One Coarse Meal (SpongeBob SquarePants)
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 An episode that not only took torturing a character to extreme levels, but also became so infamous, so notorious, that it almost became the final in the coffin for the reputation of an otherwise great franchise.
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"That’s it, I’m done. The 4:15 bus should be along anytime now…"
— Plankton deciding to end it all by getting run over by a bus.
One Coarse Meal is the 20th episode of the seventh season of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Summary
Mr. Krabs discovers that Plankton is afraid of whales, and disguises himself as his daughter Pearl to scare Plankton.
Plot
As the episode opens, Mr. Krabs is sleeping in his money bath, when he smells something burning. SpongeBob then tells Mr. Krabs that it smells like Plankton with his new explosives. Plankton then blows up the Krusty Krab, while his machine captures SpongeBob and Mr. Krabs. Plankton tickles Mr. Krabs with a feather. SpongeBob accidentally reveals the location of the Krabby Patty secret formula. Then, Pearl comes to the kitchen. Plankton runs back to the Chum Bucket in panic, as it turns out he's terrified of whales. Afterwards, Mr. Krabs asks Pearl if he could use one of her dresses.
Plankton tells Karen about his fear of whales and finding Pearl in the lab, along with how they ate his family members in the past. She tells him there are no whales in the Chum Bucket. Later, seemingly Pearl terrorizes Plankton. He flees inside the Chum Bucket, where Pearl quickly reappears, claiming she wants to eat Plankton. This goes on for two whole weeks--Plankton becomes severely traumatized and eventually has a nightmare about a demonic Pearl eating him and his kinfolk. Unknown to Plankton, it turns out that "Pearl" was actually Mr. Krabs in disguise the entire time.
The next day, Plankton appears on the road, laying on it to try to get ran over by a bus. SpongeBob becomes concerned about this and confronts Mr. Krabs in his office and tries to ask him to stop harassing Plankton, but he refuses to listen. Mr. Krabs reminds SpongeBob that he revealed the location of the formula which is a violation in the Krusty Krab Rule Book. Since Mr. Krabs won't listen to reason, SpongeBob then tells Plankton about Mr. Krabs' worst fear. Plankton suddenly stops his attempt to get ran over and is surprised but becomes angry when SpongeBob tells him that it has been Mr. Krabs disguised as Pearl that's been scaring him the entire time. SpongeBob leaves while Plankton is left with a plan to get revenge on his rival.
Plankton decides to get revenge on Mr. Krabs by tormenting him with a mime which turns out to be Mr. Krabs' fear. Later, SpongeBob scares Plankton away with holographic whales to keep him from getting the formula. SpongeBob then releases Mr. Krabs, and the episode closes as mime continues to bother him.
Why It's Really Far for the Coarse
- To get the elephant out of the room, it's not only a very harsh Plankton torture episode, but it's the absolute worst torture episode of any character in this entire show.
- Also, this episode is basically SpongeBob SquarePants' answer to The Simpsons episode "The Boys of Bummer", which is another episode with a similar premise.
- Mr. Krabs is at his absolute worst in this episode, as he needlessly torments Plankton to the point where he considers suicide, even if it means keeping the secret formula from him.
- The writers of this episode feel like they hate Plankton, as Mr. Krabs uses Plankton's fear of whales to scare him, leaving him in depression, and paranoia. Even when SpongeBob points out the consequences of his deeds, Mr. Krabs just laughs and points out how much of a mess Plankton is now.
- Aside from disturbing, the animation here is very bland and doesn't feel fluid at all, not to mention having a lot of washed-out colors.
- What doesn't help is when you consider that Mr. Krabs and Plankton were actually friends before, as established in Friend or Foe. This episode shows no signs of continuity towards said episode and it comes off as really sad to contradict such past events.
- Mr. Krabs seems to be portrayed as a protagonist, even though he acts like a diabolical, arrogant sociopath who torments his rival to the point of considering suicide and shows no remorse for his actions. Not helping is that he never gets any real comeuppance for his actions whatsoever; however, he almost did when Plankton tried to torment him with a mime, but it goes back to Mr. Krabs winning anyway.
- Perhaps the most infamous scene in the episode is when Plankton reveals his intentions to commit suicide, which is rather sensitive and goes well into adult territory.
- This episode failed miserably to do horror-comedy correctly, as prior and later episodes, including "Squidward in Clarinetland", "Fear of A Krabby Patty", "Don't Look Now", "Nasty Patty", "Graveyard Shift", and "The Ghost of Plankton" have done this right. This (along with "A Pal for Gary") tried to take this concept correctly, except they went too far. What failed experiments of episodes they are, it would be considered laughable.
- Karen is no better. Instead of encouraging him to steal the Krabby Patty Secret Formula and/or trying to help him get off his fear of whales, she criticizes Plankton because he has a fear of whales.
- As Mr. Krabs seems to be portrayed as a protagonist and Plankton as an antagonist, the episode implies that you are in the right by harassing and driving other people you despise into committing suicide, which is morally wrong as it can make you look like a criminal.
- Driving someone to suicide can be considered murder as there have been some cases in real life where people have been arrested for being the perpetrator of another person's suicide.
- The nightmare scene adds to the whole atrocity of this episode.
- It also directly contradicts "The Algae's Always Greener", in which Plankton and Pearl directly interact. Yes, one may say that SpongeBob SquarePants has always had continuity errors, but several episodes, especially those that do contradict prior episodes, aren't really meant to be watched in chronological order, not to mention the series' official timeline is also unclear.
- The title card, for some reason, plays light-hearted music, which is a very bad contrast to the episode's scary tone.
- On that topic, the title card, while still good, is somewhat creepy. It is because it has black bars around it, which is used in a lot of horror movies.
- SpongeBob, while not as bad as Mr. Krabs in this episode, is no better, as he helps Plankton give Mr. Krabs revenge, only for him to suddenly betray Plankton and help Mr. Krabs instead for no reason.
- He also states it would fly in the face of his "good nature", which makes him a massive hypocrite as he has done horrible things:
- Helping Mr. Krabs poison a health inspector.
- Cheering when Karen malfunctioned when she started crying after Plankton gave her a song for her anniversary.
- Took advantage of Gary for a great snail race.
- Ignored Gary's condition while Gary was being constantly harassed by an evolved Puffy Fluffy.
- Destroyed the reputations of his childhood heroes along with Patrick.
- Murdered several clams while defending a Krabby Patty.
- Joking about being a drowned victim by saying "Because I ripped my pants!", which angered a lot of people.
- Purposely destroyed Squidward's chances of joining a men's choir by pestering him into getting him to listening to his singing.
- He also states it would fly in the face of his "good nature", which makes him a massive hypocrite as he has done horrible things:
- Despite all of the torment Plankton is put through, the writers still portray Plankton as the villain of the episode just because he is designated to be a villain by the show's standards.
- Hypocrisy: This episode tries too hard to make Plankton unlikable, as one part has him trying to take revenge on Mr. Krabs by tormenting him with his own worst fears and it portrays that moment as bad, which is very hypocritical of both the show and the episode because it is not Plankton that is being the viliain, but it is Mr. Krabs.
- This episode could encourage children to become bullies by tormenting other people and it shows them that taking advantage of the fears of others is a good thing, and that is a serious red flag.
- It is revealed that Mr. Krabs doesn't even pay SpongeBob with real money, which is hard to believe since "Squeaky Boots" showcases Mr. Krabs paying half his money to SpongeBob almost at the end of the episode. Here in "One Coarse Meal", this episode acts like nothing from "Squeaky Boots" has even happened.
- Terrible ending: After Plankton finally learns "Pearl" was Mr. Krabs in disguise the entire time and gets his revenge on him at last with a mime he can torment him with, SpongeBob scares him away with holographic whales so he can lose.
Redeeming Qualities
- Just like a regular SpongeBob episode, the first few minutes of the episode were okay until Mr. Krabs finds out about Plankton's fear of whales.
- Plankton is the only likable character and it's easy to feel sorry for him.
- Pearl is at least a likable character because she did not participate in her father torturing Plankton.
- SpongeBob is somewhat tolerable throughout the episode, however, the same can't be said in the ending unfortunately.
- At least he stopped Plankton from getting crushed by the bus.
- He called out Mr. Krabs for torturing Plankton.
- The writers of the episode might have done some research. Whales do eat plankton.
- At least Plankton puts behind his suicidal intentions, even if his revenge attempt failed anyway.
- A few of the jokes are funny, like the "Wacky Bucks" scene.
- Even though Plankton's revenge attempt was ruined thanks to SpongeBob, at least seeing Plankton using a mime to scare Mr. Krabs was very satisfying.
- The events of the episode were never mentioned again.
- However, while this episode is bad itself, it at least didn't take the character torture episode concept the same way Danganronpa did.
Reception
"One Coarse Meal" was universally panned by fans and critics and is widely considered to be one of the worst episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. It received a 3.5/10 on IMDb making it the second lowest-rated episode of SpongeBob. PhantomStrider ranked it the number #1 worst episode of the series. WatchMojo ranked it Number #1 on their Worst SpongeBob list. It also reached the point where some fans and viewers even stopped watching the show altogether after this episode. [citation needed]
Similar in case to the Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends episode “Everyone Knows It’s Bendy”, much of the cast and crew confessed to hating this episode as well, most notably Clancy Brown, who is Mr. Krabs' voice actor, as he felt uncomfortable when he was recording his lines for the character in the episode. There were rumors that even Stephen Hillenburg hated this episode as well. But evidence of that is unconfirmed as of 2021, even before and after his death in 2018.
Gallery
This is the exact moment when it all started going downhill.
Poor Plankton.
Before Smile at Despair in the Name of Hope, there was this.
"Really, he's a mess?" *laughs* Suicide is no laughing matter, Eugene!
If SpongeBob didn't help Mr. Krabs, this could've been a way to teach the crustacean a lesson.
Literally one of the worst moves SpongeBob has ever made.
"This is so not cool." - Johnny Test
Trivia
- This episode was originally going to be titled "Plankton Got Served" during production.