Patrick: "Hey, that's not fair! Cowboys couldn't afford cannons." SpongeBob: "They couldn't afford station wagons either!"
SpongeBob and Patrick excitedly race to Sandy's treedome to hang out with her. However, the entire dome has a metal cover over it and a "Keep Out" sign on the front door. In the entryway, they find a TV, which turns on, and plays a video of Sandy dressed for bed, and gobbling on loads of acorns. The recording of Sandy explains that she is hibernating for the winter, and that animals that hibernate do not like to be woken up and asks for no one to disturb her, including SpongeBob as she said so explicitly at the end of the video recording. However, even though prohibited to do so, Patrick opens the door anyway to reveal that the dome's environment is completely covered with snow.
Then SpongeBob and Patrick quickly take delight in the snow, even being able to remove their water helmets because of the snow's moisture. When they hear a strange noise from Sandy's treehouse, they go inside to investigate. They then discover that Sandy is many times her original size from eating loads of acorns, and is sleeping soundly. At first, their gentle prodding, and poking do nothing to wake her from her dreams of catching the outlaws Dirty Dan and Pinhead Larry.
"Who you callin' Pinhead?"
Soon enough, though, their merrymaking takes its toll, and then Sandy suddenly wakes up, assaulting SpongeBob and Patrick in her sleepy stupor. Then she falls back to sleep in her bed. Patrick then makes a pair of earmuffs from his belly button lint, which SpongeBob places over Sandy's ears to prevent her from waking up.
Then, SpongeBob and Patrick leave her room to continue playing in the snow. They pretend to be the outlaws from Sandy's dream, but then they start fighting over which one of them will play the part of being Dirty Dan. Their roughhousing causes Sandy's earmuffs to fall off, allowing her to hear all the noise, and she attacks them in further half-asleep fury. Being battered and bruised, with the winter storm growing more intense, SpongeBob and Patrick try to leave, but then they find that the door's frozen shut, leaving them trapped in the wintery treedome until spring. Some hours later, SpongeBob and Patrick are covered in snow and they start shivering.
Unable to escape or survive in the cold weather, SpongeBob tries to take a piece of bark from the tree, but the sleep talking Sandy, still thinking he is Pinhead Larry, threatens to put him in an iron lung. He takes it as a sign that he should put it back. They go into Sandy's room and, throwing caution to the wind, rip off all her fur. With their new fur-lined winter attire, SpongeBob proclaims that now they are ready for the "longest, coldest winter ever!" However, winter immediately comes to an end, and then Sandy wakes up with her winter pounds shed. Sandy sees SpongeBob and Patrick outside from her window and is excited to see them. She then comes out of her treehouse, and Sandy is initially surprised and confused to see SpongeBob and Patrick wearing her fur, but when she looks down at herself, she finds herself completely bald causing her to scream in horror. This shock immediately turns into anger, when SpongeBob and Patrick realized that ripping her fur off wasn't a good idea after all they now have to suffer the consequences.
As a punishment for what they did, Sandy forbids them from leaving her home and then drinks lemonade with them, while their bodies are tied around her to provide her new spring coat to keep her warm until her fur grows back, much to SpongeBob and Patrick's discomfort and dismay as the episode ends.
Production[]
Art[]
Title card background.
Painting of some of Sandy's fur taped onto Patrick's forehead
Model sheets[]
Deleted scene[]
According to the audio commentary and in the storyboard, there is a deleted scene where Sandy's bed was hanging from the ceiling, and there was much more saliva/drool. Also stated in the audio commentary, the original title was "Survival of the Morons."
Music[]
( ‣ ) Production music
( • ) Original music
( ◦ ) SpongeBob music
‣Down by the Riverside - Jerry Burnham, Stephen Wade [Title card] •Idea Sting - Nicolas Carr [Metal cover over treedome] ‣Folli the Foal - Andrew Fenner [Sandy's on the eating channel] ‣Skaters Waltz - Emile Charles Waldteufel, George Wilson [Snow inside treedome] ‣Footsteps (b) - Dick Stephen Walter [Sandy snoring] ‣Footsteps (c) - Dick Stephen Walter [Sandy snoring] ‣Easy Days and Mellow Nights - Glen Sutton, Norris Wilson [Sandy talking in her sleep] •Gator - Steve Belfer [Pat-back] ‣Point of Departure K - Gregor F. Narholz [Sandy wakes up] ‣Unpreventable - Gregor F. Narholz [Sandy roars] ‣Easy Days and Mellow Nights - Glen Sutton, Norris Wilson [Sandy falls asleep again] •Steel Licks 40 - Jeremy Wakefield ["All right, Pat!"] •Closing Theme 1 - Steve Belfer [Testing the earmuffs] ‣Hilo Rag - Guy Fletcher ["You're under arrest!"] •Tension B/U - Nicolas Carr [Sandy wakes up] ‣Monster Bug A - Gregor F. Narholz [Sandy backhands Patrick] ‣Hog Fever (a) - Graham Preskett [Sandy chases SpongeBob] •Death Bell - Nicolas Carr [Tombstones] ‣Time for Terror - Jack Dorsey [The lock is frozen] ‣Face at the Window - Dick Stephen Walter ["...until the door thaws..."] ‣Unease - Dick Stephen Walter ["...in spring."] •Drowsey Reef - Sage Guyton, Jeremy Wakefield [SpongeBob, Patrick freezing] •Vibe & Harp Hits - Nicolas Carr ["Maybe it's her fur!"] ‣Footsteps of Horror - William Merrick Farran ["Look at all that warm, toasty fur."] ‣Night Chill - Dick Stephen Walter ["That should be enough, right?"] ‣Reckless Rufus - Jerry Burnham, Stephen Wade, Tom Layton [Roll of tape] ‣Spring Song - Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Fiachra Trench [Spring arrives] ‣Hog Fever (a) - Graham Preskett [The lock is still frozen] ‣Fingerpickin' - John David Edmed, Vic Flick [Closeups of SpongeBob and Patrick wearing fur] ‣House Of Horror [#10.5] - William Merrick Farran [Sandy screams] ‣Curse of Evil 2 [#46.02] - Gregor F. Narholz ["SpongeBob... Patrick..."] ‣Down by the Riverside - Jerry Burnham, Stephen Wade [Ending]
Also in the audio commentary for the episode, C.H. Greenblatt had admitted to being lazy with having to draw the water helmets for SpongeBob and Patrick after they got into Sandy's treedome for the rest of the episode. Because of this, there is a scene where Patrick and SpongeBob take them off in the treedome because they realize that the snow melts into water. However, when it later becomes spring, SpongeBob and Patrick are still not wearing their water helmets in the treedome.
In the pilot episode of FOX's drama series Fringe, the beginning of this episode can be seen briefly.
Patrick breaks the fourth wall when he points to his dizzy clouds of chicken leg and said "hot wings" after he gets hit by Sandy.
The scene when Patrick makes a realistic face and saying, "Who you callin' Pinhead?" has become a popular internet meme.
There is also another internet meme that depicts SpongeBob and Patrick with Sandy's fur in an image with the caption "Asoingbob and Patrick when they stole sandy hair."[6]
SpongeBob and Patrick running to Sandy's treedome has also become an internet meme, known as "Five dollar foot long," with SpongeBob saying "Sandwiches at a cheap price!?!?" and Patrick saying "Satisfactory."
Patrick's line "Open sesame!" and "Well, I've done all I can do" have become memes as well.
This episode was paired up with different episodes in a few instances:
In the Bahasa Indonesian dub, in the scene where Sandy is infuriated when SpongeBob and Patrick steal her fur, she grunts rather than mentioning their names, though its airing in Indonesia shows her yell their names out of anger along with grunts.
When spring arrives, SpongeBob and Patrick are not wearing helmets and do not dry up.
Similarly, earlier in the episode, when they depend on snow for hydration, they are not affected by the lack of snow while inside Sandy's tree.
After Sandy grabs SpongeBob and Patrick the first time and goes back to bed, she is not wearing her blanket. The next time she appears, she is wearing it.
SpongeBob's feet and shoes are missing and Patrick has sharp teeth.
When Sandy pounces on SpongeBob and Patrick, SpongeBob's feet and shoes are missing.
SpongeBob's dark teeth
SpongeBob's teeth are colored darker than usual for most of the scene when he admits that they should leave the treedome.
Sandy Cheeks' lips are not moving.
When SpongeBob is standing next to Patrick, he has ice and snow on his head. When he runs to the tree, it vanishes. When he returns to his spot, it is back on his head as if it never left.
When SpongeBob is in the hole and picks up a plank, there is another plank behind him. When the scene changes to Sandy, and back to SpongeBob, the plank is gone.
At the end of the episode, just before the screen fades and zooms in from SpongeBob and Patrick to two empty glasses on the picnic table, the two glasses do not fade in and suddenly appear by one frame.
SpongeBob's mouth is offset.
In one frame, SpongeBob's mouth is offset.
Pink eyebrows
Patrick's eyebrows are pink (but a bit darker than his skin) when he and SpongeBob are tied around Sandy's body.
Names in other languages[]
Language
Name
Meaning
French
La morte saison
The Off-Season
German
Ein harter Winter
A Harsh Winter
Italian
Attenti alla belva
Beware of the Beast
Korean
바보들의 겨울나기 babodeul-ui gyeoulnagi
Winter of Fools
Polish
Nie dla głupoli
Not for the Dumb
Russian
Уроки выживания Uroki vyzhivaniya
Survival Lessons
Spanish (Latin America)
Supervivencia de los idiotas
Survival of the Idiots
Spanish (Spain)
La supervivencia de los idiotas
The Survival of the Idiots
Videos[]
Dirty Dan! 🤠 SpongeBob Throwback TBT
Why "Survival of the Idiots" is an UNFORGETTABLE Episode of SpongeBob ❄️
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