cool again, he decides to spend a night on the town with SpongeBob and Patrick. Of course, while SpongeBob and Patrick might be young, they're decidedly not "cool" -- their idea of a good time involves watching laundry machines, playing tabletop RPGs and going to the dentist, among other things. The Krusty Krab boss is ready to pack it in for the night when Patrick warns him he's going to miss the "panty raid," which piques his interest. However, it turns out the woman whose drawers they're raiding is Mr. Krabs' mom, who grounds her son to his room.

It's obvious the "panty raid" plot point is the part of the episode Nickelodeon found inappropriate for children. While the story makes it clear SpongeBob, Patrick and Mr. Krabs were in the wrong and their actions deserve punishment, a plot about stealing women's underwear is pretty odd subject matter for a kids' show. Though the unexpectedness of the plot point is a joke in and of itself, it also feels out of character for the asexual SpongeBob to be interested in such a thing in the first place. As a result, the episode's removal is understandable.

That said, "Mid-Life Crustacean" still holds up as a great episode of SpongeBob SquarePants overall. Like many of the classic episodes from the show's first three seasons, hardly a second goes by without an inspired joke or visual gag. There's tons of great character-based humor driven by Mr. Krabs' mid-life crisis, Pearl's embarrassment about her dad and SpongeBob and Patrick's gleeful strangeness. The "Are you feeling it now, Mr. Krabs?" montage is a comedic highlight, which will continue to live on as a meme.

The episode's removal from streaming raises questions about the consistency of standards for Nickelodeon programming on Paramount+. Many fans have pointed out other episodes of SpongeBob that are dirtier or more disturbing, but let's ignore the idea of "inappropriate for kids" and focus on the issue at hand: in this case, potentially imitable behavior that could be considered harassment. Why, then, is "Mid-Life Crustacean" more inappropriate than, say, all of Ren and Stimpy, which -- even ignoring all its other boundary-pushing humor and behind-the-scenes controversy -- centers on a physically abusive relationship?

Perhaps the assumption is thatRen and Stimpy and older Nicktoons will be consumed primarily by nostalgic adults (even if they're placed in Paramount+'s "Kids" section) while SpongeBob SquarePants is still ongoing and more likely to be watched by children. In this case, it's SpongeBob's longevity that makes problematic content in its early episodes more vulnerable to removal than content from other shows that aired at the same time.

However, adding content disclaimers, as Disney+ did for select episodes of The Muppet Show, feels like the better route for dealing with potentially uncomfortable classics than simply removing them altogether. Perhaps "Mid-Life Crustacean" can eventually be re-added to streaming services with a disclaimer.

KEEP READING: Why Nickelodeon Finally Created SpongeBob Spinoffs

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Source: https://www.cbr.com/spongebob-squarepants-mid-life-crustacean-banned/