After watching a video on Youtube discussing about certain story driven shows doing better than episodic shows nowadays, I saw a comment asking this same question and it made me think for a moment.
If Spongebob came out today instead would it become as popular as it is now?
Well for me, I would say that it would probably still be popular among young children (similar to how Teen Titans Go and PAW Patrol are popular among them) but it wouldn't have become the global phenomenon like it is today. It would also depend on how well it would have done in ratings and how Nick would've treated it overall.
I really do believe the show had come out at the right time when Nick was treating most of its shows well, even if it didn't quite hit the ratings they were expecting as yet, and I think the show truly did shape the millenial and gen z generation we know today in of pop culture and humor. If the show today had the same type of humor as it did back in the early seasons then the show might have been popular among the older audiences and might even spawn the same amount of memes on the Internet. But the show overall, might have not have become the global and cultural phenomenon like it is today.
What do you all think?
Comments (8)
He would still be popular
Honestly, that's what I think caused the show to run out of steam. The show being an episodic show eventually caused the writers to have difficulty keeping the characters interesting. What's the point in watching SpongeBob try to get his license again for the umpteenth time? It's just going to make you wonder "SpongeBob, you like walking. Just quit one thing in your life so your teacher doesn't lose her mind!"
To me, that's why people consider Patrick's line about mixing his stupidity up in The Card to be his worst moment. It's the show acknowledging that his personality is now nothing more than an inconsistent joke. It's also why I consider Are You Happy Now more disappointing than atrocious. Because having an episode taking Squid's depression seriously sounds interesting on paper, but it doesn't really work if you're not going to follow up on it. Even when they do have small moments of development, like Plankton and his relationship with Krabs, those tend to fall flat when you have episodes where Krabs stagnating greed keeps getting worse and worse.
Honestly, I still consider SpongeBob one of the best optimistic goofballs in animation, but wouldn't it be nice if all those episodes where his personality was genuinely challenge stuck and helped him grow as a person? Like Aang? Or Todd? Or Luz Noceda? Or Steven Universe? Or, in of movies, Po the Panda?
Honestly, as much as I can name more than 20 newer episodes I like, I still wish the show ended at the first movie so we could end it off where SpongeBob truly develops.
Yeah I do agree with what you said in that last part. I mean Spongebob is mostly fine as an episodic show but it does become a problem when the characters become worse than how they were developed before. The first movie was and still is the perfect finale to Spongebob's character arc.
The honest truth is that SpongeBob came out at the perfect time and the perfect place with the perfect pitch, and was unlike anything on television. We live in an era where everything is SpongeBob or is attempting to be SpongeBob, just straight up wacky and goofy for the sake of being wacky and goofy. It would still be just as appreciated, but for the most part it would not be as iconic mostly because of the overall entertainment landscape that we have, which it arguably formed in many ways. Plus I have a feeling the show probably would have ended at the point Stephen Hillenburg would have wanted it to end, instead of it being dragged along on a leash by Nickelodeon for who knows how long.
Considering how iconic and likeable the characters are I still think it would be a success although some audiences might complain that compared to other cartoons the first 3 seasons are alot more slower/calm than what we see SpongeBob as nowdays
True. The earlier seasons were perfect for that kind of late '90s era but at the same time where it had that kind of a proper amount of witty writing along with visuals that were relatively trippy but creative and cool, as the ocean. It's only really homogenized into this sort of completely creative goof show because of adapting with the internet as well as other parts of the audience, especially the older crowd from a financial standpoint, but now heavily focusing on a new demographic, completely letting go of that equal entry for adults and children alike.
I think the show would become popular but not a global phenomenon