1/15/05

1/14/05--Law and Order, TNT/TBS/wherever
SpongeBob SquarePants, Nickelodeon

Do kids look at grownups watching SpongeBob with as much incredulity as adults have looking at tots watching Barney? I was giddy during most of the show. I didn’t even experience a fart joke; but it’s a silly, jejeune show, full of puerile humor. And I certainly could use more of it.

I’ve heard that SpongeBob does great with the “stoner” demographic. Guess if I like SB, I’m part of it; at least it means that I’m a Bugs Bunny fan. The show is absurd and good-natured, and even though the stories are usually pretty straightforward minor morality plays, they have so much fun getting to the conclusion that it’s hard to hate the fact that the message is obvious.

In the half hour, we got two little episodes. Bugs and crew would have given us four. In the first, SpongeBob was humiliated in front of the restaurant patrons because his grandmother kissed him outside the Krusty Krab. He resolved to be a grownup and did so with Patrick’s help. Patrick said the way you become an adult is 1. Puff up your chest. 2. Say “tax exemption.” 3. Cultivate a taste for free-form jazz. SpongeBob pulled out sideburns for him and Patrick and he went to confront his grandmother, who naturally made him want to be a child again. Who would say no to cookies and napping and presents when being an adult means no cookies and getting a gift of unwrapped office supplies?

In the second episode, Squidward got sick of being near SpongeBob because SpongeBob and Patrick wrecked his home with their reefblowers, so he went to a gated community of squids. Naturally, they were just like him. At first, it felt like paradise, because he could ride his bicycle, get canned bread, do interpretive dance, and play in a clarinet quartet. As the days wore on, it got less and less enjoyable. Finally, despondent, he sat on a park bench to contemplate. And he saw a reefblower nearby. He pulled a SpongeBob and drove his neighbors crazy. Meanwhile SpongeBob and Patrick try to visit and bring an apology cake as a gift. Chaos ensues, but our dynamic duo can’t find their crotchety friend because they can’t tell him apart from the other squids and Squidward uses the reefblower to jettison himself from the community.


Law and Order

Haven’t watched Law and Order in ages. I seem to remember that in the early days, the cops followed some leads that went nowhere and the prosecutor occasionally got it wrong and the decisions sometimes didn’t go his way. Maybe I was just watching through a rose-tinted monitor.

Whenever I’ve caught some of the “new” L & O’s over the past several years, it has seemed that there are fewer dead ends and fewer losses, and the story hinges on some twist in the defense.

This one, about an accidental death of a medical researcher due to a criminal act of an animal-rights activist was surprisingly without twists, though Briscoe and Green didn’t run into any dead ends.