SpongeBob's House Party (Party Pooper Pants)

SpongeBob is excited to throw his first really big party. He's got tons of friends coming over and a whole list of fun planned. But his idea of fun is clearly different from the rest of them...

Season 3 is known for being where the specials really started taking place, containing a total of three. This is the first of them.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I quite enjoy the Patchy the pirate segments. It's clear Tom Kenny has a blast playing the role. I thought the somewhat dark joke where he accidentally punctures the area filled with water the mermaid needs to be in to survive was pretty funny. Mistaking dynamite for a flute and practically blowing his body off was amusing too.

The story with SpongeBob throwing the party had its moments. Patrick mistaking Mr. Krabs for Patrick (yes, it really is that dumb), Larry looking at himself in the mirror which turns out to be an image of a real lobster, SpongeBob coming up with the utterly boring idea of reading a comic strip outloud and Patrick giving the phone to an ice sculpture of SpongeBob in a punch bowl. The song at the end was cool as well, with some interesting visual animation.

The reason why this is one of the weakest classic episodes however is that SpongeBob is unusually unlikable. It feels out-of-character for him to care more about his silly schedule than his friends having fun. It almost felt like the script was originally written for Squidward. Yet at the end when Patrick tells him the party was great, he's happy that they loved the party. But he could see that they were having fun before and tried to stop it anyway. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but oh well.

Despite these flaws, Party Pooper Pants is still enjoyable. It does break the streak of the 10 amazing opening episodes, but it doesn't lack in entertainment value. I would give it a 7.7/10.